It takes more to equip our kids to launch into their future world and stand against the pressures of society. We must orient our lives towards the most important priorities God has set out for us. What naturally happens is a move away from what’s most important for the sake of our progressing lifestyle. This will be encouraging for every parent with important reminders of where they may want to recalibrate. 

Main takeaways from this episode:

• Don’t let your ambition sacrifice your most important mission.
• Don’t let life distract away from taking your family to Church.
• Does your lifestyle leave enough room for the ongoing discipleship of your children?
• Are we encouraging anything that could distract our kids from their walks with the Lord?
• What do we need to say no to, so that we can start proactively saying yes to what yields more fruit?

Scripture From This Episode:

1 John 2:16 – “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

Matthew 6:19-20 – “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal”

1 Timothy 6:17-19 – “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.”

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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 21 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 following. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Hey, guys. So glad you’re here. We’re talking about don’t let your lifestyle hurt your family.

Such a good topic. You guys are probably listening right now going, what does that even mean?

We don’t want to hurt our families.

That’s right. Yeah. But but sometimes we make choices in our lives. We make decisions or we say yes to things or versus say no to things. And it those those choices that we make can hurt our family.

And sometimes we grow up in a way where we feel like this path is rigid, meaning it’s not changeable. And there’s this feeling of have two for provision reasons and different things like that. Whereas maybe there are other possibilities. Other possibilities were forced upon us, which gave us really a bird’s eye view into how radically things can change for a family. And it’s just really, really an incredible thing. So the most important thing is that all of us, regardless of what activities we’re doing, what our work is, and these things, is that we’re orienting our lives, our leadership and families towards the top priorities. And what are the top priorities when we really get down to it? What is the purpose of parenting? What do you think the purpose of parenting is?

Oh, he just opened a can of worms when he said that and looked over at me. We actually cover all of the the theological look at what the biblical purpose for parenting is in the parenting mentor program. So, hey, if you haven’t joined us, we’d love to have you join us for our next program, which starts in a month or so. But in reality, when it comes down to it, we all need to have our lifestyle set up in a way where it’s not going to be an opposition against what we are called to scripturally as Christians. Right. I’m assuming everyone that’s listening here is a believer, but for for the Christian for the Christ follower, our hearts should be because we love God, because we love Jesus, we want to obey him. Right. That’s John 14 says over and over again, If you love me, you will obey me. Yeah. And so as adult Christian Christ followers, we should want to obey God and what his directions are and his word for Christian living and be modeling those for our kids so that hopefully when they are older, they have turned their life over to Jesus as well, and they make choices that are going to reflect that same heart.

Because our purpose in life is at the end of Matthew thinks Matthew 28, which is go and make disciples of all nations. Well, the most important disciples, we are going to influence our own children.

Right? So if we make choices that are going to hurt our relationships with our kids, for example, or hurt the discipline of our kids, right? Like the time that it requires to disciple them, then we need to reevaluate and recalibrate some of our lifestyle.

All think about this because the enemy is using so many more tactics through technology, media and really grabbing the global conversation, if you will, that seeps into all of society around ungodly things and so in traps and so forth. And so it’s really important more than ever that we’re vigilant in the sense of discipling our kids in discipleship is an event. You’ve heard us say this before it’s got to be woven into the fabric of your parenting and your lives. And so just a couple of things and we’ll dive in in a second. But, you know, do you do things come in between you and your family going to church? Is it too tired from the hustle or we can just watch it online.

Or even people like I just even think about like sometimes we get a lot of messages from people who have family members that are unbelieving, right? They’ll come to visit during different times of the summer or different things like that. And one of the things that Isaac and I decided many years ago was that regardless of friends or family or just people that were visiting, we were not going to stop going to church for those times. Right.

We go to church every week we possibly can because there are going to be those times where you family is too sick. And so if there’s an opportunity to go to church and and we.

Want to want to this is.

A legalistic issue. It’s just obedience. It’s like God said, don’t forsake the gathering. And it’s not just about a message. If church is just about a sermon, we are really maybe missing the point. And we’ve got to be replicating what our kids we’re going to do a whole episode on this by moving on, you know, discipleship we talked about or even another one would be sports. The sports overtake take away so much time, effort and things. And I’m for sports, by the way. Angie is for sports. She played sports growing up. But there can become a point where it takes away from what’s most.

Important, right? I mean, there there have been many times where like, if our our kids were playing sports, they had tournaments on weekends that would. Potentially take them out of town, away from church, for example. Right. And then, is your whole family going or is half of the family going or like you guys know because you’re living it? Right. And so we’re going to dive into all these topics. But you guys, we started like just jiving and talking about the topic because we are so excited to talk to you guys about this. But we want to take a moment to say thank you for joining us with this 10 million legacies movement. We have just been felt so supported. We have felt your encouragement along the way. We could not keep doing this without you. Your reviews make a difference. Your comments make a difference. Your messages make a difference. In fact, we would love to hear from you. If you have suggestions of future podcast episodes, send them to us and to us. We would love to. You can email Isaac at Courageous Parenting or Angie at Courageous Mom dot com. And we would love to be able to we just want to keep this relevant and talking about things that are relevant to today. And so a lot of times we’re talking about things that we’re doing right. And then we also but most of the time we actually talk about things that you guys have sent in. So, so.

And sometimes I know because I remember being on the other side of it in the business world, not doing as the marketplace ministry. But I was in ministry and I remember wondering what ministry people do when they say it’s a full time effort and they’re working hard. Right. And it really is. There’s so much behind the scenes to produce two podcast shows every single week, maintain six websites to launch new products shops. We have two shops Resolute man, courageous mom. We have customer service for products to podcast, questions to social media, daily posts on social media, getting promos out.

Fulfilling book.

Production of all these things, and fulfilling book orders and you know, and then the expense, I mean, just for I’m just giving you guys a real bird’s eye view. Just the courageous parenting website is $450 a month just to make sure it runs because it gets so much traffic. The server cost is high. So, you know, we’re not complaining by any stretch. I just thought we’d give you a little bird’s eye view into it. And we are so thankful because of people purchasing courses, books, the shops and soon to be coffee coming soon at the app community. That’s 899 a month but is far more value than that. Promise you it’s almost 800 people and beyond all of that stuff helps support the cost of the ministry, but also support our family because it takes full time effort. So thank you. Well, let’s dive in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, you know, Isaac, before we dive, dive in, I just want to say, like, I know that there were times when I was even thinking about running a ministry many years ago, and I had no idea all that it took. And so I had been doing ministry for a while on my own. And it was it was fun and I loved it. I love connecting with many of you moms because I know a lot of you have been following for a long time. But until we started doing this together and you were full time, like there really was a threshold of how much I could do because of costs, because of not having time. So anyway, thank you guys.

So we have three points for you guys. And the first one is ambition. And when I say that word, most Christians probably think that word is a bad word. I actually don’t think that word is a bad word. That word by itself is a good word. I want my kids to be ambitious. I want them to be proactive, take initiative, have productive, have goals and work towards them and all of these things. So ambition is not a bad word, but if your ambition sacrifices your number one mission, then it is. And we were just talking about the mission God has for all of.

Us, right. And so on that on the topic of the mission that God has for us all, obviously there are collective missions that we all have. We just want to like overview real quick. As believers, there are a collective missions, right? Isaac talked about the great commission making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Number two, I would also say, love the Lord, your God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength. If your life does not provide you time to be able to be in the Word and loving the Lord with your whole mind, heart, soul and strength, there’s a problem. There needs to be reevaluation. How can we make there be more time? Right? Maybe it’s a conversation because you have little kids where you have to talk to your husband and you go, Hey, I don’t feel like I’m in the word. And he’s like, I don’t either. And then you find a way to make time for each other because it’s about wanting to spend time with the Lord. And so there’s some collective missions, but then there’s also this element of knowing God and making him known to the world collective mission. But then there’s unique gifting that God’s dispersed among the body. And He has called people to certain ministries, to certain jobs, he’s called them to certain vocations. He’s called you. He’s got you on a mission. There is a purpose that God has put you in, the generation in, the family in. The marriage in the job that you’re in for a reason. What is that? Right. What is that? And are you distracted from that and not doing that at all because of other things that you have allowed to seep into your lifestyle that have gotten you kind of off the railroad tracks, if you will?

Yeah. First, John, chapter two, starting in 15, actually do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him for all that is in the world. The desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life. Like I got enough likes on social media and these kinds of things is not from the father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. So this is just a friendly reminder to us as well that we don’t want to let anything get in the way of the most important thing. It doesn’t mean we can’t do certain things, although we may audit some of it. Sometimes we do need to prune even good things so our best fruit can become even better. What do we need to prune potentially? So the discipleship of our kids and quantity time with our kids is better. Quantity time is better than quality time.

And can I just say something? You just brought up something. I think a lot of parents or a lot of people believe the lie, that quality time, for example, has to be extravagant. That quality time is going to the amusement park and spending a lot of money in order to do these quality time things. Can I just say that quality time is really having heart to heart conversations with your kids where they’re opening up to you and you guys are delighting in each other’s company like you’re really enjoying one another. And our definition of what quality time needs to be more biblical. Otherwise, we’re going to make decisions that actually suck the life out of us, that are going to potentially make us not enjoy those relationships. And so we have to realize that what the world portrays as what is quality and what is best for your kids is often not God’s best. It’s often the worldly best or the enemies best. The enemy is tempting you to try to keep up with the Joneses or do X, Y and Z. But in the long run, looking back, does that exhaust you? Does that make you regret it? Do you feel like you need a vacation from your vacation like that? That happens when you have made wrong choices, actually, you know, and so I think that we’ve all felt overwhelmed at times.

I’m just going to say this for a second, because I said the vacation from a vacation, which I’ve actually said myself, Isaac has too. And I know that especially when you have little kids, it’s you do feel that way. You feel that way just doing life. Sometimes I think when you have little kids, it is pretty normal. So I don’t want you to feel guilt of any kind and some things you need to prioritize, like going to the family reunion. Yeah, it’s going to be hard and you’re going to be tired afterwards, but it’s worth it for relationships. My point is, though, is are we tacking on extra things that the world is tempting us to do, not that the Lord is asking us to do as an act of service and like flourishing relationships, that those things are sucking us dry of energy. We just need to evaluate that.

I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night. 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 Craig’s parenting dot com 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. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

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

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

This class has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of 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. And I would say to praise the Lord for all you providing out there for your families. Yeah, I think in a lot of families is is the men out there working hard. But I know there’s lots of women working hard, too. And whether it’s a side hustle to help and or single moms or others. So I think that’s really, really amazing. But one thing that you don’t want to sacrifice your family for your career, and so where is the line? And only you can decide where that line is. But you have to look in your heart, your hearts, and pray to God and go in my justifying something for a future, I used to do this in a way. I would say things like when my kids, my little my first three were really little, I would say to myself, Well, they’re not really going to remember this time. So now is the time for me to dive all in and really build and really save money and hustle like crazy. So that when they do remember and they’re older, that I can spend more time with them. The problem is, is we develop habits of working like that and what happens down the road is a new rationale comes and a new rationale comes and a new rationale. So just if this is you make sure you break that cycle so that you don’t sacrifice that time with your kids because you can grow to love the hustle and do those things.

And it’s okay to enjoy what you do. And I hope you do, actually. Yeah. But regardless, we don’t want to sacrifice our families and it would be worth it to actually be not as successful in the world’s eyes, but to cultivate and grow seeds of faith in a spiritual sense that is more worth it. Now, I’m not saying you have to do one or the other, because I believe in the genius of the and not the tyranny of the war, a good business book says. But it’s really important to at least think about that and make sure we’re not going too far on this side of hustle, hustle, hustle. Accumulate things in the bigger, the bigger. And now we have more weight and more debt, and now we have less freedom and even a greater responsibility to make more and more and more. And you get on this treadmill and then you’re looking over here and your kids are already 14 and up and you’re like, Where did the time go? I need to sow seeds of faith, but it’s always easier when the kids are younger.

It’s interesting because it’s a cycle, right? Like you were talking about habits. And I think that women can even do this too, with the lifestyle choices and how we manage our home and what we buy. When you are talking about accumulating things, that hit me big time. So like I am not a minimalist, but I’m also not. I’m definitely not a hoarder. I see myself as a prudent wife. I try to get sales on things and I we do hand-me-downs, we pass things down. So I will hang on to clothes, for example, or shoes to pass on to the kids. And that can be more things, right? Like think about it where a family of nine kids, like all the things that we could potentially be hanging on to that would require to be taken care of. Many years ago, when I was in the midst of this and labeling boxes of 0 to 3 month boys and 0 to 3 month girls, all the things it dawned on me that I need to be very choosy about the things that I hang on to because I do need to steward the things that I have. Well, and I also there’s this deep conviction that if I’m not using it soon or if I may not use it, I should give it to someone who would be using it right now to bless that person. And that truly was like the balance for me actually was Can I pass this along to bless someone right now? And I remember for many years, like we were hanging on to baby girl clothes and obviously our youngest daughter is 17 and a half, so she was maybe seven when I kind of was like, I just don’t know if we’re ever going to have another baby girl because we kept having baby boys.

And of course, you have a 5050 chance. But there was that temptation in me to hang on to all of her stuff because I wanted so badly to have another little girl. And then it finally hit me after like nine years of hanging on to it. You know what? This stuff is getting so old now. I don’t know if other people would even use this if I hung on to it anymore, and so I got rid of it. But the thing is, is if you’re not using something proactively, if you’re not using it, you shouldn’t be hanging on to it because it’s just one more thing that’s potentially needing to be taken care of, dusted clutter, that sort of thing. And that takes away from the time that you have if. You’re taking care of it. That is time taken away from your kids that you can spend with them, discipling them or with your husband or with other people. We have a Bible verse in Matthew, chapter six, verse 19 through 20. That is 21, actually. It says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal But lay up for yourselves Treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys And where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will also be.

I love that scripture and I just want to say something real quick because I remember that Scripture being preached to me when I was a new believer, but I was like 25 years old and I had at the time I was in the business world and I had this little BMW convertible, and I used to love taking Kelsie, my oldest daughter, she just turned 22. We would have so much fun together. She your hair blowing in the wind and we’d go on the winding roads and we just have good memories together with that. And but it was a fun car. But, you know, part of it was I went and saw my managers and I would take them and do things and business, hospitality, you know, go golfing, things like that. And that was just part of my life then. And I was coming up and it was a great car. But then I heard this sermon where they used that scripture and then they referenced people with BMW cars. And I just remember going, That is so immature. That is unbelievably untrue. And so when we say that scripture, the unbelievably wrong thing to do would be to judge somebody because of things they own, because that’s not what the Scripture is saying at all. The Scripture is saying the heart of the matter, it’s okay. God is a good God. He may afford you to have some wonderful things. And friends of yours should rejoice in that, not be competitive about it. We should rejoice for fruitfulness in each other’s lives. However, we should also pull each other out of the fire when our hearts are wrong.

Amen. You know, it’s interesting because I even think about our sprinter van. So you guys, we have a mercedes sprinter van. Yes, we have a mercedes sprinter. And we love our sprinter van because our whole family can ride in that van and it can’t really ride in any other vehicle.

Well, you only have a few options, right?

You have very few options. But let me just tell you this story. So many years ago, we saved up and we got a really good deal on a sprinter van. Really good deal. I think it was like $19,000 or something. And I’m telling you numbers so that, you know, and then when Isaac felt the calling to go into full time ministry, we sold that sprinter van to give our family a three month runway in ministry because we were able to sell it and it could provide for our family. So we drove two vehicles to church together and we sacrificed and we paid more gas. And we we we did all the things because we obviously still had a big family and we prayed as a family that God would provide us with a vehicle that our whole family could ride in, so that we could go on vacations together and only take one vehicle. And the RV, you remember this? And then a few years into doing ministry, we were on our family vacation and the whole family is squeezed into the excursion and we did not fit. I was pregnant, for example, and we were all praying that God would provide. And you know what? One of the kids said, I’m going to pray for a sprinter van.

I think one I think two kids had a double buckle.

It was really rough. Yeah. And so we prayed for the sprinter van, for a spirit van or a vehicle that would fit everybody. And our son found one on Marketplace. And God enabled us to buy this beautiful sprinter van that had been used as a shuttle to church and back by an older lady whose husband was passing. And she sold it to us for 13,000 and 13,500. You cannot even like. Yes, that’s how much we got it for, because God is good. So if you see Isaac and I driving around in Idaho and we’re in a sprinter van, don’t judge. We got that thing for a really good price because God provided.

And I will also say if you bought a brand new one for 70,000 and you can afford it, it doesn’t impact the good of your family and it’s something useful to you. And it’s but your heart is for God and not for things.

Praise the Lord, generous giver.

Yeah, praise the Lord.

So we share that with you guys, because isn’t it easy for people to judge things? It’s super easy for people to look on the outside and to judge things. Yeah. And I just want to remind you that because I’ve been reminded gently by the spirit that things don’t always they aren’t always what they seem on the outside. And so we actually need to spend our focused energy, spending time in the world and, and, and coming before the Lord and saying, search my own heart. Oh, God. And we need to. Be more concerned with making sure that we are making the lifestyle choices personally that are going to afford us the time, which is our greatest commodity, to prioritize the things that we believe God has called us to for us. He’s called us to our family. He’s called us to our marriage. Yes, we have nine kids. So that is more of a commitment than it is for for parents that maybe have two kids. It is so we are less available to other people. But that’s okay. And we he’s called us to ministry. And so what are your priorities like? This would be a good time for you to maybe think about this question. If you’re not listening with your spouse, go on a date night and talk about what are your priorities, what does God called you to and do you have time for those things? Or is your life so consumed with pursuing things and saying yes to things that maybe are not those top priorities that you don’t have time for them?

Yeah, too often we’re scared to say no, so we say yes to inferior things and we sacrifice things that matter most. And so it’s really important that we really work that muscle of no and we get really good in alignment as a marriage on who are the people we’re going to invest in relationship with because we can only spend so much time and and those. What are the activities and is this activity? I know it’s fruitful for the one kid mostly other than some of these influences over here. And then if you really think about it, maybe some of the other things, but then you go, but is it fruitful now that we’re not eating dinner together most days and that we miss church every once in a while because we’re at a game and these kinds of things. And what is this saying to our kids as they’re growing up of what our real priorities, the actions, the what we live every single week is what actually shows our kids what is important. It doesn’t matter as much what you say. If what you do is different than what you say, what you say doesn’t matter at all, actually.

Right then they’ll deem you as a hypocrite. I do think that there is this element of needing to realize that there was a time in this world when sports were not in conflict with church. There was a time when they were not and they had success and becoming an idol in enough people’s lives to choose sports over going to church on Sundays that it became a thing and it stayed a thing since then. And so if if as believers, that is something that we have allowed even for a season like you guys, we have to understand that what we do is going to leave an impression with our children about our commitment to God, and that will influence their commitment to God and their commitment to his people and his body. And like Isaac was saying before, I mean, we we briefly brought up Hebrews 1025, which talks about not neglecting the meeting and stuff. And we talk more about that in the last podcast, too, actually from a different vantage point. And this is an important thing because when we are going on a regular basis, yes, we are hearing the Word of God and the word of God is good for rebuking and correcting and penetrating.

And it it reminds us of who we are and who God is and and what our mission is here in life. And I don’t know about you, but I need that reminder every day. And so I love getting in the word every day. But when we go to church and I hear it, the word preached and God has impressed upon a brother in Christ a different passage of Scripture, and he teaches from that. It is so edifying. It is edifying to see a sister exercise her gift in hospitality. It’s edifying to see a brother or a sister exercise their gift in worshipping God and leading everybody to worship and to worship it. The meeting time should be a time where you walk away your fan. Your fan for Christ is is your flame is fanned and you’re encouraged and ready to go out and be on mission the rest of the week to be the mom that you know, God’s called you to be.

Yeah. So good. I mean, busyness can really get in the way of the top priorities and, you know, so it’s just something to think about. I love the scripture in first Timothy 617, it says, As for the rich and this present age charged them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. So everybody listening is like, you know, there’s probably a few people that financially would consider themselves rich that listen and then everybody else is probably like, Oh, that’s not me. Well, most everybody listening, at least in the United States, probably would be considered rich by somebody listening in a different country. Yeah. Certain countries and so forth. So. We all shake the world and you look at your situation. There’s probably a lot of really good situations of people living in homes and and things like that. So. So as for the rich in this present age, charged them not to be haughty. So we’re not to be haughty about God’s provision, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty. That’s not where our hope is. Right? But what are our actions? Your kids, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. And if we believe that and we feel like we need to make some adjustments to how we provide what the work is in the situation with the family or, you know, the standard of living or these kinds of things. Is that preventing you from more time with your kids and these kinds of things is just something to think about because it takes more, I think, to prepare our kids these days to launch into this world.

Super important there to do good. So so moving on here in 18, they are to do good, to be rich and good works. I love how the Bible so well written using the word rich prior in terms of someone with wealth or doing well and then to be rich in good works. You see that? I love the Bible. It’s so good to be generous and ready to share that stirring up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. So hey, let’s just do an audit, you know, maybe have a marriage meeting, date night, date, night in whatever you want to do and just go, what are the things that we’re not doing as well as we desire and what is holding us back from the time to do those things? And let’s let’s be purposeful about the top priorities and the actions within the rhythm of the week that are those top priorities to disciple. Our kids have godliness, a spirit filled home, peace, not a slave to things and things like that. What what needs to shift a little bit to have more of that? Because what happens is we don’t even realize it. And pretty soon our life rhythm isn’t in alignment with our actual priorities that we actually believe in. And how does that happen? Pressure from the world, pressures from friends and people, pressures from society to do certain things and pressures from your own kids and maybe.

Even pressures from family to I just even think about like now different generations value different things and and being able to separate yourself from that and go, okay, but Abba father is the one that I really care about. And he what he thinks is the most important is what is the most important to me? And finding a strong, confident identity in that and not needing to be a people pleaser. That is huge. I know that that that was huge for me. Just as far as like even saying yes to being a stay at home mom when everyone around me was like, why wouldn’t you get a job? And I am so thankful. Now, looking back almost 23 years, I’m so thankful that I said yes to God and did something that was against my nature. That was against what my what I originally had thought my dreams were because my dreams were actually based upon ambition and and different influences, Christian world actually influences. And they were good. Like, I wanted to be a missionary and sometimes that is God’s call in your life. But clearly, if I would have said yes to that, I would have been saying no to nine children, grand babies, like a whole lot. And so I’m so glad that God knows better what his will is for us. So our first priority needs to be seeking him in what his will is for us and for our kids and for our legacy. And when we seek God’s will and we pray in God’s will and we seek Him, he promises that He will reveal to us what His will is. He will make it known to us and you guys. Sometimes that is going to be just a simple adjustment of things. But sometimes God requires us to sacrifice things on the altar. And if the times He does.

And if you’re feeling like a big change needs to happen, but you have this feeling and when you talk as a married couple, it’s like, well, that seems impossible. Well, this is where your faith starts to grow stronger because it’s possible with God if the motivations to create a radical change are for godly reasons, don’t you think God’s going to get behind that? But He wants our faith. He usually doesn’t prove he’s going to do something before you take steps towards doing it, if you know what I mean. He wants us to step out in faith, just like in wisdom. Ask wise people around us too. But stepping out in faith. And I know we’ve had to do that and it’s been so amazing for our family. I’m so glad that we have stepped out in faith to do this ministry, for example, and not everybody’s call to do a ministry, but what are you called to do and what are things that could. Create some more time and space for the discipleship and relationship building and equipping of your kids for the world they’re going to launch into, which is even a lot different than today’s world.

And, you know, as we’re getting ready to wrap up here, I think that it’s worth sharing this, too. I know that there have been different I don’t know if it’s movements or if it’s just passions that people have had on their heart for different things. And I think that it’s important that you guys remember what we were saying regarding seeking God’s will for your life and for what you’re to be doing, what your spouse is to be doing, and the that it would reflect the priorities that God has clearly giving you direction on in his word. I know that for some parents they have this huge desire to not be working, kind of like what Isaac was talking about at the beginning when he was saying that he wanted to work really hard so that he could work less when they were older and work super hard to make money when they wouldn’t remember, if you will. Well, they do. They do remember to a certain degree, because their relationships are being built during that time they’re being formed. And so, yes, that is the truth, actually. They they are building relationships with you. And so if you’re not there to build that relationship, you’re going to be stunted in building it, actually. So I know that that might be a hard thing for people to hear, but that’s actually the truth. And in addition, it’s not actually God’s will for people to retire. I don’t actually see the the conversation of retiring anywhere in the Bible. And this is an important thing to realize, because this is something that humans made up, because humans desire not to work and to get out of work, but God actually created us for work.

That’s one of the purposes He created us all for, was for work and to delight in the work that we do and to do it without grumbling and complaining. And so if we are trying to retire early so that we can just be full time parents, while that sounds all noble from one perspective, it’s actually not biblical because then what are those kids going to grow up with? They’re going to grow up with parents that are not actually working, and they’re going to be in opposition to wanting to work as well. God does not promise us an easy life when we choose Christianity, when we choose Christ, he doesn’t. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. And one of the things that we want to raise our kids with is good work ethic, and so working and working hard is a good thing. We just need to make sure that our ambition is God’s ambition, that it’s not preventing us from the things that are a higher priority. So I just wanted to like wrap that up and make sure that you guys know that we’re not against people working. We don’t think that work is bad. We want people to be working. We encourage, like the Bible even says that it’s worse for an unbeliever than for a man not to provide for his family. So that’s like a big deal.

We really think it’s our job to help people think about things, think about the choices they’ve made, and sometimes figure out on their own if they need to recalibrate things so that the trajectory of your legacy is more godly and that your kids launch confidently being Christians in a world that hates Christianity in large part today. 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 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

This is a touchy subject for sure, but we will never shy away from getting people to re-think their decisions, after all, we all want to defy the terrible statistics that a majority of kids raised in Christian homes walk away from the faith after launching. The normal Christian parenting rhythms aren’t working; so what does that mean for youth programs? Regardless of your position on this, you will appreciate this episode and nourish good marriage conversations that need to happen.

Listen to episode 114 with Ken Ham on “Parenting Kids to Face the Giants”

Scripture From This Episode:

2 Timothy 3:16 – “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:”

Hebrews 10:24-25 – “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”

Matthew 19:14 – “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 18:5-9 – “And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.”

Malachi 4:4-6 – “Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

Scroll down to see other resources

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support

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 21 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 a following. Hey, welcome to the podcast, everyone. Hi, guys. We’re so glad you’re here today. We’re talking about an interesting topic. We’ve gotten lots of questions on it, especially since we’ve kind of just let out a little bit of our opinion here or there in some of the episodes about youth programs and so forth and church. And so we’re going to give you our take on youth programs with biblical truth. And I think this will be a really good episode for everyone. We realize probably a majority of people listening have their kids in youth programs.

Yeah. And I mean, I would I would even say that you could probably put Sunday school into the same category. So for those of you who have little kids as well, some of the verses that we’re going to share with you guys in today’s episode will probably exhort you or challenge you to think, Oh, is this actually the most edifying for my family? And that’s something only you can decide. So every now and again, Isaac and I will be hitting hard topics that are like literal, like, okay, so God is unwavering on his opinion regarding this specific thing, right? But Sunday school and youth groups is one of those open handed issues. Isaac And I really want to make sure that you guys know that what we’re sharing in here is just some thoughts to maybe challenge people to think a little bit deeper. Hopefully you’ll walk away very encouraged to either continue doing your youth group and super thankful for what you have, or maybe you’ll go, I don’t know if this is really producing the fruit that I want. My family and whichever way that goes, just know that like we can be brothers and sisters in Christ and not have to agree on this specific topic. Again, it’s an open handed issue, it’s a non salvation issue.

So regardless, I think everybody will get something out of it and so we’re really excited about it. As you probably know, we have not been part of youth programs with our kids, our kids have visited them before and so forth as we’re wrestling through this at different churches.

But and they’ve also participated in like an event that a youth program will put on in a local area where they have like a bunch of friends from their home school co-op go into it, stuff like that. We’ve done that over the years.

But you know what? Our conviction may or may not be your conviction, but here is our take on it. Right before we get into it, though, we so appreciate you being part of the 10 Million Legacies movement. That is literally just a goal, a mission of the ministry to impact 10 million families and their legacies. I know it’s huge, but you know what? Doing this week after week, although there’s a lot of joy that comes from it, there is hard work also. And for me to be motivated, I think Angie is the same way it takes having a big goal for the Kingdom of God. And so we’re really on board. I know so many of you are on board with us and whether you give reviews on the podcast and five star reviews, that really helps the algorithms get the podcast up there. But also when you purchase courses at Courageous Parenting com or just share the ministry with people or donate even, that really makes a difference. So we so appreciate it, by the way. Yes, the coffee is coming, so we’re super excited about that. The app is out and spin out for about eight months and it is so encouraging to see the biblical community growing in there. So be courageous in the App Store. Check that out too. Okay.

Yeah. So on the Be Courageous app. Before we dive into the podcast topic, there’s just something I wanted to share briefly. A lot of people don’t realize. So Isaac and I were motivated to create an app because we had been searching for a solution for the courageous Parenting Mentor Program’s live situation. We used to have a group on Facebook and a lot of people didn’t want to be a part of Facebook, but they wanted to be a part of that group because they were getting so much out of it. And we didn’t want people to feel forced to have to stay on Facebook or Metta if they didn’t want to. And so we searched for a solution and then it just made sense to make an app. And now it’s become this alternative social media for like minded Christians that don’t want to be a part of things like Metta. And so it’s also kind of our like it’s our main place that I would say that we are going to be focusing on. And that’s a good thing because we don’t know when or if we’re going to get deleted at some point, right?

Yeah. So it’s approaching 800 biblical Christians subscribed and it’s just going to every day people are joining and it’s just really encouraging to be in there with you all. So anyways, we so appreciate you all. Let’s dive into this. So, you know, first of all, I just want to say pastors because we have pastors that listen to us, youth leaders, obviously even some that have gone through our parenting mentor program and loved it and so forth. I, my heart goes out to you in a good way, meaning that I really have studied leadership in the business world and so forth and been in various leadership positions. And I would say that the leadership position of pastor of a church is the hardest leadership position and a lot of ways and I just my hat goes off to you because I know you’re doing a really good work for the. Kingdom. And and that’s amazing. So this is this episode is with unity in mind. It is with being supportive of the bright of Christ. We believe in the Bride of Christ, from the megachurch to the small church to the home church, as long as they’re preaching Christ crucified, amen.

So yeah, and they’re not compromising on the scriptures. I think that, you know, ultimately when we’re talking about just an encouragement, we also want to give you guys some practical help. And so one of the things we would recommend for all people, regardless of if they’re in pastoral ministry or youth pastor ministry, and if you are, please pay attention to this. Check this out. Answers in Genesis dot org that creation scientist can Hamm. He is also the one of the co-founders of the Ark Encounter. That’s in Kentucky. And the Creation Museum. One of the foremost Christian creationists, has written so many helpful tools, including curriculums that youth groups and VBS Sunday schools can use to disciple children in Christian apologetics, which is really what should be at the core as a mission. It should be discipleship. I think that sometimes youth pastors are like, Oh yeah, I get that. There’s this issue when they talk to parents like us, right? Isaac But maybe what needs to happen more than anything and is an encouragement to have tools from someone who’s actually studied at length the, the demographics of people leaving in droves from the Christian Church over the last decade or two decades. And who has really nailed this down? And I would say that would be Ken Ham. He’s already written a couple of books. One of them is called Already Gone. I would highly recommend that as well. So this is just our like tiny little plug for resources that will help you. It’s something that’s really influenced our view on this over the years. I remember we heard him speak at a homeschool conference for the first time when our oldest was maybe six, and it really like made us rethink a lot of things for sure. And so at the least, it’s helpful for evaluating what the mission of the church’s vision is for discipling the young people in the church.

And there’s an episode you can look it up that where we interviewed Ken Ham about his book, Already Gone, but we really talked about all kinds of wonderful things regarding this topic, actually. Yeah. And so we would really encourage you to go look for that. So, you know, one of the things I think, Angie, that we were talking about is that youth programs in the church isn’t actually in the Bible.

That’s right. And so that’s something that for us, we always question why do we do this or why does the church do this? Or This is actually what led us to homeschooling. Why would we just put them in public school? Because that’s what we happen to us. Right. And I think a lot of parents, we do that unintentionally. We lean back on our our experiences as a child and how we were parented. And we just kind of go into the mode of doing what is normal or what’s common in the communities around us. And I would say that as far as larger churches are concerned, Sunday school and youth programs are a common thing in many churches. And so because they’re common and so many people put their kids in them, there’s this silent parental peer pressure, if you will, even if you don’t want to put your kids in to do it. Do you know what I mean? And there’s also this, because we’ve been you know, when you’re raised in the kind of culture now I’m talking about the bigger world, secular culture, where you don’t question authority. A lot of people don’t think to ask, why do churches do youth group? Why do churches do Sunday school? When, why were they created? What era were they created and what was it for? And so it’s very interesting history. That would be a whole nother podcast that we’re not going to be getting into about the history of how youth groups and Sunday schools came about. But if you go and do the research, I think you’re going to be shocked. Industrial Revolution. There’s your key. But what’s interesting about this is that it isn’t talked about in Bible. In fact, the model that we see is how churches in the New Testament.

However, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing just because we said that there’s lots of things that aren’t prescriptive in the Bible that can be additive good things. And that is our third point. We’ll get to that. Youth programs can be additive if other things are happening, which is important. So it’s not extra biblical or it’s not anti biblical, but it is extra. It’s not in the Bible. So I think that’s a really important thing. Now, one thing I want to say is that I was recently having a conversation with somebody about this, that a lot of times when people are looking for a church, they are looking for a good youth program that actually a lot of times is the. Priority. And therefore there’s that pressure. We can’t leave this without saying this. There is a pressure on the church today because of cultural norms in the Christian community that if it has a good youth program, therefore we can consider it as a church for our family. If it doesn’t have a good youth program, it’s not something we’re going to put in our realm of looking at. And so pastors know this and they understand that, and I’m sure most pastors are doing it because they believe in it and so forth. But there also is that pressure. How do you build a church today? That would be I don’t know the answer to that.

Without having.

Without having youth programs when that is what Christians expect.

Well, and I would say, like, it can actually be very additive. Like let’s just talk real basic level here. You know, the courageous parenting motto is equipping confident Christian kids for an uncertain world. Right. And we go about that by trying to encourage parents and equipping parents in how to raise confident, courageous kids. Right. That’s kind of been our tagline for a while. Churches, what should their ultimate motto be, which is also part of our like mission. Ultimately, as believers, we all have the same one. It’s called the Great Commission. I think that what is missing, though, or what gets forgotten a lot, is that people think that the Great Commission is all about only about evangelism. When an event evangelism is important, that’s like God calls us all to to that to a certain degree. And there are some who are more gifted evangelistic, actually. Right. That’s a gift, a spiritual gift. But really what God calls us to in the great commission is discipleship. And not to be confused with conversion, right? When you see the big churches that are all about the numbers, it doesn’t say Go Ye therefore and make many converts. It says Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That’s the Great Commission. And if that’s our mission and if that’s the Church’s mission, then that should be their mission within the Sunday school classroom and within the youth group as well, to make disciples right. And that should really, truly be a partnership that’s happening between the families and the church, not in replace of the families having headship or authority or the dads being the pastor. Right. For example, Isaac is always talking about how, hey, dads, if you’re if you’re a parent, you’re a pastor. Yeah. And that is a calling that God has on our lives as parents. And sometimes people over delegate that. Right. And the temptation that I see within many churches is that they have the youth groups or the Sunday school classroom happening at the exact same time as the church meeting.

So let me ask you a question. If no teachers existed, that wouldn’t be a good thing. But if no teachers existed, what would we do? Well, every parent would find a way to teach their kids. They would find a way. If no youth programs existed, what would we hope parents do?

They would disciple the.

Disciple, their children. And I’m just making a point that sometimes there is a tendency of once we delegate someone, something to someone, we let up on our part. And that is what perhaps needs to be fixed. Which is it? Just because people are kids are in a youth program, it doesn’t mean we let up on discipling our kids. In fact, it should be as as fervent as ever, regardless of additive programs they’re in.

Yeah, that’s true. And I love how we’re putting it, like when we’re talking about it as additive because it really it isn’t something that Isaac and I are super closed off to indefinitely for all of our kids. Right. Like in, in regards to every particular situation regarding youth group or even a Sunday school type of thing. Right. However, there is this element of there’s no way that we would ever let our kids participate in something if it was happening at the same time as a church meeting. Right. And the reason why we actually had this is the part where I think that we really want to dig into scripture with you guys, because the Bible is very clear about us making sure that we are going to church on a regular basis and we’re not missing out on meeting together. And so in Hebrews 1024 actually is where it says not to neglect the fellowship together. I’m just going to read from that scripture really quick here. Hebrews 1024 and 25 says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. So this specific scripture is talking about the gathering, right? About the church meeting together. And so if God is telling us here, he’s saying, do not. Neglected. That’s a command, right, Isaac?

It is. And you might say, well, the kids are gathering together and the adults are gathering together over here. But I don’t that’s not the intention of what we see in the Bible. That’s not what was modeled when the church was growing and started. So to separate that, just think about when so when do if they’re happening at the same time. When do kids start understanding the importance of what actually going to churches, the actual church meeting where the pastor is preaching, where we take communion together, where we worship together all ages. When does that happen? And then they’re launched into the world without experiencing going to church. They’ve been going to youth programs.

Mm hmm. And the other aspect to really ask. That’s a great question. I think that what we just want to do more than anything is kind of take you guys through some of the questions that we have asked ourselves and gone, hmm, these two just don’t reconcile together for us on a long term basis. The the verse that is in Matthew, chapter 19, verse 14, where Jesus says, Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven. I can’t help but remember one time when Isaac and I were, we were either traveling or maybe we had just moved to, I think, his central Oregon. We were visiting churches and we walked into a church. I’m not going to tell you which one it was. Doesn’t matter. But we walked into a church at the time, I think I was pregnant with Solomon and we had so much pressure from everyone as we were walking into the sanctuary to sit down with our kids for the next service. Literally, I think I was stopped maybe five or six times. You were also by multiple Sunday school teachers and youth pastors. Oh, hi. Hey, do you need help getting your kids to class? And there was this real pressure to put the kids in class when, first of all, I we were visiting. I did not know any of these people. I wasn’t just going to let one of my kids, maybe six or seven years old, walk off with a stranger and get into a Sunday school class. I don’t care if it’s at a church.

We would never do that.

Yeah, no, we never. Anybody there. Exactly. And so here we are, like over and over and over again, getting pressured to put them in a class. And then we go and we sit down kind of towards the front of the sanctuary. Do you remember this? And one of the ushers slash elders comes and asks us to put our kids in Sunday school or to move to the back. And we’re like, Why? This is so rude? So we moved to the back, so we moved to the very back and the kids were phenomenal. Can I just say, like I remember this specific service because I this memory is.

There was a lot of it in my mind. It’s like.

Oh yeah.

Don’t.

Breathe. They were like they were like, kids are just too loud. And so we have Sunday School happening and did it and I’m like, too loud. What did the Bible say? Jesus said, Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. For such belongs the kingdom of Heaven.

We’re supposed to have faith like a child.

And I just. I, like, didn’t know anybody. I wasn’t going to put six kids in six different classrooms with people I didn’t know. And I wanted to get to know the church, and I wanted their opinion on how the church meeting happened. And here I was feeling this massive pressure to keep everybody silent. It’s just pure silence. And you know what? Then someone like I think one of the kids had a little car and was being really quiet but had a car and the usher again told me to walk my son out. So. So he kicked me out with him basically. And then I came back at the end of the service when the music started playing and all these older people turn around, they’re like, Oh my goodness. I had no idea there were five kids sitting behind us this whole time. They were so quiet. And I’m like, Exactly, because they were paying attention. Like, it just was this very vivid memory of an unwelcoming church feeling.

Now, I will say that we’ve gone years to churches where almost everybody put their kids, if not everybody, into youth programs. And our kids sat with us. And it was.

It wasn’t a.

Problem. We’re friends with the pastors and we got along great and there was no problems, no issues. And I know that is actually probably a norm.

And we appreciate that. And there.

Are a lot of situations where youth programs don’t happen at the same time as the sermon, and that.

Is an additive.

The actual meeting, the church meeting, and that’s great age integration is fabulous. And it’s really important that I guess the the question people probably have is, what aren’t your kids noisy? How do you train them to sit? During the church.

Meeting, we did a whole nother podcast, not.

Just on that, but it’s just really important to know that it is possible and it is okay if there’s some noise. Obviously, if a kid starts crying or something like that, one of us will take the child out until they’re done and bring them back in and deal with situations. But you know what? The fruit of them growing up in the body of Christ and reflecting on the same message together and asking what they thought and they and teaching more about it and all those things in the car. Right home and once we get home is so fruitful, it is vital that everybody in the family is getting the same.

Experience.

Experience so that we can talk about it so parents can continue the discipleship from what happened on Sunday. I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night. 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 parenting dot com 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. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children.

But Angie and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal.

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

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

Behaving.

Or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of 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 lights to be leaders for the next generation.

I think about just that verse, that exhortation, where God is telling us, commanding us, really warning us massively not to neglect the gathering together or meeting together. And I think about the meeting, the church meeting, and and what scripture actually does tell us is prescriptive for every church meeting, right? We’re supposed to listen to the apostles teaching. We are.

Breaking a.

Bread there for the breaking of bread, which would be communion. We’re there for prayer. Yeah, right. There’s many things, too, when you think about.

All the worship too is in there in a different spot and breaking of bread is also actually fellowship ing together. Yeah, it’s fellowship around food.

So here’s the thing. When you know what the Bible talks about regarding what is prescriptive for what’s supposed to actually take place during a church meeting, for the reverence and glory of God, for the discipling of the body, for the edification of the body, for fanning the flames, equipping of the saints. Amen. When you know that that’s what the church meeting is for, why would you hinder a child from going? Why would we do a habit of taking them and dropping them off? I’m just going to say it to child care. To child care. Why would we drop our children off to child care even if that child care happened in a church so that they they were not with us in the church meeting experiencing this when God’s word actually commands us not to neglect it. And in Deuteronomy six, God puts the jurisdiction and responsibility on the shoulders of the parents to be teaching their children God’s commands and how to learn about him modeling having a teachable heart. There is something so powerful about your kids watching. You have your Bible in your journal Open, having a teachable heart before the pastor, listening, learning, and then asking questions in the car ride home with your spouse and seeing you guys both seeking God together. That is replaceable. You cannot replace that. There’s also this element of like, I have to be honest, like there was a point where when we were talking about the concept of like Sunday School and youth group, where I was convicted as a parent and going, no wonder so many people leave the church by age 18 if their whole life they’ve been going to child care or going to a Sunday school or a youth group experience that maybe was focused heavily on fun and less on discipleship.

Now, I know that that’s not the case for every situation, and I’m really thankful for the ones that do actually get the mission of discipleship. So just bear with me here. But like in our experiences at many different churches, that was the primary thing that we saw. And how in the world, though, are kids going to transition from being a child who’s focused on having fun and playing with their friends to how do they even know what it looks like? To be a Christian as an adult if they literally never see it modeled and they don’t sit with you in service. Not only that, but there’s also this element of big church spectator, Christian ese type of stuff that goes on in Christian Christendom, if I will say. And I think especially in America, where people will just go through the motions. Right. And I would think that anyone who’s listening to this podcast today would agree that they don’t want their kids to just go through the motions of legalistic saying, Oh, yeah, I believe in God. And I go to church on Sundays to check off a box like we all understand here. Or I’m assuming that we all would understand that it’s about relationship with the Lord and glorifying Him and living out the mission and purpose that He created.

It reminds me of what we talk about all the time is we want to do while they’re growing up consistently over and over and over again what we hope they replicate in their future. And so we want them to replicate going to church, being part of the body of Christ, not just with their age, but in an age integrated sense. We want them confident, speaking with people older than them. This speaks bodes to their future when they’re interviewing, getting jobs and things like that. There’s a lot of things and I really think it comes down to the question we all have to ask. And you might continue doing youth programs after asking you this, because maybe where you are, there’s really good answers. But we need to do what’s fruitful. And the issue is what’s fruitful is usually harder. So sometimes we’re just like, I need a break. The kids can go learn over there. I need to hear the pastor and sit in the meeting. And by the way, that’s understandable, especially if you have a lot of young kids. Understandable. However, the future fruitfulness of your kids. The stats don’t bode well for that. The stats are most people. Most children are leaving, walking away from the faith that launched from Christian homes. And so if we’re going to counter the trends, we have to do something different. And I’m not saying that this is the one thing that makes all the difference. There’s many things, right? If you listen to our podcast for very long, you get lots of little tidbits that will help you. And reading the Bible and so forth. But your leadership is so important. So we need to lead in the efforts that have long term fruitfulness, not just for us to have a moment of peace and quiet and hear the sermon.

Right.

But more importantly, actually is the future of fruit and the fullness of our kids.

So I just even think about like I was talking about spectator issues being a spectator versus a participant in a church meeting. Right. And when our kids go to church with us, there may be an element where they’re sitting there and they’re watching people. They’re watching people use their gifts for the edification of the whole body, whether it’s the worship leader or the pastor that’s praying for communion, the people who are handing out communion, the ushers, they’re seeing people, greeters, they’re seeing the pastor teach, they’re hearing the pastor teach. And that those exposures to those different gifts are actually meant to your kids, are meant to be exposed to the body of Christ, functioning as a body with many members that all have different gifts for the edification of them all, which is second Corinthians Chapter 12. And there are other scriptures as well. But I just even think about this concept of like when our kids are little and they’re, they’re soaking things in and they’re learning and they’re creating their worldview and they’re thinking about themselves and how they interact with the world and how they interact with the church and how they interact with God and other Christians. It is so important that they see that there is a need. God created them to be a part of the Body of Christ. The body of Christ actually needs them because they have special gifts that they themselves are also supposed to practice for the edification of the whole. And when we put kids in a compartment and we put them in child care or we put them in Sunday school, and they are never exposed to the real church meeting and they don’t see the value in that and they’re not taught the value in that.

They’re not taught a reference to learn how to be quiet during the church meeting. Then it potentially is also shutting off the opportunity for them to envision themselves as an older person or even a young person exercising their gifts within the body of Christ. Like I remember when I was 12 years old, being able to lead worship during church service, and that was huge for me. That was huge for me to be an actual active part of a body. And and that is God’s design, guys. I just have to say that that’s God’s design. So when Isaac and I say we don’t do youth group, that that is something that we have had a conviction on for quite a long time regarding our kids in Sunday school, although they’ve tried it at times. And part of that too, though, is that a lot of the churches we went to was that the. Same time as the church service. And we just were not willing to let our kids grow in the habit of neglecting the church meeting every Sunday while they’re going to have fun in Sunday school or in child care or in youth group away from us potentially hearing a completely different message, which, by the way, if you’re sitting in another room, you don’t know what’s being taught to them, whether by peers or other kids. Regarding church, that’s an issue.

There’s also authority just the just think about the word authority for a second. You’re putting your endorsing the authority of whoever’s leading the youth programs. Well, let’s say they’re really good. Awesome. Usually, though, they’re much younger. And one of the things is that when someone’s younger, they don’t have a life experience. And to.

Back up giving wisdom.

Giving wisdom, correcting and so forth. And so what happens a lot of times is that youth leader becomes a source of the kids, give divulging all kinds of things to versus their parents because there’s no repercussions. There’s no repercussions for any of the.

Sins, potential.

Sins or challenges because they’re not the parent. And I think it’s really important that first and foremost, the parents are the most important human authority in their lives, and there’s nothing usurping that. So just maybe something to think about is how do we make sure if youth programs are happening, that the parents remain in that leadership role? And I bet you if there’s church leaders listening and go, well, there’s not enough parents involved involved in stepping up, we try and and they’re not stepping up and in these things and I go, well, what new can we try?

And what if there was instead of doing a youth program, what if there was within a church where they actually took the effort to train parents in biblical parenting? What if they did six weeks of we’re not going to do youth group or Sunday school, but instead, you know, we’re or or maybe we do. But during that time, we are going to be teaching parents biblical parenting. And we’re going to encourage and equip the parents in our church so that they can partner with the church, which is really what should be happening. You know, one of the things that we for sure have witnessed over the years is this what Isaac was just talking about regarding authority, where the kids will start to really get attached to a Sunday school teacher or youth pastor. You see this in sports all the time too, like with coaches and stuff as well, and maybe they start going to them for advice. That’s kind of more what Isaac is talking about. Like, let’s say a kid was in high school and they invited to a party where they knew that there was going to be alcohol or drugs or something. And they’re scared to talk to their parents about it because they know what answer they’re going to get from their parents. But instead, they kind of soup up the story and they talk about it with the youth pastor. And the youth pastor is like, Oh, I think it’s a great opportunity to be able to be a witness because that youth pastor is justifying because maybe they have done it themselves or they just are scared to say no to the kid because then the kid won’t necessarily come to them again.

And they’re worried about that because they’re like, Oh, if they’re coming to me, they’re probably not coming to their parents. I don’t want to push them away. I don’t want them to not come to me again or I don’t want them to not come back to youth group if I don’t give them the right answer. So there’s this element and I’m not saying all youth pastors are this way at all. I’m just sharing with you partially what I’ve experienced in my past, being growing up in youth group and what I witnessed. But also the truth is, is that Isaac’s right, like a lot of the youth ministry guys are, are or even women are people who one day want to be a pastor, but they’re really young. And so they plop them into youth ministry right before they’ve been a parent. Or maybe when they’re a really young parent and they don’t have experience with correcting children biblically, they don’t even have experience parenting biblically. So are they prepared to actually give biblical parenting advice to the teenagers parents because of how their own age? Probably not because they’re not a Titus two.

It can also be pressure to not divulge what’s happening with some of the kids because they look at it as a black eye on what they’re doing, what their role is, and the culture of their youth group, even though probably has nothing to do with what they’re doing. But that is how they get a salary. That is how they provide for their young family. And they want to potentially have an image that things are really good and parents only want to put kids into a youth group where things are really good. So there is a pressure not to divulge the reality of you’re putting a bunch of young people, some of which are believers and some of which are not together with authority of an inexperienced in terms of life person. Right.

And so I just you just got to think about this. If it was any other situation and not in a church building or not condoned by a church, would you do it? And if you wouldn’t, you need to use that same wisdom. But I think that ultimately the biggest issue at hand is that most parents don’t actually take time to get to know the youth pastor or the Sunday school teachers to even know if they would trust them with their children, which is a whole nother issue. We’re not going to dive big into that. But I got to say, like, if you’re putting your kids in child care, you better know who’s watching your kids and changing their diapers and taking them potty. You better know who’s teaching them the Bible and what they’re teaching.

Actually, it’s so important. This is just a great scripture. In second Timothy 316 All Scriptures Breathed Out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness. And so that the biblical truth needs to be the foundation of anything happening and without compromise. I think that too. I think kids actually are desiring that. And an encouragement would be not to get rid of all fun, but to make sure the programs are balanced, heavy on biblical truth and discipleship, and having fun. Also, the fun is important. It’s important kids see Christians having fun together in a wholesome way. But just be careful of the things.

That are come the idol.

That you’re not sending. I would just be wary of sending my kids to overnight things with a group of mixed non-Christian, Christian, strong Christian, and with very little supervision and supervision that doesn’t really, you know, hold the line.

And I would say to potentially like you guys, you know, our heart with like even education let’s just bring this real, real practical here. So it’s been become aware to everyone in the last three years that there’s all kinds of agendas that have seeped into the educational system and that lots of things have been being taught that most of us would say, I cannot believe this. I would never allow my kids to learn this. Right. Have you thought that at all about what you’ve become aware of? Well, the truth is, is that progressive Christianity has been seeping into the church for a few decades now. And the truth is, is that a lot of what is potentially being taught, if it’s being taught by people you don’t know could be progressive thinking, it could be unbiblical, it could even be anti biblical. What we’re seeing around the nation and even worldwide with different churches and embracing drag queen shows within churches and weird stuff happening, it’s like, Are you kidding me? How is this even happening in the church and OC? And so and I know that that’s just an extreme that I put out there. But the truth is, is do you know what the Sunday school teachers and what your youth group leaders believe about this kind of stuff? And do you know what they would say if a child or a youth came to them and asked them point blank questions about gender, for example, like, you should know what their answers are going to be if you don’t.

And you want your kids to be a part of the youth program because you are like, I do see fruit. I would encourage you to maybe talk to the the youth pastor and the pastor and go, You know what? Things are going good. But I just I in my spirit, I feel like maybe us parents need to come together and collectively and have a night where we’re sitting down with the youth pastor and we’re able to talk and find out what they personally have conviction on regarding all of these issues that are swarming around in the culture that we know our kids are being potentially exposed to, the other kids in the youth group are being potentially exposed to because we need to have confidence that we are all of one sound mind. Which brings me to a whole like we can’t go dig deep into this, but isn’t that what Paul exhorts us to as Christians in the local assemblies to not be divided but to be of one sound mind? Amen. On doctrinal issues and gender is a doctrinal issue. Yeah, actually. And so if you don’t know what your youth pastor believes and what he would answer a kid one on one with if they came to him and they were having confusion, if you don’t know what he would say and what he says is not necessarily in alignment with the word of God, then you’ve got a problem.

And so these things have to be talked about. There needs to be a recalibration of unity among the body of Christ, especially on the local assembly, where there is literally people rising up, understanding that there are wolves in sheep’s clothing, there are lies from the devil, and you need to be gatekeepers, watchmen on walls, protecting your children. Yes, you may be going, Wow, this sounds like a lot of work. If I put my kids in youth group and it is and it is, it’s just going to say either way, it is a lot of work. Either your discipling, your kids or somebody else is discipling them and you’re discipling them and you’re going back to them over and over. And that’s actually why one of the reasons why we’ve chosen not to do it, we actually just don’t have the time capacity to do all the extra stuff that we’re talking about that we do know needs to happen if we were to. But then in youth.

Group, I also know you can’t come in to something that’s really established. It’s very difficult in an organization, a church, and come in with the goal to change the leadership’s perspectives on things. So if they’re not already in alignment, you can always try and contribute and give your feedback. But a lot of times when things are already going in a direction, it’s very hard to shift that direction. And so, but hopefully where you go to church, you’re in alignment and that would be wonderful.

That’s right. So we have another scripture that we want to share with you guys. It’s in Matthew Chapter 18. It’s versus five through nine. These are red letters. So again, not this this part’s not our opinion when we’re reading scriptures is God’s opinion. It’s not Isaac and Angie’s opinion. In verse three, Jesus starts out saying, Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s huge. Why wouldn’t we include our children in the church? The church means super humbling.

Our children in our hardship so that they can pray.

Right?

Exactly. More people praying, the better.

So here’s verse for whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Amen. And so we need to be humbled by that. Verse five says, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be to be drowned in the depths of the sea. This is this is a huge warning, right? And it’s one that Isaac and I take very seriously, kind of like James three one. Not many of you should want to be teachers, my brethren, unless you receive a stricter judgment. And I want you guys to know our heart in this. I don’t think that sending your kids to Sunday school is necessarily a sin, but I will say that God commands us not to neglect the gathering together, the church meeting. And so if we are sending our kids to child care and they’re never participating in a child in a in a church meeting that is teaching them to neglect the church meeting, which is teaching them how to habitually sin, actually. And this is a big warning about that, that we’re not supposed to tempt a child to sin.

Matthew, 1914 says, Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of Heaven. And he laid his hands on them and went away. So kids are important to Jesus, to God. Kids are important to all of us. You wouldn’t be listening unless kids were super important. So then the question is how do you navigate your unique situation? You pray, you ask the Lord to give you wisdom and maybe you have a good situation and maybe your youth group isn’t meeting at the same time, and you can make sure they come to church with you. You guys can grow in that area of training them during the week, so they sit still with you and have that experience.

And then maybe you put them in a Sunday school hour so they can spend time with their friends. But you’re there, too, and you’re in. You’re you’re involved, you’re serving and you’re investing in the other kids. I do truly believe that if we as parents are going to be putting our kids in something, then we need to be. There is an amount of investment that we must put in so that we’re knowing the friendships that they’re making. And we’re able to give our kids wisdom and our kids are able to talk to us about their experience as well, and they feel like we get it. And so, you know, there are ways that you can go about this, whether you’re the one teaching Sunday school or volunteering every Sunday there with them. And I know that some people listening, they’re like, wow, that is a lot of work. It can be, but it’s good work. It’s like what Isaac said before, hard doesn’t mean that it’s not right. Like usually the best choices are the hardest ones.

I just think a good reminder, especially dads listening to, is what’s your most important job? Well, it’s to nurture your marriage and then it’s to raise love and equip your children and point them to Jesus. Yeah. And so everything else is provision important. It’s vital, right? So that’s vital, too. But we’ve got to do both. We’ve got to be diligent. The world is changing. The enemy is using every way to get to the kids and change the next generation to love the world, not to love God. And so we’ve got to be diligent. And right here in Malachi is the crucial thing here, Malachi four, verse six. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest they come and strike the land with a degree of utter destruction. And so that is so good that fathers, we turn our hearts towards our children and we really think critically. One of the things I think comes naturally to me and I think. The energy to it may not come naturally to everybody. We recognize that is this willingness to suspend what’s normal, to critically think about what’s best, what’s normal. I’m going to really think about what’s normal because my experience is that what the droves are doing a lot of times isn’t necessarily what’s most fruitful. That’s certainly true in business I’ve found, and it’s certainly true in leadership.

Certainly true in family.

Certainly true in family.

Marriage.

And so we have to really have a biblically backed Holy Spirit filled. Critical thinking experience about anything our kids are involved with. And if they’re going to be involved in something, let’s have confidence because we’ve done our due diligence and we’re not sacrificing something God says is really important, like the church meeting. So let’s really think about these things as pray about these things. And you might be wondering about socialization. I mean, I already homeschool and I, you know, when are the kids going to meet people and things like that? Well, that is a true concern. That is a valid concern, something that prayer be prayer and praying about and considering. But the question back to you is this how is your hospitality? How are you doing at becoming great, at engaging with other biblically minded Christians and getting better at it even when you stub your toe and not getting frustrated, but continuing on pressing on to find like minded families to run the race with and your kids can be friends with each other. That is where we need to be persistent to. Right? Super important.

You know, this last verse that Isaac read, I don’t know if you guys caught it. He said he was reading from Malachi chapter four versus four through six. It’s the very end of the Old Testament, actually. It’s the last the last words of the Old Testament, which begs us to, one, reflect on the Old Testament and what God commanded us and all the lessons that we’ve learned, but also begs us to look forward to the future, because this is talking about Elijah, the Prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, right? So that’s like verse five, I think. Yes. And so he’s like giving us vision for the day that Jesus is coming back. And then he ends it with and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. It goes both ways. It’s actually a both ways thing. And one of the things that we have seen, unfortunately, time and time again with things like sports and youth group programs, is that children’s hearts are turned away from their fathers and towards the youth pastor, and then fathers hearts are turned away from their children and kind of in animosity towards the youth.

Pastor, have you ever have you ever noticed that? Think about that for just a second. Right where I’ve I witnessed it myself when I was a young person, that there were parents that were frustrated with the youth pastor. So there was this animosity towards the youth pastor. But part of it was also that there was this they could tell that the loyalty of their child’s hearts was actually more for the youth pastor who was getting paid to have fun with their kids while they were working super hard and would have loved to have fun with their kids, but they didn’t make the time. And that can be super hard navigating that. And that’s one of the reasons why Isaac and I were recommending like, okay, so if you’re going to do youth group and it’s going to be a good additive program, you also need to be involved in it so that that doesn’t happen, so that you do keep your child’s heart. So I just got to ask you, who has your child’s heart.

And are.

You have your.

Child’s heart and are your kids ready to be lights? Are they equipped not just the good idea of our children or lights? Are they equipped to be lights in a group? We’re not everybody’s believers and there isn’t a lot of supervision where there’s usually a younger person with little life experience leading it. Are they ready to be lights? And if they are and you know that, that can be a good thing as long as we’re not forsaking the meeting. But you know what? It’s also youth programs can be wonderful for.

The single.

Mom, single mom, the broken homes that, you know, praise the Lord. There’s something for kids to go to when parents just aren’t able able to.

Yeah.

Or aren’t doing it but are able to and so but you know if you are intentional, I think that’s the people listening is you either want to be more intentional or you are really intentional. And our encouragement to you is to really pray and think through this and sure have your kids involved in something. If you know what’s happening, you know the quality of leadership. You know your kids are ready to and equipped to lead strong, stand firm and not fall into falling in those groups. And we just hope this was edifying. I know for a fact that a lot of people are going to disagree with parts of this. And our heart is unity. It’s our heart is respect towards people that have disagreement on this. We love you if you disagree even on this. Right. So there is no dis discord here.

No, but I would think that, like, just so you do know, you’re probably thinking them. Why are you even talking about this? Because now there’s a whole bunch of us sitting here and we’re all going. Now, I don’t know if I want my kids in Sunday school. Now, this is an issue, right? We feel.

It’s our job to get people thinking about.

Things. So that is true. This hour, our courageous parenting. We’re going to talk about courageous issues courageously. We’re going to talk about the hard things here on the podcast. We talk about even harder stuff in the parenting mentor program for the purpose of equipping so that parents are not parenting with rose tinted glasses on, but actually. Parenting in reality, understanding that they have the freedom to ask why? Why does the church just do this program thing that they’ve always done when the kids are leaving by the time they’re 18 and not integrating into the church? Why? Why should I put my kids there? Do I know the people leading it? Am I involved? Is it at odds and creating a habit, actually, where my kids are getting into the habit of neglecting the church gathering? And what will that look like when they are a young adult? Is it actually training them to think that going to church has to be fun? And then once they’re older and they’re sitting and they’re supposed to be learning and worshiping and being reverent and like doing communion and all these things that they didn’t grow up doing, then they’re dissatisfied. They’re not entertained, and they leave. Like, we have to ask these questions because the statistics are so staggering, so shocking, so disheartening. Something has to change. So the narrative of what is taught needs to be foundationally, scripture is authoritative. We’re not going to allow progressive thoughts or new age lies from the devil to come into the church. We need to make sure whoever is teaching is strong biblically and they’re not going to compromise for friendship or anything. We need to make sure that we are standing and walking above reproof and that we are discipling our kids, even if we are additively doing something in addition. So you guys, we love you. We love the church, but we want the church to be walking biblically. We want kids to rise up, be launched into the world, and be stronger than we were when we were younger. I’m sure you’d agree with that, too.

And they need to be all right. So praise the Lord. Thanks for listening.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom dot com 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

You have a huge influence in pointing your kids to Jesus and nurturing their experiences with God that further bolsters their faith. This was inspired by a listener’s story with their three-year-old experiencing an answered prayer after praying to Jesus. This episode will encourage and challenge you. We hope it makes a difference in your family!

Main Points in This Episode:

1. A powerful story is shared by one of our listeners.
2. The unique opportunity of parents to influence their children.
3. Prayer without doubting.
4. God cares about the small things and the big things.
5. He acts on our prayers when our hearts are right and it’s in His will.

Scripture From This Episode:

Hebrews 11:6 – “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

Matthew 19:14 – “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Luke 18:17 – “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.”

Matthew 17:14-20 – “And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”

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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 21 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 a following. Hey, everyone, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, guys.

Excited for this episode. And this was prompted by somebody that listens to our podcast.

That’s right. So we love getting messages from you guys. We love hearing from you. We love seeing the comments on iTunes, the five star ratings. Super helpful, actually, to the ministry. As you know, Isaac has mentioned this before. We don’t do advertising on popular social shows. So social media engines, if I can talk, right. Because of a personal conviction that Isaac and I both have and not wanting to give them money. And so when you guys share, you help bless the ministry in ways that you don’t even realize. It’s so empowering. But one of the things that I love, we share this often in the podcast that we love hearing from people. Yes, but today we’re actually going to share a little testimony from someone who messaged us and share her story, because you guys get to hear from our stories. But we love being able to incorporate what things people are learning, either through the courageous parent mentor program or the podcast, and to see the fruit that’s actually occurring in their children’s lives. That is what this ministry is about. It’s about God being glorified, kids being led to the Lord, parents growing in spiritual maturity and having a biblical perspective and intentionality in there.

Amen. And it’s Holy Spirit driven. So we listen to what the spirit’s telling us, and it tells us things through you. And sometimes our conversations. Sometimes something happened to one of us during the week or in the Bible.

When we’re reading Scripture or.

In prayer, it’s really cool. And I remember in the beginning, by the way, 200, we just hit 200 episodes last week. So it’s 201. So Praise the Lord. And I remember in the early days just pouring out everything, every episode about the topic, everything, every episode of the topic, and we still do that every single time. But I remember feeling, are we going to have enough to say?

I know. I remember thinking that too. What’s crazy is that how many times have we been like, Hey, maybe we should do something on marriage? We haven’t talked about marriage in a while yet. Like that used to be the thing that we were most passionate about teaching on years ago back like 11, 12 years into our marriage. And I think if we were to look at all 200 episodes, there’s probably only a handful on that topic, actually. So maybe one day we’ll we’ll be bringing you even more on that.

But well, hey, today we’re talking about encouraging your kids trust in the Lord. Yes, this is an obvious desire for every parent. But I think the direction of today is going to be really practical, really helpful. And we felt that it was incredibly vital right now to talk about this. So we’re going to dive into that in a second. But first, we just want to thank you for being part of the 10 million Legacies movement is very important to our hearts, and I know so many other hearts out there that donate by courses share on social media. One other thing that’s really helpful to get the podcast specifically, it’s kind of the tip of the spear for the ministry to create awareness and give free value to the world that helps the world and we love that is when you give ratings five star ratings on the iTunes or wherever you listen. Also written reviews. Not only are they encouraging to us and we read everyone, but it really helps the algorithms to get the podcast in the top listings and so forth. Yeah, so.

More on this topic real quick. I’ve actually had some people say, Hey, what if I don’t want to listen on Apple iTunes? Where else are you guys? I know we’re on Spotify. Where else are we? Like.

Anywhere you listen, we should be there. But courageous parenting is probably the best place because you get a whole blog post video of the episode audio as well, and right up main points and some free resources and access to all the things the ministry offers.

I don’t know if you guys realize this, but each podcast episode, generally speaking, we will share between two and ten Bible verses or passages of Scripture that we go over, and sometimes people are listening while they’re doing laundry or they’re on the run or they’re driving or whatever, and they don’t have pen and paper with them, or it’s not safe to be writing those down. So if you heard something on a podcast and you’re like, Man, what was that verse that they covered? I want to read that more. I want to study that more. Just go to courageous parenting, look through the blog post because we write those scripture references down for you guys and pray that that really draws you more to God’s word, less to us.

Okay, we’re going to dive in. And this episode is a lot about faith and children have this incredible faith in God. I’m talking to young children. It’s just so sweet. And Jesus and we’ll look at Scripture says, be like the children. And it’s really amazing. And so we’re we’re not talking about necessarily salvation. Faith right here. Faith, you know, that is part of obviously salvation is mystery of God. But it takes faith. Right. And but we’re talking about when people believe in Jesus. People believe in God. There is faith that God will show up. There’s faith in the way we prayers. James talks about not doubting when we pray. Write the book of James. It’s really important that we actually have an expectancy that God’s listening, because the truth is, is He hears every prayer. But there’s such a unique opportunity when our kids are really young to bolster their experience with God.

So as we’re about to dive in, we’re going to read from Hebrews chapter 11, verse six here real quick. And I want to ask you a question. So let’s just look at this verse for a second. Says, And without faith, it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Here’s my question. Isn’t that what we want for our kids? That’s what we want for our kids. I think I actually just wrote a post about this today, ironically, where I like listed out. I was sitting on our front porch just enjoying the word and a cup of coffee in a cup. That said, prayer changes everything. And I started thinking about the prayers that I’ve prayed for my kids over the years because we just graduated our third daughter. And I’ve just been kind of reflecting on parenting because it’s like, Whoa, we’re getting ready to launch another one. And I just thought about prayer and how there are so many things that you can do as a parent, and we are called to be diligent in those things. But when it comes to heart change, that’s something only the Holy Spirit can do. And a lot of parents take that responsibility and put that expectation on them to change their child’s heart.

And I will honestly say that there is a temptation, an unknowing, subconscious temptation for parents to act as if they are the Holy Spirit or to think that they actually have the ability that the Holy Spirit has to change their child’s heart. And that is actually not true. We have the ability to be a change agent in our child’s life. We have the ability to speak truth and that God, if He chooses to use that truth in our child’s life, he can do that. He can use the thing that we speak to create change in their life. But it’s not something that we are actually doing. Yes, God is using us, but he’s the one that creates the change. Does that make sense? Amen. So when I read this and I go without faith, it is impossible to please him for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. So, yes, we want our children to draw near to God. We want them to believe that He exists. And we want Him. We want God. We desire God. We pray for God to reward our children. We pray that our kids would seek him, that they would chase after him. This is all the kind of stuff that I literally wrote about today where it’s like, Yeah, okay, yes, we want our kids to be saved, but we want so much more than that, don’t we? We want our kids to be living on mission, living on purpose, walking in faith, wanting to want to pray.

We want our kids to want to spend time with God and fellowship with him in his word. Reading his word, that’s actually like the desire of wanting to read the Bible is actually a fruit of your walk with God. So if you don’t have that, there’s actually a problem. Like there should be a huge check in our spirit and in our mind where we repent and go, Why wouldn’t I want to read? That’s a huge problem because this is where God’s this was God’s letter to us. Why wouldn’t we want to read it right? Why wouldn’t we want to obey him and know him better? This is how we get to know him better and experiencing him as part of what we’re going to be talking about today. And so I just want to ask you, do you want those things for your child? Do you want them to know God? Do you want them to know he exists and for him to reward them?

Hey, well said. And there’s a story I want to share and have you share it because you’re the one actually read this and saw this on social media. But there was a mom that has this incredible story in her post, is going somewhat viral. And she has been listening to our podcast for for a really long time and has been learning a ton from what we’ve been putting out. And the Lord’s been having a great ministry.

So I’ll just do a shout out to Danielle. Danielle Bala Bala. She messaged me on Instagram with this awesome, awesome testimony. She said, I just want to say how much your podcast, Courageous Parenting has meant to my husband and I. He’s made such a difference in our lives. When you guys told the story of your three year old son being disciplined and then going to his room to talk to Jesus, it really lit a fire in us to be more intentional and was powerful to know how much he could understand because of the biblical teaching. I posted a story last night about how our three year old talked to Jesus, and I woke up this morning with like a post going viral. I had no idea it was going to do that. And then she shared with me what she wrote in that post, which was pretty powerful. I’m just going to share briefly what the story was. So she has a little son who’s three years old and he had like one of those giraffe pacifiers that he had slept with every night since he was a baby. And when he turned one, they cut the pacifier part off and gave him the giraffe and he used the dress.

Well, this giraffe, as you probably can tell the story is going went missing and for five weeks it was lost and it was a big deal. And the grandparents even tried to like buy him a new little lovey or whatever to have with him in bed. And that wasn’t satisfying him. And she kept encouraging him to pray and ask Jesus to help him find this thing. And then tonight, when they were going to bed, Shiloh hopped in bed with the giraffe. So her little boy hops in bed with the giraffe and she’s like, What? And she asked him, Shiloh, you found your Passey Where was it? He said, Mommy, I looked everywhere, under the bed, under the couch, in the drawers. It wasn’t anywhere. I said, I know. How did you find it? He said, I prayed to Jesus and Jesus told me where to look. He told me to go to the playroom. It’s under the blue seat behind the chair and she just in her post said, Jesus cares about your three year old’s last pacifier. How much more does he care about your need to don’t lose heart. Keep praying.

How many of you right then? Well, obviously everyone’s going to love the story, but there’s probably some people are like, did Jesus really say that specific exactly where his passy was behind the bleacher. And I would just ask you if that came into your head that you might need to revisit with the scriptures, say, and you might need to revisit where it says, have faith like a child. Because we are called we we are to believe and trust the Lord that he is a good God and that he cares about our small things and he cares about our big things and he cares about the child’s little toy, I guess. Is that.

Right? Yeah. Well, yeah. It’s like this little giraffe stuffed animal thing that he was sleeping with to give him comfort. You know, it’s interesting because she she messaged me the rest. It said at the end, it said, keep praying, keep believing. We got some really great time tonight to talk about how Jesus answers prayers. So thankful for these sweet moments, she said. And then she created an update and she said, Wow, we weren’t expecting this to reach as many people as as it has. But we’ve been so encouraged by your messages and comments. So many parents and future parents are asking us questions on how we are teaching our children so that they understand God at such a young age. Both my husband and I grew up in a Christian home, but a resource we listen to every day is Courageous Parenting podcast. And then she linked to it and said It’s been life changing for us because it’s been encouraging us to be intentional and discipling our children. So you guys, I’m sharing this with you like obviously for multiple reasons. First and foremost, the topic that we’re talking about, encouraging your kids to really trust in the Lord. Like do they pray, trusting that God is going to one, listen to them to answer them. And three, if they are praying in the will of God that their requests will be made known.

And so some people might say, well, okay, well, maybe the giraffe being lost and praying for the giraffe was a selfish prayer, right? Well, but did God get glorified in that situation? God answered that prayer because he knew the heart of that child and he wanted to be made known to this child. Like on a deep personal level, even if there’s a desire that we have where we feel like we want something and we think it’s a need, but it’s actually more of a want sometimes God wants to. He shows up in these really miraculous ways. And I know that for you guys you’re talking about, okay, this is a little stuffed animal, Angie. And you just called it a miraculous thing that this three year old found it. Yes. And as parents, we need to recognize that those small little things are mountains to our three year old. They are like as big as getting a new job to an adult. And that is just as important to God as it is him helping you figure out what you’re going to do with your life’s calling and what vocation you’re going to have, or if you’re going to have, if your baby is going to be born healthy or whatever, the prayer request that you have is just as important to God as this three year old’s lost pacifier.

And hey, so let’s talk about children for a second. And there’s this interesting question that might come to your mind. Came to my mind a long time ago. I’m sure Angie, too, and we’ve talked about this, which is young children. There’s appears to be something unique about young children. Let me ask you a question. If a one year old child dies. Does that child go to heaven? And while the Bible isn’t very super specific, unlike that situation, it does say that in Matthew 1914. Let’s look at that, because this is pretty clear, which says but Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. So what does that say? Little children. Are going to have. That’s what that means. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the little children and were to have faith like little children. So this presents a unique opportunity, and we’ll get to that in a second. For parents to influence their little children, how powerful the stage this is and how important this is. Right. So we’ll talk about that. So you have little children, but then what happens? At some point, children get older and you could call it whatever you want.

You can call it an age of accountability. Now, some denominations will put a specific age on that. I would respectfully disagree with that, because age doesn’t mean maturity. We talk about that all the time. But there is a point and we’ve seen this different places with our different kids where they start to have questions about God. They start to wonder if he’s real. Some of them and some of them never wondered. They always trusted. Right. And then. But then they had a real conversion when they’re older and they’re born again. So there’s faith like a child. Little children belong to the kingdom of heaven. There’s some point where there’s an age of accountability and they’re wrestling with what truth is. And then there’s this They accepted the Lord when they’re a little bit when they’re older. And sometimes that age, by the way, can be a real acceptance of the Lord. At six, seven, eight, often you’ll see it nine, ten, 11. You know.

I mean, it really it’s just every person has a completely different journey with the Lord. So one of the things that we’ve prayed for that I would encourage you all to pray for, I think that it is within God’s will that we would be praying this prayer, which is, Lord, I pray that my children would know you and accept your free gift of salvation into their life at a young age. I’ve prayed that over and over and over again for my kids, knowing that God’s will for their life is going. It is one where they are reconciled to him and when that happens, is in his hands. But I know that he knows my heart and he knows my child’s heart. And so if I’m prompted to be praying for the soul of another person, even if that soul is my child, God delights in those prayers. So it’s not ever a lost cause, if you will, to be praying. Lord, I pray that my children would know you at a young age, that they would accept your free gift of salvation, that they would seek you, that they would have a have a desire to know you more, to want to listen to the Bible even before they’re reading even. And you guys, it’s a beautiful thing. We have this awesome responsibility and privilege. It’s like both as parents, to be able to disciple our children and to see the fruit of him in their hearts.

I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date 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 parenting dot com 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. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children.

But Angie and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal.

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

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

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children, and 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. Hey, man, another one. Just one more. Luke 1817. So important. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. So. Jesus says, let the children come to me. You know, it’s just the children have this special, special period of time. So if you have young children and by the way, if you’re listening, you don’t keep listening because other people have little children. You may be a grandparent someday with little children.

Willing, because children are a blessing.

So it’s really important that you keep listening, but because during this time, there’s this unique opportunity, let’s look at it as a unique opportunity, as parents, to to be trusting of the Lord ourselves, even in the small things, to believe that it would be a good thing for a three year old to pray for something lost. And you as a parent, even though you’ve completely looked through the whole house, you’ve helped them. It’s a big deal or some other situation. You believe God can help your child find the thing and do you walk that way yourself? And do you influence your kids to experience God in that way? And you might have the question, well, what if God doesn’t give direction on exactly where the toy is or the thing is or whatever it is? Well, we don’t want to live like that. We don’t live in what ifs. And you know what? It’s actually okay if it’s a no answer from God if the thing doesn’t come up, because aren’t there no answers in real life? As we get older and we have a relationship with God, God is all knowing He knows what’s best. He knows what’s best for your child. He knows what’s best for you. And that’s easy to answer and come up with. I pray. I know I’m a little weird. I pray for parking spots and I see and I have a full carload of kids and I’ll have one of them pray for a parking spot. And you know what? Often, so often God opens a spot, especially if a child prays, opens up a beautiful spot for us and goes in and we give glory to God for that. And some of you are like, Well, that’s such a little thing. Isn’t that why are we bothering God with a parking spot? You can’t bother God. No, he is that.

Big and.

He is that powerful. He is that loving. He is that good. He did not have to make fruit taste so good. He made fruit match up with our taste buds in a way that makes it awesome.

It’s tasty. Hey, you know, he’s a good guy, because this last weekend, we were headed to the rodeo with our bigs, our big kids in town. It was kind of a far away distance. And we we experienced a miracle in our family, actually, because we were driving all of us with all the kids in the van. And we got to the gas station to get gas and the battery died. Like I’m talking, it was dead. You tried turning the car on.

And the reason I knew was a battery issues because it would slightly start to turn the engine, but it wasn’t enough juice energy to actually do it enough to get the engine going. So I knew so that so that was an electrical problem either battery or elsewhere.

Not charging, you guys know. So we have nine kids ourselves and a daughter in law, Austin and Caroline were not with us. Kelsey was already she was at work in town, but we had seven kids, all under 17 in the van and and myself and Isaac. So nine of us in the car. And it was over 100 degrees that day. Very, very hot. So he sent us into the gas station to stay cool and we waited for a local mechanic to come and try to jump the battery, so to speak. Well, the car miraculously turned on and then we all got in the car.

Yeah, well, so I had tried many times and then we called somebody and I’m just sitting there waiting for him to come. And they go. You know, I think the Lord might do something here. And I turned it on and it just fired up like it was perfect. There was no struggle. You know, if you’ve experienced the battery dying, you can’t start the car, no struggle at all. Just boom, start it right up to extend, come back out and I go, okay, we’re going to go two blocks down the street. Yeah. And and we went to the mechanic shop and they’re baffled. They’re like, Well, that shouldn’t happen.

Like the battery.

Was dead.

Tested it and then.

They and then so well, can you please test it? We’re going an hour away. Can you imagine breaking down on the windy roads were going on or something like that?

We would have had to get like two Ubers to get home because there are so many of us.

So anyways, so we’re right there and he goes, This battery is completely toast.

Like it’s dead. Dead. They didn’t know why it turned on again after it had already died and wouldn’t turn on for like 20 tries. Like, it was crazy that we got there. And then we.

Live in a very small town under 1000 people. So the likelihood of having a mercedes sprinter van battery, which is not just a normal battery, that’s average in our average place, has in this little town is very rare. So he calls the parts place.

That’s like next.

Door. He goes, I think you we have one of these because he also owns the parts store. I think you have one of these and can can you look? And he goes, yep, sure. We, we do actually have one in the back here and boom.

And they brought it over. They stopped working on the other cars that were in the shop and we’re all sitting in the van waiting and they put the new battery in and bam, we were back on the road. But like, in all seriousness, you guys, God is so good, right? Like, so how many people would look at that and be like, Oh, man, I’m sorry you had that experience. No, God was glorified through that experience because we gave everything to him every circumstance through prayer and supplication, we made our request known to God with Thanksgiving. We didn’t allow ourselves to have a bad attitude. Even the kids. I have to say I’m super impressed because even the kids, I didn’t hear one of them complain, even though everyone was excited to go to the rodeo like I’m talking, people were in full on cowboy outfits, excited to go to their first rodeo here in Idaho. And here we were potentially going to be not going because we wouldn’t have had a vehicle that would have fed us. Right. But God was glorified and everyone had a great time. But I look at that and I go, imagine if we would not have prayed.

Imagine if we would not have given glory to God in that and been willing to recognize and verbalize the actual miracle to our kids. So here’s a question for you. When things happen like that, do you give those little things to God or do you think that they’re so little minu petty that you don’t want to bother Jesus with them? And here’s the thing. I want you to also think, do I do this or do my kids think I do this? Because that’s actually a really important question to do. My kids think that I don’t pray for little things and I only pray for big things because that is that modeling, what you’re modeling for them is going to become a legacy that is passed down, potentially not not 100%, but potentially. And we need to be aware of that. We need to be challenged in our own prayer life and go, am I praying with faith like a child because I can’t leave my child to do that if I’m not doing it.

So think back to the story of the three year old now. What do you think happened to his belief in God? What do you think happened to his belief in Jesus? What do you think happened to his belief in prayer? What do you think happened about.

His experience with God?

His experience with God? He literally prayed. God literally showed him where it was. He went to exactly where he was shown. He found it, he had it.

And he gave glory to Jesus when his mom asked him how he found it. That is super powerful. That child might not ever forget that experience with God. Hopefully that mom, I mean, she wrote it down in a post, so she’ll remind him multiple times, most likely because it became a milestone in her walk with God to. Of what? Faith like a child is actually like.

Yeah. So how can we then just think about this? How can we encourage experiencing God to our kids now? We did a whole nother episode on experiencing God.

Yeah. How did how to help your kids to experience God, which is what the podcast episode.

Which is a little different, different stories and so forth.

But more stories that are similar.

But let’s, let’s encourage our kids to pray and pray. They probably already pray without doubting. The question is, are we praying without doubting? Do we have an expectancy and let’s have faith. And this is even this episode isn’t about this, but this is even in a correction process with kids or discipline, however you decide to discipline, this is so important that there’s a spiritual part of the correction which is repenting to God and praying to the Lord, asking for forgiveness for anybody they harmed, and those kinds of things. And if kids, children, when they’re young, are experiencing God and praying to God and repenting over and over and over again what is going to happen to their spiritual walk with the Lord as they get older? It’s only going to encourage us.

I hope so, yes.

Again, this is not a works based salvation message at all. Again, we believe when children are very young, they’re already sinful, already sinful. But there there’s also a special situation where they’re gods. Right. And then there’s this age, accountability and then born again. And so and when someone accepts the Lord, the mystery of salvation is all God’s. And that’s all God’s doing the work. But there is faith required. There is man’s.

Responsibility. Now, since we’re talking about this, I think that it’s important that we just touch on this, because I know I’m probably going to get bombarded with a bunch of questions from parents just regarding like so if you if you believe that there’s an age of accountability. And so just to be clear on what we’re saying, Isaac and I have a personal belief based upon scripture, as many of you do, that God is a merciful God. And if that one year old or that two year old was to tragically die, that even though the Bible is not clear on if they are in heaven, we believe that the Merciful Jesus would welcome them with arms wide open into heaven, even if they haven’t been baptized, if they haven’t done a confession of faith, different things like that, right? So let’s say even toddler’s not talking. And the reason why I think this is important for us to talk about, just because we believe that does not mean that we don’t believe. That children are sinners when they’re that age, because we do believe they are. We believe that what the Bible says on all of these topics that children that because sin entered the the world through Adam and Eve. The moment that we enter into the world, we sin is bound up in the heart of a child.

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child. For all have sinned and falls short of the glory of God for all means, even children. We see the the ramifications of human nature in selfishness. We see it through temper tantrums, we see it through selfish desires. Yes, they are sinners. And it is important that they are corrected, that they are taught it’s important that they are loved, that they are disciplined, that they are disciplined in all of these aspects of the Bible. What the Bible teaches are extremely important. Just because we believe that God is merciful on that one year old that potentially would die does not mean that the parents of that one year old should not have been teaching them. That’s not what you see what I’m saying? I want to be really, really clear here. So even though they are in sin, we as a parents have responsibility to be training our children up in the admonition of the Lord. We have a responsibility before God. But we also believe that if something was to tragically happen to those those little children, that God is going to be merciful with them. And so I just wanted to be clear with that so that we don’t have a bunch of confusion down the road.

So your example of trusting God really matters. Let’s look at Matthew 1714 through 20. This is such a good chunk of scripture right here. And then when they came to the crowd, a man came upon up to him and kneeling before him said, Lord have mercy on my son, for he has seizures and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples and they could not heal him. And Jesus answered, Oh, faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me and Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him and the boy was healed instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, Because of your little faith for truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. Now on this, is that a grain of mustard seed? Mustard seeds? One of the small seeds grows into one of the biggest trees 20 feet wide and 20 feet high. Beautiful birds can sit on it.

Jesus talks about it in a different parable, being like the kingdom of heaven and supporting the birds and all these things, right? So it’s just interesting. You can go look at that. But this is having faith like a mustard seed. The smallest seed becomes the biggest thing. So it’s not about necessarily quantity of faith. Sometimes you might think to yourself, How could I have more faith? No, it’s either faith. You’re either walking and trusting God or you’re not. If you have fear, anxiety and worry about something, you’re not in a mode of faith if you are praying, but you’re not fully believing that God’s listening and can do what you’re talking about for somebody else. You might be praying for somebody else. You might be praying, healing for somebody. Do you believe that God can do that if it’s in his will while you’re praying? You either do or you don’t, right? So it’s it’s it’s not about us becoming having more faith. It’s about having faith. Right. And it doesn’t take a lot. It’s about God doing something through you, not you doing something because you have more faith. It’s about having faith. So super, super important to think about that and it really comes down to this is that when does God take action, when it’s in his will and when our heart is right? So the more our heart is right is, the more likely it’s going to be in as well, because we’re more likely to talk to God in ways that aren’t as well to ask for things that aren’t as well.

But should we not ask for things out of wonder if it’s going to be in his will? No. We should pray. We should have a relationship with God where we’re asking and talking. Even the small things, the big things. And if our heart is right and it’s not in his will, that’s okay if it’s in his will. But our heart is isn’t right. He may not take action. He may. He’s God. He can decide to because it’s still in his will. But let’s let’s have our hearts be right. And how do we how do we make sure our hearts are right? Well, to have a heart of God, we need to know God and to know God, we need to read his word. The word of God is so important to have our hearts right. It’s not everything when it comes to relationship with God, but when you read Scripture, it is a mainstay. It is the thing. It is how you know the heart of God. It’s how you know the will of God.

And it’s how you test the spirit’s right. A lot of people will talk about just thoughts and they journal with Jesus and I journal. I mean, I journal to God all the time. I write letters to him. I write down prayer requests. I write out my prayers. I take notes when I’m reading Scripture. But that should never be confused as being part of the Word of God, because it’s not actually the word of God is alone sufficient for a rebuking, for teaching, for correcting, for all things. This alone is God’s Word, and the Bible warns us in Revelation not to add to it. Right? We talk about this all the time in the podcast, literally. That is a massive warning. We don’t add to it. Can we write Jesus letters for sure? Can we experience God and learn more about Him as we’re reading his word and we’re writing out what it means to us? Yes. And that’s a discipline. That would be a beautiful thing to be teaching our kids as they get older as well. But listen, when it comes to experiencing God, let’s be careful not to put God in a box, not that God could ever be put in a box. Let’s just be honest. He can’t because he’s God. But what I mean is don’t put try to put human parameters around what God could do. Don’t put a fence around like a metaphorical fence around a limitless God that loves your children and is pursuing them and wants them to experience Him instead. Let’s view God rightly. Let’s view him accurately. Let’s view God Biblically. Understanding that He literally is a limitless God that can move mountains, that can raise for people from the dead, that can cast out demons, and that he’s called us all up. He’s called us all to walk in that same faith that children seem to naturally have, which is this belief that, oh, he’s God, he can do anything.

And let’s not forget to give credit to God. How often do we sometimes pray for something? And it happens seven days later and we don’t circle back and glorify him and bring that back to the kids and help them be part of that. How often do we hide the challenges we’re experiencing? We pray quietly without our kids knowing about the challenge and they’re not praying for it. And then something good happens. And and.

We don’t really tell we don’t.

Really tell them about it. We don’t give credit to God in front of the kids. And they’re not part of that experience. There’s in this book, there’s in this cocoon.

That’s maybe sun, only church.

Cocoon, cocoon. And they’re not we’re not being invited. And the stirred up by parents just really walking real life with their kids. Obviously, we’re not going to share every single thing with them, but that is so important. And then the question sometimes comes up in our heads probably, which is how do I know when to give credit to God? Like what happens? What happens if I give credit to God? But it’s really just something that we did or it’s really just happenstance or it’s just a really an ironic thing that happened. Well, I would always err on the side that God did it versus these other things, and I think we should just think less about wondering these things. Let’s just glorify the Lord. And if it was a situation where God didn’t do it, he’s still glorified. And I think that we want to be walking in a way where we’re praying without ceasing. Right? That means we’re consistently praying, maybe not every minute of the day, although that’s is what it means. But that’s pretty impossible, I found. But so but it’s like we’re in this continual prayer process many times during the day and we’re giving credit to the Lord. And yeah, sometimes we’re like patting our kids on the back for doing a great job, and.

Sometimes we’re praying for them to grow and be challenged, right?

And sometimes we do something. We didn’t pray about it. God wasn’t involved. And you know you’re not. Just going to fabricate credit to God either. But let’s rejoice in that. Let’s walk in a way that’s spiritual where let’s walk in a way where it’s evident that there’s a relationship with our Creator, the one true God. And let’s encourage that in our kids. Sometimes they naturally have that and we don’t even realize it. But we could be discouraging it in our own unbelief that God is answering prayers to the children. So let’s not do that. I think that story was so beautiful and so glad they shared it and let us know about it. And I think this episode was important.

Yeah. So you guys, as we are wrapping up here, I just want to remind you all that this topic of encouraging your kids to trust in the Lord, to have faith as small as a mustard seed can and how it can move mountains. Right. I just want to encourage you that we love teaching on this kind of stuff and we do teach more in depth on this specific topic in the courageous parenting mentor program. And so if that’s something that you’re interested in, go check it out at courageous parenting. Just watch the video. We also offer opportunities for groups to go through it together and so you can find out more about that on the website. But we have an entire session out of the six week self-paced course that teaches on discipleship of your children. And this is one part of discipleship, is this concept of teaching them how to pray for things and how to give God glory and experiencing Him so that there is a real, real relationship that is being cultivated. It’s kind of like this. If you had a friend and you wanted to introduce your friend to your child, you would literally say, Hey, Johnny, this is Jesus, Jesus, this is Johnny. You would introduce them, you’d help them to meet together. That’s what we get to do as parents over and over and over again, through prayer, through worship, through reading the word, through understanding him, through serving other people, through being kind, through all kinds of avenues. So if you would like to explore more what it means to disciple your children, come join us in the parenting program.

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

The Tolpin’s celebrate 200 episodes by sharing the full back story on doing ministry together. The podcast started just over three years ago, but it’s a culmination of their 22 years of marriage. So they share the way back all the way up to today! It will likely be inspiring as you hear the things God has done but there’s also practical wisdom that will help your family’s journey too.

Main Points in This Episode:

1. Rapid fire upbringing of Isaac and Angie.
2. How they met.
3. The early days of Isaac working in the business world and Angie a stay-at-home Mom who was also involved in the Church.
4. The importance of knowing your seasons.
5. How Angie wrote a book while having a large family of young children with a husband working full-time.
6. Major business and financial failure.
7. The Job years.
8. How the body of Christ helped.
9. Walking in faith and avoiding bankruptcy.
10. The Kickstarter failure.
11. How we started anyways without funding.
12. A look ahead into the future.

Scripture From This Episode:

Hebrews 12:15 – “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled”

Scroll down to see other resources

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support

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 21 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 following. Hey, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, everybody.

This is the 200th episode.

It’s so crazy.

Wow. 200 weeks in a row since the beginning.

That’s amazing.

So we thought we’d do something a little different to it.

Yeah. So we for a while now, we have been plugging at this every week and we get a lot of questions. A lot of questions. You guys know that because we’ve done Q&A podcast before and we share in our lives, in our app and different things like that. But some of the questions that we’ve actually not really answered were more personal questions regarding like how we started doing ministry. I know that I get a lot of those on social media from younger moms that were like, Hey, how did you get started teaching? I’d really like to do what you do. It essentially is what I get the messages about. And so before we dive in, in what we’re going to be sharing today, my my heart for you guys, if you have ever felt that or felt a calling towards doing ministry is to remind you that you are in ministry with your kids, that the Great Commission starts in your home first. And we have to be diligent at keeping the priorities straight and focusing on that. And if you do that really well, then your kids will grow up and you will have their there will be a fruit that actually qualifies you to be in a teaching type of role. And so amen. I just want to I want to bring that up because that’s something that like when I was a young mom, we were going to share a little bit of the raw story here of how we got to be doing courageous parenting.

I just wanted to say for the dads, too, your ministry, most important ministry is your family. And also whatever God’s calling you to do for work, there’s a ministry there, and sometimes you can be more overt or covert. Sometimes you have to be. But still the light you shine makes a difference.

So yeah. And and our story, as you will find out quickly is that that is our story, right? That we did that.

Most of our marriage. That is how our ministry worked. Right. Which is our family, most importantly. And then I was working in the business world and in a mix of things. So anyways, we’re so glad you’re here. Now, this isn’t just for people who might be interested in doing ministry. This is not just even for people interested in our story. There’s going to be powerful lessons. I believe everybody’s testimony has powerful lessons, practical insights, and that’s what we hope for this episode as well. So we’re so glad you’re here. We’re going to dive in. We’re going to talk about things like business failure and catastrophic financial issues and our family clinging together and how courageous parenting started. And, you know, all in between what Angie was doing, you know, a blog started this and, you know, wait a decade or more before courageous parenting. So, you know, some interesting things I think, and dynamics and our family and so forth. But we sure appreciate you being part of the 1 million sorry 10 million legacy movement. And our goal that we feel prompted by the spirit is to impact 10 million families in their legacies through the related ministry things. And so podcast being, I would say one of the very most important things, this free value that we give out every single week trying to give you really good information. Angie I thought it was interesting. You’re like, Well, I think we do share, we’re transparent on the podcast and we do share things, but we’re so into giving you practical things you can use right now to make a difference in your life that we don’t go deep into it sometimes.

Yeah. And, and well we go deep into the topics that we cover. Yes. And we go deep into Scripture and we go deep into teaching and biblical exhortation and encouragement. But and sometimes we’ll we’ll we’ll dabble. Right. We’ll bring in some of the personal life history stories that we’ve gotten over the last 22 years. But when we were talking about this specific episode, how special this is that we have been doing this for 200 episodes, many of you guys have started with us and been with us since the very beginning. Thank you for your loyalty, for your faithfulness, for your encouragement over these years. It’s been incredible. The incredible prayers to Oh yeah, we definitely wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for you.

Guys and the people donating and the courses and books and.

All the things for sure. But all of that being said, like there was just something that was kind of hitting me where a lot of times we get these personal question stories where it’s like, How did you guys get to where you are? And it made me realize that I even get that in real life, right? Like with people that were walking with that we just started walking with like in home church and different things. I get these questions, I’m like, Oh, I do not know that. Like, Wow, I haven’t shared that. Oh. Oc And it’s not that I’m withholding anything. We just are so focused on the things that we think are or we hope are really relevant to where you’re at because of current times and what’s happening in the world that we realized like, Wow, you know what? Sometimes it is fun to hear. The proof in the pudding, if you will, or the story behind why we’re doing what we’re doing and how we started doing it.

So even before we met, I think it’d be cool to do a rapid fire.

Rapid fire.

Rapid on our upbringing. So I was brought up not in a Christian home, and I was introduced to our entrepreneurship at age eight or nine, I believe. I was selling little wooden boats, crafts on the side of the street, in a little town and at a festival, and made several hundred dollars doing that as a young person selling something I created and to see the joy on kids faces from something, my ingenuity was incredible. But I didn’t become a believer until later. And in fact, that had a lot to do with meeting energy.

So my story starts out Rapid Fire style. I was raised in a Christian home and I’m really thankful for that. I’m thankful that my parents both love the Lord and had dedicated their life to him in raising us. We were faithful churchgoers, very involved in worship team and all the things. Growing up as a young girl, I decided to save all my babysitting money to pay my way on my first missions trip when I was 12 years old. And I did that every summer except for maybe two when I was in high school. And I would just if there’s something that I could say I was addicted to, I got addicted to doing missions work. I loved going down there, seeing the same people year after year in the same community, building relationships, serving them, building houses, giving food, doing VBS for the kids, sharing the gospel, just loving on people. And that really taught me more than anything that our love speaks louder through our actions than it does through our words. Because when I was in these other countries, I didn’t speak their language as my first language. And so that that is like a huge thing when you do international missions and there’s a language barrier and you realize that you’re able to love people even if you’re not able to speak to them. That’s very powerful and it really teaches you the power of God. So fast forward. Yeah, I met Isaac after a missions trip.

So I had just finished my junior year college at University of Washington and I was working with a company running my own business essentially within a company. And Angie and I ended up working together. I was on summer break, she was on summer break, she was at Trinity Western University up in Canada, and she came in and was exuberant and very happy person. And it was an interesting thing. I think that because she was just on a mission trip to Turkey, the Holy Spirit was so vibrant in her. And that’s a natural thing, I think, for my wife. But but it was especially so right then and I didn’t know to pinpoint it to that because I didn’t believe in God or believe in marriage and.

Know what the Holy Spirit was. The Holy Spirit.

Was so but I could see in sense something special in in Angie. And she sensed somebody troubled.

I was wondering where you’re going with it. She said, Oh, this is kind of fun. Yeah. So when I came back from Turkey, I had just to back up a second. There was less of a language barrier because I had done like full immersion, learn the Turkish language, the culture, the government. I had studied this country before going there for a missions trip, and I really felt like I was called to go back. So I had six weeks to work before I had to go back to college for my sophomore year in college. And I was determined I was like not going to be getting married. I thought for sure I was called to international missions and I came back, had six weeks, got three jobs, literally worked my tail off. And I mean, I was a very focused, hard worker. And I think that was also something that Isaac was really impressed by, for sure. And so we worked hard together. And then I had my other two jobs as well. But I sensed he wasn’t the only one that was troubled. There was a lot of people that we worked with that didn’t know Jesus and my heart went out to them. And so he oftentimes would hear me sharing with other people too, and trying to be a light. And so it wasn’t just our conversations that we were having, but also he heard me having conversations with other people.

I think. Tip If you’re wanting to reach out to somebody that thinks they have it all together, which I thought that was the case for me at the time and a little bit prideful and is asking the purpose in life. And then if you have a good answer, a biblical answer about that, that really befuddles a befuddled.

You didn’t, didn’t it? Yeah. So there was this time where Isaac and I, after a meeting that we were at, I, we were talking and I just asked him what his purpose in life was and it did befuddle him. And then he thought he would be all sad. And ask me the question back, but I actually was like certain what I was doing with my life, which was that I was going to be a missionary and he was like, What? And then I started showing him pictures of my mission trips because I literally had them in my car and he was just like, What?

I was very shortly after I was very obviously I believed in marriage all of a sudden because I told her I was going to marry her.

We weren’t even said, No way, Jose.

We weren’t even dating because that’s not really something Angie was into.

Doing.

With anybody. So she promptly told me that she’s her plan was to never get married. I’m like, Hmm. So anyways, we both went back to college and we stayed connected as friends, and I tried to pursue it as more than friends. And then she put complete brakes on that and said, We’ll never be together. Anyways, we got to one podcast.

Do so we yoked.

Very important. Anyways, God was tugging on my heart and we didn’t communicate anymore for a very good time period of time. And but God, the seed had been planted and I was going to church every Sunday and reading the Bible voraciously, skipping college class.

Which that is like kind of a cool story to like. I know that we’re trying to Rapid Fire, but you guys like God literally sent me a Bible in the mail either by using this body of Christ or it magically showed up. But I was living with my parents at the time and I went to go check the mail and wrapped in a brown paper bag was a men’s devotional Bible addressed to me, and I knew immediately upon opening it it was supposed to be for Isaac. And so like God just gave me verses to write in the front to encourage him where to start reading the Bible. And then I tab the Romans Road in there, and I gave it to him as a gift. And so I was huge.

So I was reading that whole thing. And the short of it is, is that God got a hold of me and proved that the Bible was infallible. Word of God. By how many prophecies came true in the New Testament. I go back to the Old Testament, read these things. I’d already studied leadership voraciously because I was hustling. To be super successful in the business world was my goal, and it.

Was your business.

And I would see that Jesus was the ultimate leader, that no human would have said the things He did or made those choices or had the wisdom in his scenarios, situational leadership scenarios. So it was really powerful. But really what happened, I had a radical conversion because something literally happened to me that maybe I’ll share in a different podcast and all of a sudden I knew God was real and I knew that the way was through Jesus and I accepted the Lord. And I called you actually two in the morning, and then after our phone call, I got on my knees and accepted the Lord all by myself in my little apartment. And by the way, I say radical because something that happened was radical, but also my life completely changed from that day forward. It was like a night and day change. It was a new creation. I know that’s not everybody’s story, so it shouldn’t discourage anybody. But for me that was the case. It was like I completely didn’t desire the the sinful things I used to do and those kinds of things. So anyways, long story short, we, you know.

Obviously we got married pursuing me.

We got married later, maybe a different episode. We’ll do the whole romantic side of things. But we, we got married maybe a year later.

Something like that. Yeah.

A year later. And by the way, you know, we set out in my mind to have two kids and perfect little family, successful business, retire at 35. And these are things are these are things in my mind. And we had way more kids and way less money and richer life. But anyways, I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night. 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 college parenting dot com 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. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children.

But Angie and Isaac have done in creating this.

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

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

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. And 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 lights to be leaders for the next generation.

We in the beginning, we’re going to some really good church, the first major church we were going to right after we got married.

Yeah. I mean, so as far as like, how do we get to the ministry? So you guys just kind of heard briefly how Isaac and I met and how we I mean, we’ve kind of skipped a large portion of things. Of course, we’ve been married for 22 and a half years, almost 23 years. So there’s a lot that we could share. So we’re going to be definitely skipping some things here in Rapid Fire and share some stories that we think are super relevant will be an encouragement to you. But, you know, so we got married in 1999 and we got pregnant with our first baby shortly thereafter. Just a few months later, we got married in the summer, and then at Christmas time we found out we were pregnant and that was our first baby. I was still doing college at the time for Family Ministries, Christian education, director of Christian Education and Family Counseling, and was like, This was not my agenda. Right? So here you’re catching on to a theme that Angie is a planner and God has a better plan for Angie’s life than Angie does, because I thought I wasn’t going to get married or have kids. And that’s not exactly what God’s will was for my life. And I’m really thankful. And even more so, I’m thankful that God has continued to change my heart over the years, to be soft, to following him and being obedient and being willing to walk in and honestly be courageous. Because there have been a lot of things where I’ve struggled with fear myself in different things or people pleasing or whatnot, and either by way of my husband or a brother or sister in Christ or just God’s word, I get convicted and I, I repent and I move I move towards God. And so he shows up.

So, you know, we have our first child and then we thought maybe we wouldn’t have another child because something might have been wrong. There’s a pretty good gap between our first and second. I think it’s almost three years. Yeah.

And we had been trying to get pregnant.

Trying to get pregnant and nothing, nothing happened. And then Austin came and then, you know, babies kept coming. But yeah, it’s not that simple, though. But but Angie, in the midst of that, Angie was, you know, running moms group meetings and.

Teaching.

And bigger megachurches and the one we were at at the time and, you know, and very involved in those ministries. But and I was very busy building a business, a business, and it was fruitful and something that I have.

We did have some things that we did together, and we really enjoyed those things together. And I think that that was like the thing that was what my heart was desiring deep down inside, because when we first met, we worked together and we were really a good team and he and I both acknowledged that and realized that and enjoyed our work even more when we were able to do it together. And then when we had Kelsey, we enjoyed having a daughter together, you know, it was just like we just enjoyed doing things together. And so having gone to school for children’s ministries and family ministry and that sort of thing, I immediately went into it. You guys are going to laugh because you probably know our stance on youth group. We don’t we don’t put our kids in youth group, but I was actually a youth pastor. So you’re a director of Christian education and in charge of Sunday School and Youth Ministry and did that for the first while while I was pregnant, until Kelsey was born. And then we were also then we joined a bigger church. And that that that experience, I think, was really good for us to give us an alignment in our conviction towards what we were going to do with our kids, because we saw up close and personal many different things that were going on and just through the training and different things as well.

But it’s interesting how each of our experiences throughout our lifetime, you probably would agree with this to prepare you for what you’re going to do in the future. And so Isaac was having a lot of experience in the business world, and he was being what I would call a marketplace missionary in a sense, because he was definitely like sharing God’s love with other people, even giving Bibles to some people, inviting people to church. We had people into our home for hospitality, for the purpose of evangelism, the Great Commission for Love. People well and just sharing with them our our faith, really. And then we would invite them to church with us. And it was amazing the fruit that we experienced while while he was working in the business world and I was a stay at home mom and was serving in churches here and there. But then I felt a conviction to come home and to to step back and not be so involved, because there was about 8 hours a week that I was spending, whether it was just driving to meetings and being a part of meetings. And I just got convicted once we had Megan, our third I think it was just.

A practical lesson right here is that we have to understand our seasons. There are seasons in life, and just because we’re capable, just because we desire something doesn’t mean it’s the right timing for our family and for the fruitfulness of what’s most important and what actually God believes is most important to you, which is your children, your family. And so that wasn’t a good season.

But, you know, we’re doing that. But well, for us, especially because of how much you were working in different projects that we were doing as well. And so it became the thing where I was like, You know what? Nope, I need to focus on the ministry that I have in front of me so that I am not disqualified later because I’m spread too thin. And that was just something that the word actually convicted me of. And because I saw a lot of pastors and, you know, people who are in ministry where their kids weren’t walking with the Lord later in life. And I didn’t want that for my kids. And so I decided to do something radical, actually, and opposite of what was natural within the body of Christ regarding the the church, the institutional church.

So then we have like four or five kids and Angie’s super talented and there’s people asking her questions.

All the time. Was homeschooling by this time about.

You know, parenting, homeschooling, having babies, birth, pregnancy, all these things? Because she already was such an expert really in a lot of these things. I would say she wouldn’t call herself that because there’s.

Just was doing.

It. She was doing it. But she really people were constantly gleaning wisdom. And so I really encouraged her to start a blog.

Oh, my goodness.

And she would not do it. She would not. And this is when blogs blogs are still big, but this is when there was really momma blogging was really big.

Well, it was just it was a brand new thing because the Internet was a new thing, actually. And it was this popular thing that all of us moms who’ve been married, you know this about as long as we have. We all remember when those mom blogs started, right? So it was like a version of scrapbooking.

So I’m always like, hey, what are my wife’s dreams? And let’s make sure, even though it’s a busy time, what is an efficient way? She can still get that positive feeling of impacting lots of people. And that was blogging. That’s the answer. She wouldn’t do it. She’s like, Oh, no, I don’t want to handle the negativity and the people that disagree with me. And what if not everybody likes it and these kinds of things.

It’s funny that you remember that. It’s true.

It’s true. And so so one day I go, well, I’m going to start a blog.

He did, you guys.

I just found it actually this week. I didn’t know it was still up. It’s out there. There’s like ten blog posts because I only did enough posts.

Wait, wait, wait. So wait. You. You must have written those back when we lived in Happy Valley, Oregon. Yeah, Happy Valley. You guys lived in our first house?

I was in my early thirties.

Early thirties, late twenties. Early thirties, yeah. Yeah. And so it must have been like early 2000s. Yeah. Yeah.

I was just reading a couple of blog posts, not too shabby. But anyways.

Had me editing them.

I had her edit them and I go, oh look, I’ll look, I’ll say something impacted someone and I was just kind of trying to share stories with her and you know, pretty soon she started a blog, so I didn’t need to blog anymore.

That was the reason I stopped as soon as I started doing so funny.

Yeah, I wanted to fan her flames and she ended up, you know, 350 blog posts later. That’s courageous, mom. And this that really got it going. And then she had this real conviction, this like Holy Spirit burden on her heart to help women in pregnancy and birth. Because and I know you can say this well, but I want to say it because there wasn’t a book out there that had biblical sound, biblical teachings, not a methods book, but on how to include God in pregnancy and birth. Right. And that is so important because so much of our society has discredited it by the decisions people make in how and what they do. And so instead of a methods book, it was a biblical book, motivational book. I read it. I’m like, this thing is like a motivational biblically sound, you know, have your baby in an awesome way book.

Well, you know, that was quite a journey because I actually yes, it was a burden. But I didn’t want to write redeeming childbirth at first because I. I was really afraid of rejection and people in my real life taking what I’m sharing and being convicted. If they didn’t have a good experience and maybe not wanting to be close friends with me, I was just very, very concerned about all of those kinds of things. And Isaac’s right. There wasn’t a biblical book that was on the market at the time. Other than one. There was one, but it was no, it’s no longer available. It’s not published anywhere. Sometimes you’re lucky if you can find it at a thrift store, but it’s very rare. It was written in the seventies, and other than that, there was literally nothing. And so I felt a deep conviction to write, and I did. And it was the best decision to obey God in that mission that I ever made, because that really spurred on something, ignited a way for me to be able to use my gifts in the body of Christ at large without sacrificing my family.

And some of the ways we did that, something you should know if you’re thinking about writing a book and say you’re a mom with little kids at home and things like that, it’s it’s definitely prudent to do so. If the spirit’s leading you, too, and you have something really valuable that you really feel prompted to share with people, it’s awesome, but not at the sacrifice of your family. And that’s what we decided. And so it was at the sacrifice of some weekends with Mom, but then Dad was all in with the kids and we got Mom like a hotel at a retreat place.

Oh yeah, for a few days.

So we invested and then, you know, alone time with us, it wasn’t always happening as much because at 930 and 9:30 p.m., all I heard was I’m trying to sleep.

She keyboards.

The keyboard was flying like the Holy Spirit was like downloading. It was crazy.

It was really weird. It was it was amazing. Well, I don’t recommend this. So this isn’t prescriptive for other people, but this is just our story. This is part of my story is it was really a labor of love in a sense, birthing, redeeming childbirth because and it was like that was actually my seventh child because it took six months to write, another six months to edit, and then six months to fully launch. And I was all in like whole wholeheartedly, all in. And I but I made a deal with God. If you can make a deal where I had this conversation in prayer with him, where I was literally in anguish, not wanting to do this because of worry and fret and fear and all the things, but knowing this is the path that God wants me to go down, and I said, Lord, I’ll do this. I’ll obey you, and I’ll put my name on the chopping block, if you will, and put my heart out there, laid bare in front of the whole world, and share the most intimate experiences I’ve had with you, Lord, which is my birth experiences. And I will pursue to interview other women all the things but my family can’t sacrifice. Amen. And so I said, I will start writing at nine 930, but the dishes in the morning have to be done like I need I need that. Lord So would you provide that time? Would you help my kids to be okay with this short period of time, this transition? And he brought it.

It was.

Boy, he brought it. And I felt so much better. I literally remember that that was the best sleep I ever had was after I would be up till 2 a.m. typed up into the day, and the only time I stopped typing was to look up Bible verses. And it was just a really just the writing was an intimate experience with him. So I did that and then I became a doula for women in our life, in our ministry. And and I saw that as a call for me as a sister in Christ or Titus two that had already had six babies to minister to other young moms. And so I was blogging and I was doing that. But then I felt this call back to like my home and to just be more focused on my home. And so I stopped blogging as much. And that was right about the time that you you were getting kind of restless in the business.

Yeah, things were successful, but that doesn’t mean they’re right. You know, it’s it was good work. A lot of people impacted. But I don’t know if any of the guys listening in or gals, you get a spiritual agitation sometimes and that’s the spirit prompting. You do something else, but sometimes it’s not clear. And I was starting to feel that call to do something else. But part of what was also happening is I had a bitter root and a bitter root, as the Bible says, defiles many. And there was a bitter root developing between me and the company that I was building a business associated with. And because of something they did and that wasn’t helpful because whenever you do something new, you take that bitter root with you and it blocks you from hearing from God in the same way, even if you’re pressing into the Lord, it’s much harder because a bitter root occupies your mind. I literally. Remember, like being in the shower and I couldn’t let this thing go. It was this heavy weight on me that no matter how hard I tried to hear from the Lord and I would read the Bible, I just couldn’t hear clearly. And so because of that, I made some errors in judgment, in decisions I made in the what? And and and and the dynamics of how things happened. So.

So before we go into that next step, there was something that happened just before that where it was really like a god thing, where you you were getting kind of bored, but you were wanting to push through and make growth with your team. And so you co-founded a tech a small tech company, right?

Yeah. Well, there was a solution needed. And so we created a tech company to solve that solution. And it was a very modest beginnings, but, you know, mildly successful to support my business partner and his family. I certainly didn’t take too much revenue from it because it wasn’t really a big enough company yet. But yeah, that was neat, neat experience. I’m not a tech person, but my business partner was and that was something that was going Yeah.

So you just the thing that as I look back over the years, Isaac’s always had this entrepreneurial mind, if you will, and a bent, if you know, is another way that you can put it, a bent towards doing things that are going to create solutions for other people. And one of the things that we felt super passionate about because of our experience with like Marketplace missionary work in that sense of just loving young couples and and giving marriage advice. We were one of the oldest married couples in that organization, and we absolutely loved those people that God had put in our lives. And so Isaac went back to Western Seminary for coaching and he started coaching and we started a coaching company called Choose Growth and we both became trained in in coaching and we started coaching people. He was coaching entrepreneurs. I was coaching female entrepreneurs and wives of entrepreneurs. And then we did some marriage seminars. Those were.

So fun.

They were they were really fun. And so we did choose growth marriage seminars, what we used to call them. And we again, doing this thing together was like something that we really like thrived in and it went super, super well.

But I was one of the challenges and maybe some of you, you providers out there have dealt with this. It’s like, Yeah, I love that, but how in the world would that provide for my family? And especially the the lifestyle we built up doing business and succeeding our bills weren’t minor. I mean, it was like it was it was kind of a major monthly number that it took to support a large growing family and a big house on a farm with a vineyard. And, you know, just the different dynamics. And that was a lesson for sure. I don’t want to ever want to get back there because that burdens you away. It prevents you potentially away from doing things that maybe God wants you to do when you change in transition. And so definitely that was in my mindset. I’m like, Yeah, I love doing this with my wife, but how in the world would I provide for my family doing this? You know, and that.

Was a challenge. So then we have this side thing going. So we had a couple of different things going. There were three different things going on at the same time. And then there was also my book. So I guess we had four different things and we had dabbled in real estate and flipping condos and different things like that, and that was fun to do together briefly. And then that’s when Isaac’s story that he was just sharing about the Bitterroot story.

So I go in and we start creating a business. I saw how challenging it was for my wife, you know, being an author to have to go out and speak and promote the book. If she’s not promoting the book, it’s not selling. And just the author challenges of really making that a viable source of income. Actually, even though that book has impacted tens of thousands of people, the financial side has not been great for that book.

Actually, there’s an old saying it goes like this. I think it’s a starving author.

Even if you sell tens of thousands. I don’t know what the number is on that book. It’s it’s well known in the birth pregnancy industry in the world. But yeah, you know, because of the way we did it, it’s not it’s not a big generator of income. So we created a company that supported authors, bestselling authors, to build digital courses for them. It was a publishing model where we take a cut, there’s big fees up front, and then we take a cut forever on their courses. Revenue split and there was many challenges. I don’t want this episode to be all about this, but there was many challenges with that and it ended up, you know, sucking us dry financially. We put all of our money into it over time. You never plan to do that. Why is entrepreneurship does never do that. But once you’re in it and you have 43 employees and you have to make payroll and.

You start supporting families and.

I still had. That bitter root. And I’m not hearing clearly from the Lord. And so I made some serious errors of going too far, way too far down the road. And the business model wasn’t working out. And this is after several years of really diligently trying. And so that was a that was a big sacrifice. And that is, I would say, the big worldly failure, meaning worldly in terms of it’s not a spiritual thing, it was a business and that it was catastrophic because half million in debt followed us.

Just from the company failure.

And we’d already, you know, used all our resources. And here I have we had a new baby.

Solomon Well, yeah, he was just about to be born and we had moved. So we were in a new community and trying to make friends and, and building church community and all of that sort of thing as well. And because we had relocated our business there and, you know, it just became this it was a really big thing. We often refer to those years as our job years because it was it wasn’t just the business failure that hit. At the same time that the business failure hit, we we were pregnant, which was a blessing. But it was hard because I get so sick. And he was extremely busy with his work and we were in a new place. Our kids were trying to make new friends. And Solomon, really, him being born, was in the eyes of the world, probably the worst possible timing. But for us it was exactly what God knew our family needed, specifically our marriage as well. And He brought so much joy to our family. Just an incredible, incredible rainbow to the storm that we were walking through. And but then shortly after that, we got pregnant again and we lost that baby. And when we lost Silas, I was in my second trimester. I share about this more in the other podcast so you can go listen to that full story as well.

I write a lot about miscarriage, but on my blog and but, but one of the things that was I think it was a traumatic experience because we had seven kids and some of our kids were in high school and in junior high and they were very they were older. And so it wasn’t just traumatic with a baby dying, but also I almost died through that situation. And so there was physical like I had to heal and that was one aspect of it. But my heart was broken, my kids hearts were broken, my husband’s heart was broken. And this was all in the midst of this massive business failure and having all of this debt. And then on top of that, we had a property or vineyard property or estate that we had in Damascus, Oregon, that we had been renting out and that rent had been supporting us while we were living in Bend so that all of our finances could go towards the business. And so we had a renter and there the first renter was fantastic for the first couple of years. And then we had a different renter right during this exact season and he decided to stop paying rent. So he didn’t pay us rent for six months and squatted and had other squatters in the house.

So to keep it short, we had to get him out of there. And that’s a process obviously in Oregon. And he ended up saying that our tractor got stolen, but really he sold our tractor, it appears. And so that was that was a big deal. You know, we had to really get that house together in the meantime, just craziness going on. I just remember that and it was a navigating and I was thankful because I had that little tech company with a different business partner. And while I was not able to get paid anywhere near what it costs to support our family, on a basic level, it was something and it was something to do. So it was like, okay, what do we have? We can sell some things. I can start working full time for my tech company again and start to scale that up and make it more substantial with my business partner. And I can also do some consulting and we can also rent our RV. So it was like all hands on deck. Let’s figure out how we can make this happen. And I was totally willing there was some offers for me to work in some with some different companies, people I knew there are CEOs of companies and that.

Required us to move, would have to.

Move away from community and all these things. And we just felt like the spirit was not calling us to do that and to instead just trust the Lord and walk forward. And that was an amazing time. And the good news is the the company tech companies slowly scaled up to start paying us more. And and pretty soon we were paying our bills.

That’s right. And, you know, a lot of it, too, was our community and the people that we were walking in life with as well. They were definitely there to support us, to give wise counsel and to to pray for us and to be an encouragement. But also there was the practical element of like I mean, there were times where, like, we couldn’t afford meat and I. I remember the specific time where we were praying as a family and the boys were praying for me. And then within like a the next week, one of the elders at our church just showed up with a couple of coolers filled with meat, and he just said that the Holy Spirit had led him to get meat for our family. There was another time where where meat was very expensive. Right. And we had many sons and a family member of a close friend, had a butcher shop, and they donated an entire alpaca to our family. And so God provided in a number of different ways for our physical needs, for sure. And it was definitely a faith journey. We, like Isaac said, we sold many things from cars to watches to pianos and you name it. I mean, we literally we came together as a family to pay back debt, to get out of debt as much as possible. And we felt like Isaac and I know many people had said, you guys should claim bankruptcy and but we just felt like God was saying, as long as we are able to work, we are going to do our best to pay people what they are due.

And what’s amazing is we prayed for God to fix this problem for us. And whenever I pray for God and I ask God to fix something, I also work as hard as I can to solve it because I trust that God is going to do things. But I have to do my part. Like I feel like I got myself into this. I’ve got to do everything I can also. And if God’s also working on it and that’s amazing. And and that’s exactly what happened. All of that debt was paid off within two years. And we decided our oldest daughter was about to launch and go to college and is our last chance to fulfill a very important family mission that we had, which is to do a multistate, long RV trip around the country. And so we embarked upon that. And to do that, we didn’t have extra money to do it, so we had to get creative.

We had to get a huge garage sale. We were like 6000.

And then we were renting our house.

We rented.

Out. We got approval to sublet it to another couple.

So we saw a newlywed couple.

So we sublet it furnished with all our stuff in it. And then we took off, we sold, I sold all my guns and we just all kinds of things. That’s how important this was. And we did on Faith and I worked from coffee shops during the week and the kids and Angie would go to drive at night to the next place. Extraordinary. 34 states, three months. Incredible. Super, super hard to do. I’m so good. I got in shape before that trip and Angie was pregnant.

So I was very challenging for her. And eight months pregnant with our eighth baby. Well, our ninth pregnancy. So, yeah, I was pregnant with Eli at the time and it was a fantastic trip. But on that trip we really God revealed some things to us that we we wouldn’t have seen if we hadn’t gotten away and just been together as a family. And and during that time, he laid it on our hearts quite a few things. One was that Isaac really needed to start speaking his mind on social media as resolute man.

I remember we had a date night on the trip and we were in South Carolina, I believe, or North Carolina, and we went out to this little place and there was water. It was beautiful. And and she’s just like I was hemming and hawing about, is it resolute, man?

Or is it a refined warrior? Or and I’ve got these.

Times, I’ve gotten some negative feedback about Resolute Man, and then Angie’s just like.

No, you just needed to do it.

And I’m like, Yeah, I just need to do it. And I remember sitting there on the date and I put the name in and.

I think I cleared the handle.

I think I think I even did my first post from our date.

Yes.

And that was so liberating to speak truth. And from the rest of the trip that was near the beginning of the trip I posted every single day and it was and did for a long time.

And you know what’s interesting about this is so Isaac had been very bold about his faith throughout his history that I had known him like every time working, wherever he was working, he was very bold about the Lord. But there definitely was this sense of like there was deeper stuff that he wouldn’t necessarily say in front of large groups, but he wanted to be sharing them in front of large groups. But because of the nature of the business world, it was hard for him to be able to express a lot of those things, or maybe it wasn’t even relevant to them. Like stuff on marriage and parenting where a lot of people weren’t necessarily in that. So super. So it was amazing really. I saw something happen to him where he became alive in this new way. And and then it was like while we were on this trip, we started talking about what we could do and, and we were in communication with different people that we were back in community with as well because we miss them. They missed us and, and we would shoot ideas around and they would shoot ideas around and they were like. Truly like all behind us going, You guys need to do a parenting ministry. Like this is what you need to do. And we 100% immediately were like, Yes, that is exactly what God’s plan is to. So while we were on our trip, I remember Isaac and I prayed about it and then we we actually took it to our kids and we brought it before them because we weren’t going to start something without their blessing. And they were all unanimous. Yes, you guys need to do this.

And so that was really cool. And the goal was it was going to be a side but important side thing because I still have my tech company and my full time effort there and something we’re building and really exciting.

I was just going to be maybe a podcast.

Yeah, so really exciting things we’re doing. We’re starting to happen with the tech company and so forth. And we got home from our trip and and then my business.

Eli, you.

Had Eli Kelsey off to school and then shortly thereafter, pretty soon I didn’t have my income anymore or my business anymore, really. There was there was a change happening with the tech company. So so that was an interesting thing where that was what was supporting our family and that disappeared in the blink of an eye for almost a year. So that was interesting. And we had to get real resourceful again. And I remember as a moment of truth, okay, do I go get a job or do we trust the Lord and move forward in this way? And again, it was that was the launch of courageous parenting. But this time we needed some funding because we needed to support our family while we built it. So we did a Kickstarter campaign.

Oh, that’s so funny. Yes, you’re right. So we actually I remember this. We launched a we also launched a few things. We had a few like mini courses, the post more. Yep. We also launched the postpartum course and then we had the book. So we created the pregnancy and postpartum bundle and that was doing super. It was doing pretty good, but not enough to support our family, of course. And we we prayed about it and we decided, let’s just let’s start the podcast. But then we’re like, we don’t even have the money to pay for microphones or like a table or a backdrop or like anything. What are we going to do? So you guys, you have to envision this, but there is this like side little library section in our master suite that was connected to our master bedroom that was actually going to it was the baby’s bedroom. So if you look at those early podcasts, Isaac set up this makeshift set. It’s a set, it’s a podcasting set. And it was in our bedroom. But the bedroom, if you literally if you’re sitting where I’m sitting and you are looking at the camera, right behind the camera was the baby’s crib. It was the baby’s room.

And I had this ship lamp that was really nice. But behind it was a window and it’s like the main window right next to the front door.

So I gave up our sunlight.

So we gave up our sunlight and I put this makeshift set that I could easily take down because we’re renting.

So you have to tell them about the table.

Oh, and so we didn’t have a table. So I went outside and there was this old stump in the creek that was dried up at the time. And I rolled it, you know, and then carried it inside and put it down, made sure there’s no bugs on it. But yeah, it’s literally just a stump from outside. So my friend loaned us the microphone and the equipment temporarily, and we’re off and running, you know, starting a podcast.

Podcast, yeah. And it was interesting because did you so a lot of people are probably going, but did you know what to do? Like how did you know what to do regarding creating the podcast?

Well, I looked at blog posts and I studied and I ask what I need to do. And then I have a friend that had a podcast and I go, What did you do? And then I ask a different friend that apocalypse, what did you do? And they have different opinions about things. I’m like, Finally I went to one of them. I go, I’m just going to do what you’re doing because making decisions on this, I can’t waste time. And so I just and pretty soon people are loaning me equipment anyways and but there are certain things you have to set up. But yeah, but yeah. And it was it was in the Kickstarter campaign failed miserably.

Oh, it was horrible. Do you even remember the numbers? I don’t know.

But anyways, some people, you know, you are.

Some people supported you.

Believed in the.

Very beginning. Thank you so much.

But even people around us, I think, wondered about the Kickstarter starter campaign. I don’t even know that too many friends joined in on the Kickstarter campaign. But anyways, it was it was a failure. And, you know, but that didn’t mean we stop. I think sometimes God does close doors and I think sometimes God is there. But he just wants us to work hard and find a way.

And be with.

Him and be faithful. And that’s what we picture. We’re like, This is something God wants to do. Evidently. Yeah, that just because there’s no money doesn’t mean it’s a closed door.

So we’re going to do this sacrifice. So we decided to sell our beloved sprinter van. It was only vehicle that sat our entire family and we sold the sprinter van to provide for our family for a few months so that we would have a little bit of a run. Way. And we started pre-selling the parenting mentor program.

Well, you guys know the parenting mentor program goes every six weeks. And so we had a date six weeks out, just like we still do today. But it.

Wasn’t.

Finished yet and nobody knew that. So we were building.

It was.

Starting. And then when it started, it took us longer than six weeks to build it. It is very in-depth and very accurate to biblical times.

We got the first week launched and we were working on it.

So each week I release a session and I was finishing parts. The PDF, download or whatever it was each week leading up to that. So it was a process and we delivered every week for that first group. And we’re good friends with some people that were in that first group that we didn’t know until they came across it. But now over 2000 parents have gone through that program. It has indelible impact on those 2000 families. And we hope it’s many, many more.

It’s incredible. I mean, so so you guys like we got this parenting mentor program. It’s interesting talking about the Kickstarter because my perspective is that that I look at that and I go, Wow, it was totally ordained by God that it failed. Because if we would have like raised enough money to support our family for that year, we could have like not seen such an urgent need to get the parenting mentor program done and available to people. So soon we would have been like probably taking extra time, but we have like a short runway and we were like, okay, we’re going to do this and we’re going to do this like as best as we can, and we’re going to work super hard again into the middle of the night.

Some abnormal things happen, and it was really a confirmation from the Lord. And these same things don’t have to happen if you’re starting something. No, you can have different confirmations. But one of them for us was, I think in the second month the podcast might have been first, first or second month. It went to 10,000 downloads for the month and and then there was about 4000 in revenue that came in, I think in the second month from the parenting program. And that was still not enough to provide for a family. But what an encouraging sign and just an incredible.

Blessing through smaller platforms. It was a huge blessing and it was assigned to us to that God was going to provide if we were faithful to do what He had called us to. And so in sharing with people that were in our community and understood that world more, they were like also shocked that it was working. And so we stayed faithful to continuing to surrender and bring new content and connect with people and, and mentor them through through the parenting courageous parenting mentor program, which has been a huge, huge encouragement to us over the years. And then shortly after that, we so one of the things, too, that was interesting is during the time on our RV trip, our whole family kind of grew the conviction that we needed to plant home. Church Yeah. And that became a thing that we really wanted to do, but we wanted to make sure that we were 100% out of debt. Before we did that, we wanted to just be above reproach before doing ministry. We want to be above reproach before planting.

I wanted to be providing for my.

Family all of the things like we just needed to cross off things off the box as far as like qualification for leadership, different things like that. And we were praying and fasting. We had other people praying and fasting for us and the Lord literally moved mountains and the debt was completely paid off. God moved in a very dear couple’s heart to actually help with that as well. So Isaac was working hard and negotiating with different people that were involved and they literally some people donated money. It was incredible. And so when you see people that you’re walking in life with, validate and affirm you in such a strong way. Like I even think back to like courageous mom. Courageous mom wasn’t always my website you are all it actually was leaving a legacy and Angie opened Blogspot way back in the day. But what’s interesting is that when you’re walking fellowship with people and people are moved by God and they’re willing to listen like again, this couple like literally bought courageous mom for me, which was like a huge like for me, that was an affirmation that God wanted me to be doing that.

That was several thousand dollars and we couldn’t afford it. So we bought all the off domains, but it was available. And then they, they purchased a dear friends, right.

And helped us build the website and all of the things like there’s just so many aspects to this where God provided through different people and different ways through their different gifting and resources.

My, my encouragement to everybody listening is if you’re going to go in a direction, make sure the spirit’s prompting you to do so.

And it’s not something that you’re designing, and.

It doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. In fact, it’s probably going to be really hard.

Well, I’ve found you guys like so our job is so. Yeah, we had the business failure. Yes, I lost a baby and I almost died. We also almost lost a it was nearly $1,000,000 estate. It almost got foreclosed. Because our renter wasn’t paying rent. God, he just really took care of us. We did a lot of work. We got the house back three weeks before we had to sell it and we were able to sell it within that amount of time, which is a huge miracle, but massive stress, right? Just massive stress during that time. There are many other things that happen.

I just yeah. And I just want to say sometimes we think, well, I don’t know how to do this or that. Well, I didn’t have much margin on that house. And so I was the real estate agent. I did the realtor paperwork. Well, how did you know how to do that? Because I Googled it and I got forms and I figured it out and I figured out what needs to go to title. And I did all of it for our own house. And and then it’s like, well, I don’t understand websites. Well, I don’t understand them either. So I took a wet WordPress course when we were building courageous parenting and I just sat in a room and sometimes I want to poke my eyes out with something because I’m so bored or going crazy with all the detail.

Or.

Why do something? Why does something not work? Why can’t technology just work? You know that kind of feeling and I just kind of persevere through it and I just keep Google and I keep trying things and I know that some things take me for hours that take other people 10 minutes. I know that’s happened to me. I know for a fact that I have persevered for 4 hours on something that if I would have had the right wisdom, would have taken another person 10 minutes. But, you know, that’s part of. It’s part of shifting, it’s part of transition, it’s part of learning new things. And you have to be patient with yourself. And God didn’t say that life was going to be easy. No, God didn’t say that. Doing really good things is going to for him is going to be easy. No, he actually says the opposite. It’s going to be very difficult. Read about Paul and Paul’s. All of Paul’s missionary journeys doing hard things for the Lord is not easy.

You will get opposition. And we definitely had massive opposition, spiritual warfare, persecution, suffering.

We’ve had to defend the ministry, legal even. Yeah, we’ve had to defend it tooth and nail. I mean, there it is not an easy path.

But it’s not an it is world. We’ve gotten death threats. We’ve gotten all kinds of things, stalkers on social media, all kinds of stresses you can not even imagine. But I don’t share this stuff with you to scare you away. We’re just sharing part of our story and where where we’ve come from in doing courageous parenting. And one of the cool things is that God has restored all that that was taken, all that we lost, all like above and beyond. And our perspective and our heart is in the right place.

Do you know you probably don’t know this. This will be another episode, but we literally just closed on our house we’ve been living in for almost two years and you’ve seen us remodel and do all these things. We actually didn’t legally own the house yet and it just went through and it’s this unbelievable peace of mind. It’s incredible thing. And you think back to praying that we would avoid bankruptcy and we did. Well, if God didn’t help us do that, we wouldn’t be closing on this house. We wouldn’t be living in a house that we own and all these years later. And so it’s just really important that we don’t take the comfortable or easy path or even logical path, because that was the logical path. Everybody was telling me, that’s what I have to do. There’s no other way out. And I go, Well, God always has other ways, you know, and I’m going.

To work miracles today. And we saw them.

We saw them. We used to do these white board and we’ve got to get back to this. But every couple of months we do a whiteboard session with our kids and go this list of all the miracles and all the incredible things that have happened. And if it’s hard to think of those things, I wonder if you’re operating at the end of your own strength so that God is responsible and you’re giving God credit for things and you’re going beyond your own strength to do what God can do. Because that’s when we start to see more of these things. And I would encourage you what is at the end of your own strength that you’re afraid to do for the Lord and maybe you need to do something. And that’s been some of the lessons here, because I look back and I go instead of thinking, Well, how would I make money doing ministry with my wife? What if I thought, how do I make sure how, what? What could we do? And what if I just didn’t have it figured out but trusted the Lord back then and avoided all that pain and.

Problems lie.

In suffering.

And we can’t live in the what if’s. You can’t.

But I just wanted to make a point. I don’t live in reverse, but I want to make a point that, you know, let’s be faithful. Let’s move forward in faith. Let’s be wise too, about what we decide to do, super important. And just because the economy is crumbling and these things don’t let that scare you from doing things. You know, there’s opportunity to have impact in all kinds of ways. And God has gifted all of us differently. And so what are the ways he wants you to? Because I look around now, I mean, he restored us by helping us get a Kubota tractor, in my opinion recently.

I mean.

We used to have a Kubota tractor, we.

Had one, but it got.

Stolen. We used to have a house on a property and we we had to we almost lost it, but barely sold it. And you know, now we have a house with property and we couldn’t afford this place, this place we live in right now. There is no way we could have afforded this. But God, through his people and through circumstances and us walking in faith and trusting him. He came.

Through. He did. And it’s an interesting testimony when you think about where we are today and and where we’ve come from, because I think that, you know, a lot of times we underestimate walking through the valleys and understanding that growth is where it really happens in the valleys the most. And in order for us to be able to have a relevant ministry that can touch hearts, that can relate to you, that can empathize where we can imagine what that might be like, because, oh, we had that situation or this situation. There’s been a lot we’ve only touched on very brief little bits and pieces, you know, because we we also lost another baby. And there’s been there’s been quite a bit. And my point is, is that that has prepared us and equipped us largely for where we are today. And not that we’ve done it perfectly, but we’ve learned.

And we so appreciate you being along the journey. We could not do it without you. In fact, we feel like this is the beginning of the courageous ministries and we’re super, super excited about what’s ahead. But to do what’s ahead, which is have an indelible impact together on 10 million families, takes a whole group of people. It takes lots of people praying, lots of people supporting with donations and buying courses and things. We’re still operating in faith every single week, every single month. And our promise is to always give our best to the ministry and what we’re doing with BC religious app and all the products and so forth. We want to provide value in the coffee coming that why coffee? Because we need to find new and creative ways to be able to expand the impact of the ministry, provide a solid financial ground into the future for the ministry and our family, and be able to pay for other things. There’s investments we need to make. We need to actually there’s a new computer that we need. We need there’s some lighting issues that we need. Just today, our podcast mixer broke, and so we’re using something else that it shouldn’t be used for recording. So, you know, there’s, there’s things, there’s set up in costs with the coffee thing and all of these things. So we just so appreciate you being part of it and there’s so many wonderful things in the future.

So you guys were with us when we hit the marker of 2 million downloads on the podcast, and that was a huge like milestone for sure. But we have now just adjusted our vision for impact. Isaac’s already shared it with you guys. It’s 10 million legacies. It used to be 1 million legacies, but we really feel like God’s calling us to something greater, something bigger worldwide. And we are excited to be running this journey with you guys. As you know, we have the postpartum course, we have the home schooling blueprint course, we have the courageous parenting mentor course we have redeeming childbirth. We have the shops, right. Coffee is coming soon and we have the app, which is a great place to be able to connect with.

Over 700 biblically minded Christians at what a powerful core of a community. It’s full social media capabilities to connect with people where you are and all over it is really, really. And we’re in there all the time, so we’re super excited to engage in there. We so appreciate you being part of it. And would you be praying for us too as we move forward? We can’t do it without you.

So thanks for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed listening to the raw, courageous parenting story. We’ll see you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom dot com 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

In an age where moral relativism seems to be growing, it’s important to follow through with a Biblical approach to parenting. One aspect of that is to correct your children when they are disobedient to you. Tune into this episode to hear why not doing so could contribute to them falling into the snares of worldly thinking when they are older.

Main Points in This Episode:

1. Beware of wayward parenting philosophies.
2. Take off the rose-tinted glasses.
3. Uncorrected kids tend to have greater challenges with entitlement attitudes, elitism, and kids walking away from the faith.
4. Love your kids to Jesus but still speak truth to them.

Scripture From This Episode:

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.”

Matthew 10:16 – “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”

1 Corinthians 14:20 – “Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.”

Romans 7:7 – “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”

Scroll down to see other resources

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support

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 21 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 a following. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. So glad you’re here.

Hey, guys.

Wow. Another lively discussion. We just love doing this. And today we’re talking about uncorrected kids grow, pray to moral relativism.

There is a bunch of problems there. There is and was always like problems. Problems. I mean, like so you guys, you know that we get messages. We love getting messages, comments, questions. They help us to know how to keep this podcast relevant. And we don’t want to waste your time. We want to be encouraging, exhorting, reminding you of what the word says, being the the cheerleaders that fan your flame. Because parenting is not easy. We get it. And recently we’ve had an uptake in people actually asking similar questions or coming to us sharing conflicts, issues that they’re having regarding all kinds of things. And it’s interesting because the narrative is so similar across the board. And so as we were talking about this, we were like, wow, first of all, there is some issues with a lot of parents just struggling with knowing how to raise kids in a in a day and age where there’s so many parenting philosophies that are about not correcting your children or never saying no and things like that. So going to talk about that today.

It’s super important because, you know, there is no new revelation when it comes to biblical truth.

Right.

And so you want to be careful when something sounds like somebody has a new angle on the word of God that nobody’s ever heard before. That would be like sirens going off. And so it’s really important just to be aware of that. And we need to rely on the Lord. Of course, you can learn from us and others, but you need to lean on the Lord. You need it. Most importantly, look to the Bible for what is true and what God is saying in Proverbs 3536 says Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways. Acknowledge him and he will make straight your path. So in those moments when you’re like, you know what’s true about this particular issue or What should I do in my parenting regarding this? What should I change?

Maybe, maybe you’re even like reading a book, right? That’s bringing up different parenting philosophies or different things like this verse pertains to that too, because if you lean into the Lord, He will make straight your path, right? But if we’re leaning into things that are not the Lord man’s words too much, our paths can become crooked.

And so when people start with the words I feel or I feel good about this or that or the other thing, just realize feelings are real. God gave us feelings. But when it talks about prescription on how to do something with something as important as parenting or marriage, or what the Bible says about those things or other things is really important to remember this verse. The first part again trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. And a lot of times when people are using, I feel regarding something I feel this way or that way sometimes that could be leaning on your own understanding. So just be aware of that where somebody else that’s trying to train your teach you, it might be them leaning on their own.

You know, where I’ve heard that the most is when people say I feel like Jesus would and then fill in the blank, right? X, Y, Z, or I don’t feel like God a God so loving would ever say that or would ever expect us to do that. And like, those are the situations where you really have to not lean on your own understanding, but literally lean on the Word of God, because that’s where the truth is. It’s going to help you to be able to discern those lies, really. And the truth is, is that we’re all tempted, aren’t we? Like, we’re all tempted well, by the enemy. We’re all we all are also tempted by our flesh, right? That self preserving instinct that’s been in us and in humanity since Genesis three, that self preserving instinct to hide, to blame, shift, to, to not take ownership. But then there’s also this temptation of the world and what’s popular, what’s acceptable, what is going to be a lot of people are people pleasers. And so what’s going to maybe not rock the boat so much? And really all of the things that I just described don’t matter. What matters is what God’s word has said. If we are a Bible believing Christians and we are wanting to live biblically, this is our guide. This is our tool right here, the word of God only. And so while books can be encouraging and I’m not throwing them out with the baby with the bathwater, right. The truth is, is that we have to filter them through the word of God and what we know, which means we need to spend more time reading the Bible so that we can discern when things are not actually truth or God’s in alignment with God’s word.

Amen. We’re going. Dive in more in a second. But I just want to thank you for being part of the 10 Million Legacies movement. And every time you share or give us a review on iTunes helps algorithms. By the way, five star reviews, super helpful. All the written reviews are amazing. We read every single one. We often share them on social media when you share on social and tag us so we know it. We appreciate that and it just really helps the movement further along. We put out so much free content all the time. Yeah. And every week for almost 200 weeks. Now next next week’s episode will be the 200th episode I believe we have a special one coming free on that. But it’s just it’s been a joy to do it. It’s not easy to come up with new content, but the spirit leads us and prompts us through some people that are listening to what to talk about, and we just thank you for that. We’re completely committed. It feels like in the whole timeline of the ministry, it actually probably is near the beginning. Still, in comparison to how long we plan to do this, this is what we’re supposed to do. This is incredibly important. And so ways we fund it are through the courses, the books, coffee subscription coming soon. Obviously, the app community, which over 700 people, which is amazing, there’s a very small monthly price and that pays for the expenses and then also helps the ministry and our family. So anyways, it’s really fun to do this journey and we appreciate it.

So let’s dive in. Let’s talk for a second. So some of the problems that people are commenting and messaging us about, yeah, that we’re going to just want to talk about a solution. We want to have some, some encouragement for you guys. But these are some of the problems that we see, right? Kids walking away from the faith that has definitely been on our radar from the beginning of this ministry. That was one of the reasons why we started courageous parenting, because it does not need to be that way, just doesn’t need to be that way. It’s kind of like when people in the world say, Oh, teenagers are so awful. Does it need to be that way? No, no, it does not need to be that way. We have not expressed, you know, or and you could even say the same thing about toddlers. Right. The terrible twos, different things. We’ve we’ve done podcasts on this in depth, right? Like the terrible things that are said out there today that as parents we need to stop saying, but kids are walking away from the faith. The next thing that we we we see is nominalism. Right? And so we this is a huge issue as you’re raising your kids. I bet you that you would say, I pray my kids are not nominal Christians.

Am I right? If you’re listening to courageous parenting, I bet that that’s a thought that has gone through your head. I pray my kids are not nominal, but they are sold out for Jesus and they want to live for him, right? That they’re not fake Christians. They’re not just or people who say they believe, but then live a totally different way. Right. That would be nominal Christianity, people who are not walking in the way that God’s commanded them to. So here’s another one. What about entitlement attitudes? This is a huge issue alone. Maybe we’ll do a podcast on that in the future. But but this how does that even happen? Right? How do kids become entitled? Largely. I mean, there are many symptoms. These are symptoms of many things that could have occurred to a child to make them potentially choose not to want to stay a Christian or become nominal in their thinking. Right. But then there are many things that could have potentially led to a child becoming entitled or even an elitist. Right. I would say that some doctrines even cultivate elitism, if you will, in children regarding Christianity, which is not.

The opposite of the purpose of life, which is to make God known. You can’t think you’re better than other people and live out the Great Commission.

No, no, you can’t. So this is this is an issue, right? We need to realize these are potential like pitfalls that my kids if I like, if I’m if I don’t follow through on the parenting that God has called me to biblically, these are some of the the ramifications or consequences that will be in my children’s hearts, potentially could be any of these. Right. And there are many more. Another one would be kids that have beliefs based upon their feelings. We were just talking about this, right? Like kids that grow up going, no, I experience God this way. And so what it says in the Bible is not really for me. I tend to think that God is like this, you know? Have you ever heard that from someone before? That that’s definitely a lie. That is a pitfall, right? So kids growing up basing their belief on their feelings or experiences with God, their truth versus the truth. This is a huge problem. This is where the moral relativism is. Right. And then here’s a big one. Like in the end, what do you experience that your kids don’t agree with you? Right, that kids don’t agree with their parents on anything and they won’t be influenced by them, actually. And so the all these. Problems that we see in the world, you see in the world that are getting perpetuated. I think really the enemy is preying on children today. I think you would agree with that.

And so our first point is wayward parenting philosophies. They often infiltrate the church. Yes. And very we hear this all the time. Very few churches actually are teaching biblical parenting. And you can come to your own conclusions on why that might be. But it is so important talk about equipping the next generation for being lovers of Jesus and proclaiming the good news to people and whatever God calls them to do for a vocation or in their life, that is crucially important. It’s almost like if we’re only focusing on now and the adults in church, then we’re missing the whole long term perspective.

You know, it’s interesting. I was thinking about this. I was thinking about the larger church, because I’ve worked in churches in the past and I’ve seen a lot and I’ve seen a lot of good attempts. Right. Absolutely. Where, like, they’ll have like a moms group or a mops group and they’ll have different speakers come and teach on different things. But then are the men there? No. And then is it getting communicated back to the heads of households? And is it a consistent like parenting as a team kind of thing happening? No, I don’t think that that’s realistic. The truth is, is that when you look at churches, I think a lot of pastors and elders even probably spend more of their time putting out fires in the church that are issues with the adults, whether it’s divorce, adultery, addiction, all kinds of things. Right.

Which is super.

Which is really, really important. But but they’re in the midst they’re literally firefighters. And then no one is actually rising up within these churches and teaching biblical parenting so that there aren’t future fires. Do you see what I’m saying? And so this is like a problem across the board. It’s almost like you have churches who won’t talk on two things politics and parenting. It’s crazy. Like churches will host marriage conferences, but they’re not actually equipping their parents with biblical parenting so that people are not running the race alone. It is hard to parent biblically. We need to be like running the race with like minded brothers and sisters in Christ linked arms going, I got your back, sister, you’re doing a good job. And guys like rubbing up against other guys and going, Hey, how did family devotions go this week? Or How’s that family meeting going? Or you know, are those conversations even happening? I highly doubt it. And so.

We sometimes the wayward philosophies come in.

Right?

And they’re coming in through influences with people and social sharing to each other. And everybody’s just on totally different pages. And we don’t necessarily have a solution for that. It’s just as a parent, as a father, as a mother, it’s important to be aware of that, that we need to be discerning because and discerning because we’re washed in biblical truth on a regular basis, and we’re listening to the Holy Spirit and.

Close to God. You know, I’ll share one little thing that maybe, maybe I have I’m sure I have room to grow in this because I don’t know if this is always like the best way. But for me, I’m I’m very I’m a skeptical person. Like, if someone says something about a specific parenting philosophy, I don’t just adopt it right away. I’m skeptical at first, and I kind of like judge it and I go, Hey, wait a second. Is this in alignment with God’s word, number one? Number two, what is the fruit of people that I see doing this? And do I want that fruit?

That one’s key, because sometimes people are pontificating philosophies when their kids are very, very little. And there’s there’s no proof that that has worked right. Or there isn’t fruit at all. And they’re saying this is the way to go or you can’t see it. They don’t ever show they’re not transparent enough, even online, to even show what the.

Reality of what’s going on in.

Their families. But they’re teaching certain things.

There is a Bible verse that we want to share with you guys in Matthew, chapter ten, verse 16. These are Jesus’s words. So not not mine, not my opinion. These are Jesus’s words. It says, Behold, I’m sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wise as serpent and innocent as doves. And then it continues. Beware of men, for they’ll deliver you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues and and continues on. But you guys, this is the reality of what we are literally living in. There are a bunch of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Sometimes there’s both.

And. And then there’s wolves. Yeah, there’s, like, wolves in sheep’s clothing. And then there’s wolves. Do you see how those two things are different? And I think that, like, if we’re on social media, I’m just going to use that as an example right now because that’s an easier one to like. See the night and day. Here’s an. Example, there’s like wolves. You see something that is the humanly sinful being pushed on children such as drag queen. Library times. Right. You got wolves? Those are wolves.

Yeah. Society’s changed to where wolves are comfortable now being out in the open.

Right. And it’s very obvious. So actually, this is like praise God in some ways, because we can go, Wolf, go the other way. Right? But then the sheep’s in or the wolves in sheep’s clothing are movements or Instagram handles that are doing ads that come in your feed where they look like they’re a like minded mom. Let’s say they have three or four kids, or maybe they have five kids and they they homeschool or they are, they say, in their their bio that they are they love being a mom. They’re they’re posting about motherhood and enjoying motherhood. That sounds like something that would be like minded. Right. But then if you look into them, you find out that they’re actually not Christian at all, but that they are actually they believe in a totally different. Bike, not even in the Bible. Right. And this is happening everywhere. And they’re like preaching parenting philosophies. And there are tons of Christians that are following them. And they’re not even Christian and they’re they have Christians following them for parenting advice. In my opinion, that would be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Right. And so, you know, it’s important that we take time to really be introspective and discern and realize that God’s calling us to be wise as serpents but innocent as doves. Was that mean? I think that it means that wisdom. How do we get wisdom? Proverbs tells us over and over again that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Mm hmm. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding. And so we. How do we fear the Lord the best? By seeking him understanding that he is all powerful and that he deserves our rightful reverence and our following. Actually, we shouldn’t be following them. We should be following God.

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. 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 Craig’s parenting dot com 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. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Stephen I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children.

But Angie and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal.

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

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

And one of the things that happens is now you have this really compelling argument for direction and then you have biblical truth or what I’ve already always believed the Bible said about something, and now you have confusion and confused minds don’t take action. So if you are in a state of confusion about your parenting, about your marriage, about biblical living, you get confused as fast as possible. And we 100% believe in the church is out there. And you should talk to your pastor or a leader at your church if you need to or look at the Bible says and or both. And and just really make sure you’re not confused. You’ve got to get out of confusion as fast as possible because your kids are here. And we need certainty in our approach to how we are going to approach things and parent and so forth. Because I think the epidemic and the reason for this episode is so many people messaging us, also seeing what’s happening out there in what people are teaching and so forth and going, Wow, there’s so many parents that are stopping teaching, stopping the training of their kids and correcting of their kids in the disciplining of their kids.

They’re even stopping saying, no, that’s what’s crazy is they’re like, Oh, that’ll that. It’s, it’s actually comical to me because you guys might not know this about our family and you can do a little, little, little insert here. Our family really loves Little House on the Prairie. And usually when I’m like, sick and pregnant or I’m postpartum or somebody’s sick, we’ll go through this season where our family will watch a lot of Little House on Prairie. Did you know that in one of the seasons later on where Laura’s older, there’s an episode where Alonzo’s brother drops off his two sons for Almanzo and Laura to babysit, and his wife does not believe in telling her children no. And these kids, like it is comical to watch this episode because even back then it’s like literally they’re literally making a mockery of parents that would not say no to their children back then. Like how? Let’s use common sense, a child does not know what’s best for them, what they would choose to eat. Ice cream every single meal. Right? Not their broccoli and chicken. So anyway, it’s just.

Bound up in the heart of children.

Yes.

So funny. So. Jesus says, Children come to me and rebukes the disciples for not bringing importance to them. Right? Both are true. They’re incredibly important. God’s children. And at the same time, they need leadership and they need to be guided and led. And part of that is sometimes we say no and sometimes we say no in different ways, and sometimes we need to help our kids learn lessons. I was just thinking about this. The principal when is driving home the other day, the principal of sowing and reaping. That is a biblical principle and spiritual, all seeing it in our own lives that we reap what we sow sowing. I’m familiar because recently we sowed a yard and we did it the old fashioned way where you throw out seed and that’s actually with your hands and it’s actually called sowing. And I will say that we’ve reaped on an average way good but average. It’s not this beautiful, luscious yard.

Not every seed.

Took, but there is a yard. And so we did bear fruit. But it’s great. But you know, I’m new at sowing. You might feel that way as a parent. I’m new.

At new discipling, new.

Things, but with our kids sowing and reaping, if they don’t learn, sowing and reaping in our home where they are somewhat sheltered, where they are protected, their structure and security and we’re providing for them and all these things God made parents, the people that would help their kids experience sowing and reaping, because when they’re out on their own, they’re going to experience that in a much deeper and bigger way. But they’ve got to experience the weather home so that they understand where boundaries are, where they understand what’s appropriate and what’s good and what’s not good.

And part of that experience when your kids are living in your home, I think, is that there’s an opportunity for a narrative, a conversation, an ongoing conversation that’s happening between parents and children to help them process and actually have a deeper understanding to grow, both in understanding and in intelligence, but also in like, can I just say street smarts? Like, we don’t want our kids to be tossed to and fro, like the waves of the sea when it comes to parenting philosophies or marriage philosophies or worldly philosophies of any kind. Right? When they launch from our from our homes. And part of the way that you get your kids to be so solid, I think, before they leave, is to have lots of conversations when they’re little, when they are willing to listen. But part of the problem with these wayward parenting philosophies is that they literally don’t point out the sin. So this is like a fundamental problem. I’m not talking about your home always being all about like the sin police. If you’ve got sin police going on, that is not a happy home to be a part of. Can I just say that I have to? That’s like a huge, rare, rare. We need to have a there’s a teeter totter, right? Of of of love and discipline that is happening. And you can’t be so focused constantly on sin and so nig. Sometimes I get like, I get so intense because I’ll be thinking and focused on like one project and I’m so driven to like, get this project done. And I have to remember that there’s little hearts in the process that I need to be tender with.

Oh, I’ve learned that too. When? Same kind of thing, when I’m trying to get something done and somebody is working with me, but they’re not doing it right. I have to slow down and get patience.

You have to. And so when I’m saying like you need to point out the sin, I’m also saying like there has to be a balance of like really pouring into the relationship as well. It can’t just all be this way. But what I am saying is that there’s literally a many different philosophies that are movements really for eradicating the word sin from the vocabulary and not even acknowledging that sin exists. And this is, simply put, not biblical, it’s not biblical. And if you raise your kids in an environment where you’re not ever talking about sin, they don’t know what sin is. They don’t understand that they are being tempted to sin. They don’t understand, like the temptation of the flesh, the temptation of the world, and the temptation from the devil. If they don’t understand those things, they’re not equipped. They’re going to fall for it hook, line and sinker. You can eradicate as much temptation as possible, but there’s still something called human flesh. There’s still an enemy and there’s still the world. Right. And so we have to understand that those things are actually against God. And we need to teach our kids that and and equip them. You guys, we can equip them like this should be an exciting podcast for you to be listening to right now because literally, like, imagine if a child grows up in a home and they never fully understand the gospel, but they’re raised in a Christian home and they don’t understand that they have a need for a savior, but they are raised thinking, Oh, I’m a Christian because my family goes to church. How many kids grow up in that kind of a scenario where they think, Oh, I’m a Christian because my family is a Christian and we go to church on Sundays. That is like I literally think about this and I. Go. This is the heart of how kids fall to Nominalism. We have to teach the gospel truth to our children, which is freedom. Actually, it is freedom. Why, as a parent, we would never want our kids to be in any kind of bondage, especially bondage to sin. Right.

So what happens with kids who never believe they make mistakes, they have hard times with friendships. It’s hard to be friend with somebody.

That thinks they’re never.

Right, never wrong, or don’t need to apologize because they didn’t really do anything they rationalize in their behavior. Well, there’s parents out there. We hear stories who are rationalizing for their kids.

Thank you. Yeah.

And you bring sometimes kids have squabbles or challenges with each other and parents talk about it. And then one parent goes, My kid’s perfect and you just need to get it together. That kind of attitude is validating the kid’s manipulation, sin, whatever it is, it’s going.

To create an entitlement attitude, a potential nominalism, arrogance, pride, so many things this could literally, as a parent, we have to recognize that we also, like Isaac was just talking about this, we will reap what we sow. And that is there is an element of that with our children regarding what attitudes we are cultivating in our kids, what our attitudes were cultivating by way of not parenting biblically, but parenting worldly, or even protecting our children from the truth, which is that they are struggling with sin, like, okay, have you ever offended somebody? And they’ve come to you and said, I’ve been offended by X, Y, Z, and you for some reason just don’t say I’m sorry and you start justifying. I think all humans have done that. Can I first just encourage you that if this is something you struggle with? I think all humans struggle with this at some point in their life, if not on a regular basis, and it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we have humility and we’re able to go, I’m really sorry that you took it that way, or I’m really sorry that I said that, or I’m really sorry that I hurt you or I’m I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have. Will you forgive me? But there is something that happens when you say those words. I am sorry. And you say them genuinely. And that literally it frees you up like you can walk and go, Oh, I feel better, right? And that is because we’re not allowing sin to take hold in our hearts by way of arrogance or pride. And we can’t allow that to happen to our children. We have to raise our kids up with humility. And part of that is that they would see when they do sin, that’s what actually helps them like the fact that they understand, oh, I sinned here. Oh, I send their oh, yeah, I really need Jesus. Like that leaves them in a place where they go, I’m.

Sorry, that’s fertile soil when you’re teaching them this for the gospel. And in first Corinthians 1420 says, Brothers do not be children in your thinking. B infants in evil. But in your thinking, be mature, super important.

It’s interesting because in this specific passage of scripture, Jesus. Well, this is first Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 20, in case you missed that, he’s saying We need to recognize and evaluate where we are first. We can’t be mature or be infants in our thinking if we don’t evaluate first and take an audit of where we actually are. So in this moment right now, I’m going to ask you a hard question. Are you an infant in evil? Or is your thinking mature now? Evaluate your child and in and as you are parenting them have proper expectations for where they are and recognize like this is something that as parents we need to take responsibility for in protecting our children’s minds so that they do stay infants in evil and teach them how to guard their minds and their hearts so that when they’re older they are protecting themselves so that they can remain infants in evil but mature in their thinking. This is a concept that I think a lot of people need, like hands on, guidance on and a lot of ways. But really it’s very simple. It’s listen to the Spirit, pray and ask God, how do I protect my kids? What would be appropriate in this situation? Have your eyes wide open. We’ve been talking about parenting and reality versus having rose tinted glasses on, recognizing the truth about who your child is like. It should not hurt us to go. You know what? Yeah, I could see that. My kid might say that because my son is a sinner. Right. Like, how freeing is that from one friend to another in a situation like Isaac described for you to go, I’m so sorry that my child hurt your child’s feelings or said that or Thank you for telling me.

I recognize my child isn’t perfect and this is something that we need to work on. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I guarantee you I’ll be having talks with them about this and we’ll keep our eyes open for it in the future because this is definitely not something we want to continue on in their character. Like that is humility. As a parent, that parent is going to be reaping so much better fruit than than a parent that just has rose tinted glasses on, makes excuses for their kid and allows them because they don’t want to deal with conflict. Yeah, right. And so we need to recognize when we have rose tinted glasses on, take them off. When you look at our child the way God does, which is both a blessing, but also someone who is human in a fallen world has been has folly bound up in the heart of a child. Right. We have realistic expectations and we go, are they saved? Should I be expecting the same things out of them as a mature Christian? Probably not. Have I disciple them? Do they even know what the Bible says? Like we should actually have these questions going on in our head about each of our children, because our children are in different places with spiritual maturity and we need to have realistic expectations. We cannot do that. We cannot parent in reality unless we take rose tinted glasses off.

Completely in 623 for the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ. Jesus, our Lord, we know this, but this is so, so important just to think about as we’re talking about this. We want to grow our kids up in Christ. Right? And so they need to be aware of these things.

So so pointing them to Jesus as the person who helps them and washes away their sin and saves them from that bad habit, literally can break them free from bondage is from I’m just going to say it curses that people speaking over their life there is evil in this world lies that they’ve been believing from the enemy or from other people that are in their head, that they haven’t taken their thoughts captive into the obedience of Christ and what His Word says about who they are like. There are so many aspects that can lead to the problems that we were talking about at the beginning of this. But it starts with parents rising up and recognizing that God has called them to correct their kids and not ignore the problems to speak truth in love, like in a way where their kids know that their parents love them unconditionally and truthfully. Like, can any one love your child more than you do know? Like when you have a baby, you love that baby more than anybody in the world. How much more does God love all of us? His children. Right. And kids innately should kind of they should sense that from their parents, but they should also be told that by their parents over and over again. Do you know I just love you? Why do you love me? Because you’re my son. Because you’re my daughter. We need to remind them that we love them just because we love them. But then we also speak truth and we get to speak truth because we love them. It’s a really beautiful.

Thing right here actually in Romans seven, seven. Very interesting. It says, what then, shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means yet. If it had not been for the law, I would not have known SEN for I would not have known that as it is to cover it. If the law did not say it had not said you shall not covet. So and it goes on to talk about I think Romans is a really good book in the Bible.

On the discipling your kids for sure, or even taking them through the Romans Road as really powerful for kids. But, you know, the last point that we just want to briefly talk to you guys about is the importance of not underestimating the power of influences, which we’ve done podcast on this in the past. We’ve also done encouraging podcasts that are similar that I think there’s one that’s called Don’t Run the Parenting Race Alone. I highly recommend you go look that podcast up because we’re not going to dive super deep into this, but we definitely think that this is a necessary part of this conversation because you need to be evaluating the you do you just you have to evaluate the people who have influence on your kids, period. I’m just going to say it. There’s no easy way to say it. You have to use wisdom. You have to use judgment and discernment as to how much influence you allow different types of people to have in your kids lives. Because some people unknowingly can actually lead your kids astray in their thinking as they build a loving relationship with them. That’s just the truth, right? And so you need to have relationships with people who you can run the race with. And if you’re in a situation where maybe there’s been an offense of some kind from one kid to another, and you’ve tried reaching out to that parent and that parent has not been responsive in the way that is like a biblical approach to parenting and to even you coming to them and confronting them with this issue.

You guys, that is a yellow flag, maybe even a red flag, depending on what the issue was that you confronted them on. And I would definitely like press in to that relationship first and in a biblical way and be like, Hey, the kind of relationship that I want is one where I can come to you when there is an issue and you’re not going to defend your child. And I want to do that, too. So I want to give you permission to speak into my life and vice versa. If we can’t have that, then our relationship is just going to have to be different. Like, I’m not kidding. You may have to have that kind of a conversation. I’ve had to have those conversations. I’ve had those good conversations and I’ve had those hard conversations before. But I’ll tell you this 23 years, 22 and 20, almost 23 years into parenting or 22 years, I don’t have regrets in doing that.

Do you ever sacrifice your kids well being spiritual, well being.

For relationship.

Relationships? You should never have to.

Right.

That’s the point. Which is as long as your approach is good and loving.

And biblical.

And biblical, yeah, there should be a response. Otherwise that relationship might not be a fruitful one anyways.

And there may just end up being more and more offenses and this could perpetuate into a bigger problem down the.

Road. And so it’s really important to be aware of who’s influencing you, who’s influencing your marriage, who’s influencing your spouse. So important to think about that because we get influenced anybody that thinks they’re so strong that they won’t be influenced by the people that spend time with, is it? I’m not going to I’m not going to say they’re fools, but I’m going to say it’s foolish. It is a foolish thought.

It’s a boastful thought, a prideful thought and pride comes before the fall, right?

So get influenced. In fact, you’ll even notice this. People that spend a lot of time together, they start talking similarly. It’s true. They start owning similar things. It’s we whether we can, we are going to fess up to it or not. We are influenced by the people we spend time with, and even more so your children. Even more so because they’re so impressionable. They’re young and so you.

Want if you put your stamp of approval on someone for your children, I mean, that’s really what we’re all doing, right? Like, if you think about your communities and you think about the people that you allow to talk to your kids and have deep conversations with your kids or or be in role model for your kids, you’re giving them a stamp of approval. And so, yeah, you do need to judge that. Should you be putting the stamp of approval on the youth pastor? Should you be putting the stamp of approval on the teacher, on the coach, on the friend next door, on the on the grandpa, on the on the uncle. Like, guys literally think of any particular relationship. They all need to be audited. And from the perspective of, like, fruit of loving your children. Well. So I can honestly say that, like at the end of the day. People who don’t correct their kids and then you’re correcting your kids. That is a that you’re going to have problems in the future. And there’s no easy way to say that.

Parents who are passive in their relationships and not talking about the hard things and not taking appropriate action, you’re going to have kids that raise up and are can easily get snared by moral relativism. Whatever I feel to be true is true. What I think is true is true. I think God would be this way. It doesn’t matter what the Bible says.

Or I remember it this way. Even though that’s not the true narrative of what.

Happened, they literally need to see strong, confident parents that are assertively making decisions based on biblical truth and making the tough choices. Sometimes it’s.

Called leadership.

It’s called leadership. And in this world there is a lack of good leadership. And so you have to be that good example for them. We cannot rely on really any other leaders to be that example. Now, hopefully the pastor of your church is that example and there are other people. But just to make sure you’ve got to be that leader.

That’s right. So you guys like as we’re wrapping this podcast up, this is a heavy conversation, like super heavy Isaac Right. And and we get it, guys. We are still parenting, so we are this is like a constant thing that we have been doing for a very long time and we still do this.

We’re in the trenches with you.

We are totally.

One year old and we have all the ages.

Right? And so then there’s like the OC. So how to older siblings influence younger siblings like you? You have to set your mind to try to honor the Lord in all of your relationships. But you do need to have your priorities straight, right? Like God calls us to love our neighbor as ourself. That doesn’t mean that we do that at the sacrifice of our family. That’s living in our house like our husband is. Aunt is a wife’s neighbor. Our kids are our first neighbors. Right. And this concept of loving other people, I think sometimes gets I think that people are more willing to give their best to other people and then their families get the rest based upon their contributions or their focus or where their energies go. I know that there have been times where I’ve had people in my life where I just love them so much and I am enjoying fellowship with them. And then if they go through something hard, then I’m like, I’m totally there for you and 100%. But then my family will suffer in in the long run if I keep going at that pace. So we have to keep our priorities straight and recognize that our first neighbors that are on our priority are our immediate family, our jurisdictions that God has given us. Because the truth is, is that friends will come and go. Actually, that just does happen in life sometimes. And we want to love people while while they’re in our life, but never at the expense of the the biblical faith fruit that we’re trying to cultivate in our kids.

Amen. Hey, 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 dot com 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

The thought of trying to do all the research required to make an educated, intentional decision on which companies to purchase from when you have a conviction to stand firm and not support companies with opposing values and company ethics IS DAUNTING! Seriously, I don’t have the time to do all that research, nor do I want to. But, at the same time, I feel it’s important to make wise choices and to steward the money and resources God has provided in a way that is helpful to furthering the Kingdom of God and not supporting companies that further an ANTI-GOD or ANTI-BIBLE agenda. 

I bet you are feeling and thinking the same thing I am. You don’t want this to be all-consuming and you probably want to somehow pass on this conviction to your kids too, or at the least, you will have to explain to your teens why you aren’t stopping by Starbucks on the way home from soccer… Right? 

Well, I have some encouragement for you. This week someone introduced me to an organization that has already done all the research on over 1800 companies and rated them all based upon Judeo-Christian values! Not only that but they have been working on publishing about 100 Non-profits soon as well. The goal is to help provide a filter for like-minded conservatives and Christians… to help us make the best choices on where to spend our money or not. 

Take a listen or watch today’s episode with Angie Tolpin and Rebecca Hatfield, the President of 2ndVote.com as they discuss many relevant topics related to standing firm in a woke world. 

Main Points in This Episode:

1. What is 2ndVote.com – its history
2. Stewardship
3. The Research and Values that influence the rating system
4. 2ndVote.com has evaluated 1800 companies
5. Real impact happens in contacting the right people in companies so 2ndVote provides the correct contact information for you to express your opinion and why you are not purchasing from them.
6. New tools about to launch such as a WEB-Plug for browsers that evaluate companies & an APP
7. Encouragement for those who are overwhelmed
8. The importance of standing firm

Scroll down to see other resources

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support

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 21 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 following.

Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Courageous Parenting podcast. We are so excited today. We have a special guest with us, Rebecca Hatfield. She is the president of Second Dotcom. If you have been following me at all on Instagram, then you know that I’ve been sharing about second vote in my stories because it is a great resource and we’re going to talk a little bit about that pretty soon. But I just wanted to welcome you guys. And before we dive in here, I just want to say thank you to all of you who have been leaving reviews on iTunes and leaving comments. Sharing all of that makes such a huge difference as we are pursuing to impact 10 million legacies for the glory of God and encourage parents in their parenting. And so, yes, we have a very interesting guest with us on today. We’re not talking a lot about parenting too much, but this is very in my mind, in my perspective, I think that this is very relevant to a lot of moms and dads out there because obviously we are spending money providing for our families. And a lot of things have become aware to us in the last few weeks especially, but in the last few years. And we want to raise our kids aware of how they’re spending their money, too, because that’s a biblical principle. So welcome, Rebecca. We’re so happy to have you here. Would you mind sharing with our audience a little bit about yourself?

I would love to. Thank you so much for having me on, Angie. So I’m a mom of seven. I am also a preacher’s daughter. I grew up in a family with five children and we traveled a lot. I spent most of my life traveling, moving. It’s been a little bit of time living in the British Virgin Islands, which was really nice. I just I really love serving, ministering and just meeting people. I’ve always enjoyed that. When I became a mom, that was what I really always wanted to grow up to be. I have spent time in retail management, I’ve done accounting, I’ve done several different jobs before I became a mom. But then when I got married and had children, I quit and stayed home with my children because I knew that’s what I wanted to do, homeschool my children, and I just could not. It started out with just I couldn’t put my first child on that school bus. I couldn’t do it. But then it just became a way of life. So for us, it was it was just life and it became a wonderful learning experience along the way. So, yes, it’s been it’s been a delight to be learning and growing with with six girls and one boy. So and everyone feels so sorry for my one son, but I know he really he has it good. He has two older sisters to keep him humble and then four other ones that just adore him. So he really doesn’t have it that bad.

That’s fun. That’s like almost the opposite of us. We have seven sons and two daughters, so almost. Yeah, that’s right. So we’re close there and it’s such a fun dynamic when you have so many of one gender, isn’t it? It’s like it is. Wow. It’s so different from other families that you meet. They have the opposite gender anyway, up close and personal. My daughter in law comes from a family of 11 and she has seven sisters. So there were eight girls and three boys in that family. So I get I kind of have like a glimpse. It must be exciting in your home. Well, I am really thankful to have you on the podcast. Let’s maybe you could share a little bit about second vote and what the mission is or the purpose, if you will. This is a resource for those of you who are listening that I’ve been recommending because you rate companies on conservative values, right?

Yes, I do. Judeo-christian values, absolutely.

That’s awesome. So how many companies would you say you guys have evaluated so far?

Okay. Right now, we have estimated about 1800 companies that are publicly traded companies. And we have those published. We have another 1000 that are already scored, but they’re not companies that would be consumer used companies. So we have a total of 2800 there and then we have another 1000 nonprofits. But the nonprofits are not published right now. We are working on getting those published eventually as well. So and out of our demographics right now, only 17% of that population actually score very well in being conservative. So we have a scoring system. Five would be very conservative, one would be liberal, and out of that population, only 17 score over a three. So if you think of three being neutral, which is we celebrate three, two, does that means they’re just doing their business right?

Just minding their agendas?

Yeah, right. They don’t they’re not political. They’re just doing mining business like we used to say about, well, Chick-Fil-A just minding their nuggets. So we want them to do just mining nuggets. Don’t go. They’ll go, whoa, just mind your nuggets, Chick fil A. And so that’s three. Only 17% score of that of that population score over a three. So that’s a very small portion.

Yeah. Believable. So now before we dive into all because I have I have a lot of questions in my head now thinking about that, it could be very exciting to talk about. You know, a lot of moms are feeling probably more so than men, although I think all people are probably a little overwhelmed because in the last few weeks, since the overturn of Roe versus Wade, there has been this massive exposure of barring. Oh, yeah, it’s just everywhere bombarding of like, oh, that companies woke that companies woke up and and not just that. I mean, before that we saw the drag queen parties and there’s just been a push of one agenda after another on our children, but also through companies. When you go into a store, for example, without naming too many names, there are companies where you walk in and you’re literally surrounded by pride, stuff everywhere, for example, right? So it’s and then you think to yourself, okay, how do they fund to put all these things here? Well, it’s the money that comes from us purchasing, right?

It does.

And then there are other some of these companies, while a lot of them probably were just now becoming aware of how many of them are actually investing in things like Planned Parenthood, for example, like I even just I’m not afraid to say the name Starbucks, obviously, like that’s known to everyone there, the coffee shop that has been since I think it was 2017. They’ve been funding Planned Parenthood, matching their employees and encouraging their employees to give to Planned Parenthood. Right. And so there’s just one thing after another to where you almost feel like I mean, some Christians like for me, I have a personal conviction about going to Starbucks just because it feels icky knowing that that’s where some of my funds are going to be going. I just exactly. That’s a personal thing. And I get that not everybody has the same conviction. And I by any means don’t want to push any of my personal convictions about those things on other people. But I do think that this is a very helpful conversation for people, and I hope that when they walk away, they feel like there’s some hope that there’s another company that can help them navigate this if they have been convicted about their.

Right, if they choose to do an alternative, we can help educate them and empower them with knowledge to make that alternative. We don’t we don’t advocate boycotts. What we want to do is empower consumers with the knowledge to make a choice of where they want to shop, where do they want to choose to put their money? If they want to stay with where they’re shopping, then that’s their choice. No judgment. That’s between them and God.

You just said a very powerful word is choose and choice, right?

Choice.

And that’s one of the things that I think a lot of people don’t realize. Like when you get into a habit because human as humans were creatures of habit. And so a lot of times we can start it’s kind of like if you have the same dentist for a really long time and realize that you actually have a choice and you could choose to go to a different dentist. But because of this habit and the relationship that you have built with the dentist, you don’t change. Right.

And that in bank accounts. Well, bank accounts are.

Horrible to change for sure. Or like. Yes, yes, for sure. And so I think that sometimes as consumers, there’s even an emotional with some stores, there have been studies where there’s like an emotional connection for women. I specifically just read an article about women in Target and this emotional connection about the shopping experience and that it’s this brings this joy to them. That idea of not doing that or going there is like a breakup. Yeah. I mean, it’s like there’s this emotional, like cutting off of a relationship that they don’t want to do.

Because they feel deprived of something.

Right. Right. And so this topic, though, it could be that way for a lot of things, right? Like even cars we buy or different things. And so, you know, for those of you who are listening, Rebecca and I both talked about this briefly before. We want you to know that it is to one man’s conscience what you do as we’re diving in here. And you you don’t have judgment from either of us on this, like she was just saying. But we do want to encourage you that you do have a choice. And so if you know of alternatives where you could be supporting a conservative valued or a like minded, valued company or one that is actually against and even in some cases, hateful towards your values, why wouldn’t you choose that?

Right. And that’s the thing. It’s not just that you’re giving. Money to an organization that is supporting things that you don’t agree with. Is that you’re also choosing not to support local or not support a conservative company. And that’s I mean, that’s and that’s all of us collectively, not just use somebody, the listener or, you know, it’s collectively it’s our choices that matter. And so choosing local, we always say shop local, love local, give local. When you go to give like birthday gift cards or anniversary gift cards or Christmas gift cards, where do you usually give your gift cards? It’s usually a big retailer because that’s what we’ll go. Oh, thank you. If you give.

Aware they might living nearby. Right. And you think oh they have a macy’s there or they have a Starbucks there, or they.

Yeah, right. So but it’s the local entities when you have a fundraiser that you’re going to go and ask, can you help support this? Can you you know, the local ones are going to be the ones that help you out when you when you’re needing help. But, you know, but when you’re wanting to get a gift card, are you going to go back to that local entity and get a gift card? Know. Not always. So we really want to support local.

Yeah. So why don’t you tell me about the mission behind empowering consumers?

I mean, that that that really says it all. We want to advocate for consumers by giving them the information that they need to make wise choices, to make informed, wise choices. And that’s really what it’s about. We do the research, we do the the work, scouring the Internet, scouring the the 10-K, SEC 10-K and the Iris nine nineties. And we look at the websites of these companies we look at there, if we have access to any of their corporate initiatives or policies and we comb these and we score these, every initiative that they have or every action has a score. So it is it is a geometric weighted score. So for instance, we have six issues that we score on that would be life, basic freedoms, civil, safe society, environment, Second Amendment, there we go, Second Amendment. So those are the issues that we score on. And life is going to be the heaviest weighted score. So for instance, if they did wonderful things in all the other. Issues, but they gave to Planned Parenthood a large sum of money to Planned Parenthood. None of those other wonderful things that they did would redeem that donation to Planned Parenthood. They would still have a composite score position.

I got.

I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night. 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 parenting dot com 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. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Steve and I realized.

That we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children.

But Angie and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal. This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications. This class has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids, basically, 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 your self 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 I think that a lot of us have realized that companies for the first time were doing things that we never thought we would see, like bailing out pro-choice protesters out of jail, for example. Those things also go under the life category, if you will. That’s a thing. Or paying for their travel to go get an abortion, because that’s not Planned Parenthood.

But that’s any action that promotes abortion would be counted as a pro choice action. Absolutely. And it has to be like we can’t we’ve had some people say, well, look at what Home Depot is doing. Why are you scoring them this way? We have to have things that are actually documented and verifiable. We can’t have just hearsay. Well, we saw them do this in their store. We saw a display or we saw a rainbow somewhere. It has to be something that is actually published by the company.

Okay. So so you guys do these ratings on many different companies. You are just talking about 1800 of them are published, right?

Yes.

Yes, 1800 many more that are coming. Even nonprofits, which is exciting. And when you’re doing these evaluations, you guys, it’s not you actually. Right. Rebecca, you have a team. Why don’t you tell the company a little bit?

Right. So we have a team of 12 researchers and technology specialists that are doing all this research. They’re also building a wonderful app that is about to be launched. I’m so excited about it. And also a phenomenal web plug in. So basically when you when you download this plug in, when you’re you’re searching the web, if there’s a company that’s been scored, it’s going to pop up what that company score is for you.

So wait, wait, wait. You’re saying that if I was to plug in this this on my computer and let’s say I. Was going to go to Capcom. The rating would pop up. Yes. And then that would be like a little like a yellow flag or a red flag, depending on the rating, right?

Exactly. It would give you the score.

Okay. So for for people who they don’t want to constantly be having to go to a website before they go shopping, this is going to be a very easy tool to have on their server. Wow. That’s a pretty cool resource right there. It is. And so why don’t you tell me a little bit more about the. How long? I see the ten years behind you. Yes.

This is our this is our ten years we’ve been in business. And we’re not new to this ten years. It’s celebrating it this year.

Well, that’s.

Awesome. Excited about it.

It’s interesting. When you told me that you guys had been around for ten years, my initial reaction was, wait a minute. So for ten years, I could have been choosing to purchase in different places than I probably was. I think that I’ll just be honest, like this concept of voting with your dollar, which I had never heard anywhere until my husband actually said it in a podcast. And now it’s like like lots of people are talking about this, which I think if we were to pick like a biblical terminology, we would talk about stewardship and using our money for the glory of God, recognizing it’s his, and we have a responsibility to steward what He’s given us. Well, as best we can. As best as we can. Here’s where the grace enters in. Sometimes you can’t always know. And we don’t have the time, as you know, to be constantly researching, which is why using a tool like yours is very helpful. But we do the best we can and we give the rest to God. It’s kind of like the terminology. I say that all the time in parenting. I do the best I can and then it gives my kids to God.

Like, exactly. Thankful for His grace. Yeah. And I always say, like, if your child has a fever at 3 a.m. and there’s a Walgreen’s 24 hours down the road, and that’s the only thing you can get. And you need that for your child’s fever. Go get it. You know. That’s right.

Or if you’re like you have a car that comes from a company that you no longer would be happy to be supporting. But replacing a car is a very expensive feat and maybe not. Yeah. I mean, it’s like, okay, so you already gave them your money. You just give that to God, right? But you make better decisions in the future or more. When I say better, it’s not like you were making a bad decision. It was just less informed than you can in the faith. And you thank God that you are aware of things now. Right. I think that there is a an encouraging perspective in all of this that I, I think that there is a we can count ourselves blessed that so much has been exposed. I think the first, John, that says that we are to bring sin into the light and that light that then there’s power in the darkness. Right. And and I think also where God just tells us, have no part in darkness. And so our hearts is what God cares about. And we do our best to have no part in darkness. Right. And support the companies that are trying to do good in the world. Right. And obviously, Judeo-Christian values, our idea of what’s good is very different from the the more liberal counterpart of how people would argue. Right. They’re just very different. And so having a strong like being confident in what you believe and letting your faith really infiltrate your politics. Because as you and I were talking about Jesus got political.

He did. You did.

I love you.

Didn’t say I’m sorry for it. He didn’t apologize for back down. No. Right. Well, you know, we were talking about the Roe versus Wade decision and on reversal, I think that is exposing and shining some light into darkness, because we are seeing companies, we are seeing some Christian organizations that we thought would be pro-life turn pro-choice and take a pro-choice stance. And it’s disheartening, but it is shedding it is shedding light into the darkness for sure.

For sure. So, you know, it’s interesting. How would you I’m going to ask you, kind of I don’t know if it’s a hard question. Maybe it’s an easy question. But as a mom of many, you have seven. I have nine. And we’re homeschooling our kids. Right. And we want to pass on a better legacy. Right. I think that every parent would say that regardless of where they come from. And so one of the things that we’ve been talking to our kids about so much, especially in the last few weeks, is being aware how we’re spending our money. Right. And recognizing that that does actually make a difference. Now, you just mentioned that boycotting doesn’t actually make impact. Could you explain the difference between boycotting and then share with all of the listeners about the feature that you have to email people? Because I think that that’s. A powerful that that voice.

Right. So, yes, we don’t we do not advocate boycotts. What cuts have not proven to be effective in the past. So. And it is a negative it’s a negative action. For one thing, companies still provide jobs and they still our economy depends on companies. So boycotting is counterproductive. It just really is. Now, if you personally say I just can’t shop at this place, then that’s that’s your personal choice and we support you. That’s fine. That’s that’s why we leave the decision between the consumer and God. That’s up to you. We’re not going to tell you where you should and shouldn’t shop. We’re going to give you the information and let you make the decision. Now, what we what we a lot of times tell people when they say, well, there’s just not a better option than like, for instance, Amazon, there’s a lot of times not another option besides Amazon. And so this is what we recommend when there’s when there doesn’t seem to be a better conservative alternative go to the companies that you are feel that have the monopoly and you feel like you’re forced to use. Email them through our website and tell them I don’t like these initiatives that you’re that you’re supporting. I want you to change them. I would like to continue to use you, but you continue to support things that I don’t agree with. So if we come together, our voices of many is much more powerful than than one or two. You know, individually we can’t do as much as we can collectively.

And second vote actually provides the proper email. So a lot of times people don’t know where to start as far as being activated, if you will, and voicing their opinion simply because they’re like, well, I don’t know if anybody importance even going to see this, so I’m not going to take my time to do it. I know I thought that and so to have a place like second vote dot com where you can literally click on it and it’s going to give you the correct email and then you could share your opinion. That’s very empowering for people. And so I think that there that aspect alone takes it to a new level where people who are really convicted can go a step farther. Right. So you can with your vote, with your dollars for sure. But at the same time, you can also voice your opinion to those people. And hopefully, I mean, if they get thousands and thousands of emails that could make that could make a huge difference.

And that’s how we’re going to tip the scale between like right now that 17% of that population that we have scored, that’s how we’re going to move it towards a larger percentage is by telling these companies, because in a capitalism system, it’s the consumers that are the guardrails. And until we say enough is enough, I don’t like this, stop this, they’re going to continue to do whatever they want. We have to speak up and say, stop, you know, we don’t like this. We don’t want this anymore. Right. It is up to us.

It is. And so what would you tell the mom that is looking for alternatives? That is just feeling like, okay, so that’s great. So I’m going to go to the website. I’m going to put in the different I’m going to put an Amazon, I’m going to put in Apple, I’m going to put in all these different things and I’m going to get these ratings. And then I’m just going to feel really sad because it.

Is it is discouraging. But this is and this is the reality of where we’re at. Our recommendations are we’re trying to get informed to to educate yourself because until you know, then you don’t know. And it’s not empowering if you don’t know. Knowledge is power. So get informed. Pray about our our world. Of course, you know, pray the Lord will have mercy on our country, but also register to vote and but actually go vote and all the elections, you know, and then also volunteer get involved whether it’s with our organization second vote needs volunteers but anything in your community that could make a difference get active because making changes starts little by little. You know, it’s not going to be a just a big election. It’s going to make a change. It’s going to be the everyday choices that we make. Your first vote is with your at the ballot box, but your second vote is with your wallet. And those are little, tiny, little changes that we can make. And it is going to be the daily changes that we make.

Interesting. Yeah, no, it’s so true. I was even thinking about it and how we all saw how local legislature dictated how local citizens were seeing their lives regardless of what was being done at the federal level. There was. Exactly. And that’s why I like state to state. It’s so different. We’re seeing that even with the Roe versus Wade. Right. We’re seeing which states are going to support abortion and which ones are anti abortion. Exactly right. And and there’s there’s a huge impact there. But I do think that there is a lot of divisiveness that I am seeing that is happening. And even though I have shared quite a few different things, as I’ve just become aware of things, I’m like, Hey, moms, do you realize this? Like, so I’m in the birthing. I have been a Dula for many years on post partum childbirth educator and what is happening and has been happening. I immediately had a sensitive spirit to where the the leftist agenda was pushing some misinformation, talking about dances and and how miscarriages aren’t going to be treated. And you’re going to die here.

I just did a script for Charlie Kirk’s show on that. How the doctors, the liberal doctors are in is probably the same ones that were pro mandates are using that. And it is lies it is absolute lies. They are using science and they’re politicizing medicine and they’re not going with science 100%.

And they’re using emotional manipulation to make women fearful of getting pregnant in hopes that that will sway them on their political stance regarding abortion. It’s sickening to me.

They want to they want us to say, oh, well, there is actually a need for abortion.

No, no, there is not. And it’s not an abortion when a baby has died. And it’s it’s very different and it’s tough on moms. I’ve lost two babies. And one of them I had to have surgery. I almost died.

All six. I know that pain.

Yeah. And so there’s just this, like, immediate, like, I cannot believe this person is lying through their teeth like this and it’s going viral. And how many women are going to be deceived because of it and potentially die because they’re pro-life and they won’t want that surgery because they don’t want to have an abortion and then they do die because it is not because the surgery is not available, not because treatment’s not available. So just even with that happening recently, the lies that are out there, it is refreshing to know that there is going to be a legitimate place that has like minded values that maybe not in everything line up, but on a lot to where you can go and vet things. And I think that this is going to be I think this is going to be huge. I have to share something with you because this was crazy. I shared about second vote and did a link to you guys in my stories and I had this highlight right where I did like the no sign, no buy because I was trying to come up with something like five letters for the highlight. Right because you can’t a big thing and they Instagram that censored it there’s a little like red exclamation point on all of my stories that links to you guys specifically when you look at your with it the first slide got nine people. The second slide had one. The third slide had three out of almost 29,000. And I was like, You have got to be kidding me. They do not want you guys to be flourishing and you you’re up against an enemy.

And we are, David, and and we are up against Goliath. We are absolutely shut down by Metta.

It is so sad. I know that I personally experienced it. We’ve experienced it with courage, parenting a little bit as well. When you speak truth and that truth reveals what is going on behind me. They got each other’s backs and it’s not good. And what’s sad is that there isn’t a lot of get in each other’s backs within the Christian or conservative world. There needs to be more of that.

Yes, that is one thing that I have wanted to champion is Christians. Let’s come together and work together. Instead of stepping over each other or stepping on each other, let’s move together and go forward instead of horizontal. Let’s let’s make something happen here, you know, and it’s frustrating.

It is frustrating. It’s interesting you knew this, but when Isaac and I have this parenting mentor program that we do like six weeks and we’ve had a few thousand parents that have gone through the parenting mentor program that our weekly podcast. But in the program we were actually kind of stuck in Facebook for a while because we did our lives in a private group. So when people would sign up, they had their curriculum, their 10 hours of curriculum. But then the 390 minute lives took place in the Facebook group. We had tons of people coming to us saying, I don’t want to be on Facebook anymore. It’s going meta. Like, I don’t I don’t want to do this right. So we looked at what it meant. It means death in Hebrew. You probably already know this.

Yes.

And we were like, so, yeah, we don’t want to be on here, but we’re in the world. Not of it until I guess. But we don’t want to force anybody in having to be here if it’s against their conviction. So we invested in trying. We created an app ourselves primarily for the group, so that our group wouldn’t have to be in there. But it’s become this really sweet community that’s kind of like social media in some ways. And it’s we have our kids podcast, all our podcast are in there, all the things, and it’s become like the place where if we get deleted, people can find us there. And so it’s. But this is what needs to happen, actually, is that Christians start building companies or alternatives for others because there aren’t a ton actually. Right. Like like the coffee thing I brought up a couple of times, we’re actually going to be selling coffee in like three weeks. It’s called courageous coffee. And so we’re trying to do our part, but also like find ways that we can fund the ministry that don’t depend on being on social media, that don’t depend on. Do you know what I’m saying?

Yeah, well, I got to share. Okay. So I’ll give you a little snippet of what we’re trying to do. We are working on helping small businesses with a small business alliance that will that are companies that are score three and up. We’re going to go to them and try to get discounts for the small businesses that join. But also we want to help develop products to get them to get small businesses off of Google, Microsoft and Amazon. So we’re working on developing alternatives to those products so those companies, so they don’t have to use those. And also working on providing like a packet of startup packet. So when you when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re starting up a small business, you already know where to go. When you need a website, when you need payment processing, what are the conservative options?

That’s awesome because so many people have been coming to us in the last two years and stuff happened going right. I don’t know if I to work for this company anymore. And we’ve been like campaigning. You need to have a plan B. For your if you work for someone, the smart thing to do and providing for your family is to have a plan B and to be working for yourself, to have something on the.

Side.

Of income. Because this world is nuts. It is. It’s nuts. And a lot of people are like, I don’t even know where to start. So to have something like that would be hugely helpful for a lot of people. That’s very.

Cool. That’s what we’re working on in the future.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, Rebecca.

I hope I enjoyed it.

Oh, this was it’s been a blessing to me to actually find something that has been around a while and has is a resource that is easy for people to use because a lot of us I know we’re just going, well, how are we going to find this out now? Time to research.

Right now it is.

You know, we don’t have to. I can’t wait till your plug in works.

That’s awesome. I know. I can’t wait to launch it. It’s coming out soon.

That’s so awesome. So well, thank you so much for joining us today. For those of you listening, this was Rebecca Hatfield, the president of Second Voter.com. And you guys keep an eye on this organization because they are obviously going to have some tools that are going to be beneficial to you guys. So thanks so much. We’ll see you guys next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom dot com 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

Lately, it sure can feel impossible to vote with our money as there are so many companies perpetuating evil-woke ideologies forward. The good news is your vote does make a difference, for example, Disney shares are down 50%. This episode furthers the discussion about when and how to think about where you spend your money. The themed question is, while we can do everything, what can we do

Main Points in This Episode:

1. God wants us to be good stewards with our money
2. Parents have a massive influence and we see their choices already having an impact
3. The recent Roe v. Wade decision should shake all of us a little into really rethinking about what companies we support.
4. It’s almost impossible to purely vote with your money, but we should try where we can.

[RUMBLE]

Scripture From This Episode:

Ephesians 5:11 – “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”

Proverbs 16:8 – “Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right.”

Proverbs 3:9 – “Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase:”

Matthew 6:19-21 – “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Matthew 25:21 – “His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

Scroll down to see other resources

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support

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 21 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 following. Welcome back to the podcast, everyone.

Hey, guys.

We’re so glad you’re here.

We are. And today we are navigating a very complicated topic.

Yes.

It’s actually we titled this Navigating Woke Companies and Spending. This is a relevant issue that has come up since the overturn of Roe versus Wade. And so we felt an urgency, if you will, to talk about this more in depth, because I know that as a mom in our family dynamics, I do a lot more of the spending, I would say, right? Like I’m doing the grocery shopping, buying kids clothes, shoes, those kinds of things, school supply stuff. And this specific conversation about consumerism and realizing that so many companies are being exposed for having mis aligning beliefs could be overwhelming. Yeah, and I think that a lot of women could even potentially struggle with feeling guilt or like not even want to have a conversation about this. But we want to bring hope. We want to encourage you. But we also want to dig into what the Bible says about this and give you some resources that will help you.

And, hey, this is everybody’s got unique and different situations living in different places with different access to different kinds of stores and shopping experiences, people all around the world with different laws and things going on. We recognize that. And so we’re not going to give you a prescription for exactly what to do, but we are going to talk about the Bible says share some of our own insights and convictions and hopefully this helps you as a married couple to really navigate that. And husbands need to be involved, even though maybe we’re not doing as much shopping. We need to care. We need to be involved. This is a this is a very important thing because, remember, you know, we’re not just telling our kids the right way to live. We’re not just only reading the Bible to them, but we’re also living out what we do. Our example is so powerful and is the world going to be more uncertain or less uncertain when they launch from your own? Well, we already know what the Bible says. It’s going to be more uncertain. Change happens more rapidly every single year.

There will be increasingly more and more potential unpreparedness, if you will, in future years. And what I mean by that is like, who would have thought, right, like 20 years ago, what is being exposed today? And that is moving Christians in large droves from like even wanting to go buy Starbucks coffee, for example. Like who would have thought 20 years ago that this is all that’s been revealed is being revealed. So here we are navigating something for the first time ever. And I would say we are the first generation that’s navigating this. And so we’re obviously learning, as you probably are. So come walk alongside us as we have this discussion about this awesome topic.

And hey, thanks for joining the movement. Every time you share on social media, give reviews on iTunes or elsewhere, it helps the algorithms. It helps get the movement out there to impact 10 million families in their legacies. We’re so glad you’re along for the ride. We’re full time. So every time you purchase a course of book product at Resolute Man or Courageous Parenting or even courageous mom and by the postpartum course and things like that, it all makes us able to do all the free things and offer free content, the workshops, the podcast and so forth. So we so appreciate you being on this journey with us. We could not do it without you and we’re so thrilled. So, hey, let’s dive into this.

Okay, so this last week, there were some really amazing things that happen worthy of celebrating Roe versus Wade was overturned.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I want to share something I shared with our family this morning, which because we’ve lived our entire lives, most people listening with this being a ruling, with this being the way it is in America, at least 1973. Yeah, so I was born in 75. You were born in 79. Just tell everybody our ages.

That’s right. So that that was when Jane Roe versus Wade, the court trials and Supreme Court ruled in favor.

So abortion. So we’ve lived with this reality. And I’m just going to be really honest for a second. I know there’s some people that have really been fighting, like live action, incredible job and just other organizations and people that have really been fighting this fight. And I praise them for that. I have I have we have also spoken up on this before.

And we’ve gone to pro-life marathon.

We’ve done things we’ve always expressed our our voice on it. Yeah, but in the back of my mind, it was kind of like I kind of think this is the way it’s going to continue to be. It was hard to imagine the Supreme Court overturning that. Of course, that was part of why we voted for Trump. The first time was Supreme Court. I have a video where I talked about that back in 2006.

It’s also why we moved from Oregon. If you listen to our strategic relocation podcast, we talked about the that was one of the things that we personally had a deep conviction on for many years when we were living in Oregon. Is that part of our taxpayer? Money was going to provide and we were dominant.

That was part of the reason that we’re done with it. You can go look at strategic relocation, but my point is to the family this morning is that it is almost subconsciously like maybe that’s not going to change. And because that’s not going to change, that’s a difficult fight to to put all of our effort into. And I praise the people that have put all their effort into that. But at the same time, we have to be aware of the change that’s happened. It’s like we need to rethink our vigor about this. We need to rethink our choices about this because now it has been changed from the federal level. Now it’s up to the states to decide. There’s already 13 states in the United States that immediately are making it illegal, and it will be determined on some others. And it’s pretty sure that half the states will stay, you know, keep an abortion going. But we now have to be cognizant of this and go, okay, what do we believe on this? What does the Bible say on this? And this episode is not about Roe v Wade or abortion necessarily, but it’s about how we spend money and where we decide to spend money based on how companies are reacting to this. And I think we need to think more clearly in sober minded about this now that this there’s this radical good change that’s happened.

It’s interesting because when you were talking about with the kids about how even you had like in the back of your head this like this deception that. It might not ever get overturned. Part of it I know for me, I was sitting there and thinking, why would we think that? And and honestly, from a biblical perspective, when you are aware that we are in end days and the Bible says that things are going to get worse, we’ve talked about this so many times, we shouldn’t be shocked as Christians by the crazy woke agenda. We shouldn’t be surprised because we know it has to get much worse before Jesus comes back again. And so I think because we believe that we were like, Oh, abortion is legalized, this is so awful. But we also believed it’s going to get worse, not better. And I think that this is such a good like shaking. I feel like God is literally going wake up Christians. Like if he could clap his hands and be like, wake up. Like when you pray things can happen when you are willing to stand up and speak truth, this is what can happen. And I think that for far too long, even with like election fraud type of things that have happened, we all have like we started believing this deception again, that our vote doesn’t matter, that our our voice doesn’t matter, right? With the threat of the freedom of speech being taken away, with censorship on social media and different things, like there are all these like potential deceptions that we are clinging to, just like Roe versus Wade might not ever get overturned.

And by the way, parents, you are so powerful, unbelievably powerful. I’m just going to give you a couple of things. There’s way more than I even know them than my top of my mind. But Disney stock is down 50%. Net laid off. Yeah, hundreds and hundreds of employees because viewership and subscriber ship is going way down because of their just atrocious content that they’re putting out, which.

Is brainwashing our children.

So. Way to go. Way to stand up. So whenever you think I don’t know if it makes a difference where I spend a dollar, it is making a difference because parents by the droves are making conscientious decisions based on Holy Spirit conviction. Right. And that is a game changer.

It’s a game changer. And it brings glory to God and it protects the next generation of future leaders, your children. And so this is a really big deal. Now, at the same time, again, I want to remind you, like if you’re listening, you’re like, okay, I agree with everything that you’ve just said, but it’s so overwhelming to think about where am I going to get my soap? Where am I going to get my crackers? Where am I going to get cereal? Where am I going to get gas? Where am I going to bank? What kind of car do I have? I could go on and on. Literally think about everything that you buy. Like that is an overwhelming prospect to have to reevaluate and the thought of like, okay, how do I find out what companies like I don’t have time to do research, guys. This is not something that we are passionate about, like in the sense of like, I’m not going to go out there and be doing a lot of research and making a list, because I don’t feel like that is what God has called me to do within the body of Christ and what He’s called me to do. What mission is this greater under? It’s courageous parenting. Yeah, it’s courageous, mom. And so but we are going to share with you some resources of people who have been called up by God, who have been talented, who have been doing the research, and they’re providing resources that will help all of us. And so we want to just go, okay, look over here. Here’s a resource. And one of those is second dotcom, which I someone just shared with me yesterday, and I did a little bit of research on the website, read them. I am like so excited about this. I will potentially be interviewing the president in the future.

You can put in target and then it’ll give you an alternative.

Well, it’ll give you a rating so you don’t have to do the research. But what’s also great about like their Instagram profile, for example, is that they do give alternatives to things like they’ll say buy a Prius, not Honda, or like, you know, like different things like that. Now, on that note, I just want to say, like, if you have a car, if you have a Honda, because I just said Honda, I don’t want you to feel like there’s any kind of judgment from us. There is. We’ll talk about this more down the road. But there is grace.

Amen. Amen. Right here. It talks about in Ephesians something to think about. Five, six in on 311, I believe. So let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Here we get into it and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. That’s what we’re talking about, or try to discern what is pleasing the Lord and it doesn’t say him, but take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. And there’s a lot being exposed right now. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s important that we consider that that walking in this world is an. Interesting thing because we need certain things that we spend money on. We enjoy certain things that we spend money on, and those vary. I’ll give you an example. Like I use an Apple iPhone. Am I going to stop using an iPhone like right now because Apple is supporting people to go have abortions and paying for expenses? No, I’m not going to stop using my iPhone right now because that’s a big expense to figure out. There’s kind of a monopoly on technology. You could go to Android and things like that. I know. But that, you know, the Google platform isn’t much better in terms of what they believe in. So these are things to wrestle with. But I think what we do need to do, I’m hopeful maybe Christians or a neutral company can come out with an awesome phone and I would switch. That would be awesome. But the thing is, is that what can we do? I think that’s the topic of conversation is like, hey, where can we be prudent and and not hurt the finances or family or the well-being of our family, but at the same time make conscientious choices and steward our money.

Well, right. Stewardship. So that’s like the key word that has been like on my the my mind regarding what I purchase. This concept of stewardship, which we all should know, is a biblical teaching there. If you look up in your concordance stewardship, you’re going to get a lot of Bible verses to study, and I would encourage you to do that and even to do that with your kids. I know that you guys this is a we talked about this as a parenting podcast and we’re potentially diving into a topic that you might go, well, this doesn’t really have anything to do with parenting Isaac and Angie, but it actually does. Yes. Isaac talked about how we as parents need to be an example. That’s one reason. But the other reason is that we actually do need to teach our kids about this new this new opportunity that we have as Christians to be more conscientious and purposeful and intentional with where we spend our money. And and how awesome. Can I just say that this is actually a good thing that all of the the sin and deceitfulness is being exposed. Can you can you see that there is goodness there? I think that we need to focus for a second and just praise Jesus that the evil works of darkness is being exposed. That is so helpful because if we do have a choice to go into the mom and pop coffee shop that has Christian worship music playing or to go through the Starbucks drive thru, we should do the latter.

We should go and support the coffee shop that has values and their ethics in alignment with what Scripture says. Because the reality is, is we’re living in a world where the government is obviously against capitalism at this moment and they are trying to shut down those businesses. How can we love a brother and sister in Christ who’s got a business by choosing to help them? And shouldn’t we teach our children this? This is a new way of doing economy, is to align what we purchase with our values. And it was interesting because when we were just talking about Scripture together, one of the verses that came to my mind was Matthew six verse 19 and 21, which talks about where your treasure is, there your heart will also be, which is actually talking more so about giving. But I just thought about that for a second and I went, Isn’t that really what God cares about at the end of the day? And that this is really the message that all moms need to hear. At the end of the day, God cares about your heart, right? And if our heart is softened and we’re like, Lord, I’m disturbed that. Dick’s Sporting Goods is paying for their employees to travel and kill their babies. And I don’t want to have to go there to buy basketball shoes for my son. And we’re like that. That’s like sickening to us. God looks at our heart and goes, That is my heart, my daughter. I’m proud of you. And I just I need to remind you of that, because that’s really what is at the core of what is important right now is that we’re having soft hearts before the Lord and going, wow, like my dollar does make a difference.

I can vote with my dollar. And it’s it’s not that we’re trying to bring harm to someone else. It’s that we’re actually trying to save a baby in this specific circumstance so that company has less funds to give towards abortions. That’s like saving babies, right? Which is that reminds me of what our kids used to say. When we would do the pro-life walk walk a thons, we would we had signs that said saving babies, saving babies, and we’d have all of our babies there with us. And my point is, you guys is, if we’re willing to go do that, why wouldn’t we be willing to make a change in where we’re purchasing something? Right. And it really doesn’t have to be this overwhelming thing. And we do not want to come down hard. We don’t want you guys to go, Oh, I have to change everything right now. What if I have Carhartt in my house and I have Levi’s and I have like, we have those things too. Guess what? We already bought them many years ago when we had no idea that these companies were going woke. And I’m not going to just chuck them a good coat and a good pair of jeans in the garbage can and then have to go spend more money to replace it.

I will say sometimes though, you have an extra conviction. It’s okay, I agree with that. But at the same time, some, you know, you have sock drawers and there’s socks in the very bottom that you haven’t looked at in a long time. I recently pulled out some Nike socks and like, Oh, I threw them away. So we have convictions. I’m not going to wear the Nike swoosh because I, I just do not like the company. I do not like.

To advertise.

The lack of patriotism, the kneeling at ballgames and the support of that and just the the negative ness of what they bring to.

Society, confusion that they’re.

Perpetuating. I just really don’t like it. So we also are the holy temple and what we brand and project out there. So I’m not going to I feel like if I was wearing Nike socks, I’d be endorsing them. This is my own conviction. Right. But you could also say, why is it you’re carrying I’ll bring the iPhone up again. You’re carrying an iPhone. I go.

But there isn’t an alternative.

For I don’t have. That’s not as that’s a much harder thing. And so we just can do what we can do. And where the Holy Spirit convicts us, we take action. And and it’s a tough thing, though, but remember, we want to only endorse things, too. This happens to be with what you promote the companies, you promote the companies, you promote people to work for and work with. It is really important. We have to be cognizant of that today.

Yeah. And you know, if you guys want to we actually did an entire podcast on that specific topic of how do Christians choose which companies to endorse and partner with or just buy from, and the difference between buying from something and endorsing it. And you know, for us, we have a bit of a different situation than many of you listening to just because we have an online ministry and we don’t want to lead people to companies that we disagree with. Right. That would be weird. And so in regards to what I was talking about, like the if we had, we actually don’t have a Carhartt coat, but if we did, what I would do is I would probably take the tag off of it and then my son would probably use it in the winter months going to feed the chickens. And so but, but do you see the point here? And that part of that is that I don’t have millions of dollars to just go and spend on replacing everything. And that’s what most moms are thinking right now. And so get creative. You can use a Sharpie on a Carhartt patch. You can use the little I don’t even know what it’s called. This is so bad. The little tool that you use for sewing to detach it, you can use scissors. And so I think that we can get creative, but also recognize when we buy things that are good quality, right, versus low quality that we would have to replace a lot. I’m about buying things that are good quality, but you know what? You can buy them at consignment short stores. And then the Levi’s company isn’t getting your money, actually, and you can just take the little tag off. And so, like, there’s so many aspects to this. Like we take tags off store bought items all the time. It’s not like it’s extra work to take an extra.

I think a lot of women and yes it is women are really probably have a question about Target.

Oh yeah. So you guys, I have loved a lot of the products that Target sells. For example, the I have never watched the Chip and Joanna Gaines show just because we don’t do TV and stuff like that. But I love. The Magnolia line of products that she’s created in that corner of target like that is like my jam I it’s so pretty. I’m not saying I have very much of it because it’s kind of expensive. I don’t really have any, but I love it. It’s so pretty and I get good ideas for decorating. From looking at what she does, that’s really cool. But then you walk to the baby toddler section and they have literally combined both genders of clothes and it’s very difficult to find boy clothes for my boys. I have seven sons, like, right. And so that is frustrating. Then in the month of June, everything is just colored and pride colors everywhere and it’s just like choking you with this agenda, this political agenda. And so my.

Condition to wearables to help.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s gotten so bad that this specific company is now one of the first I believe I could be wrong about this, but one of the first to actually sell binding undergarments. I’ll put it that way in case we have little ears listening, binding undergarments for kids that are gender confused. And they’re advocating for that by selling these products, which I think is child abuse. I’m just going to say it. I think it’s child abuse. And so because of these kinds of things that they are selling and pushing on people, I cannot with a good conscience go there anymore. So we stopped that a few months ago, and as soon as I found out about that, I was just like before. I used to be like, I’m not going there in June.

So how’s how’s the life after target for being, I guess what?

I think I probably saved money. No, but in all seriousness, it’s not like I went there very often anyway. But I have had to be creative, like, okay, where am I going to go to get a gift for someone? Right. And it’s but there are alternatives. There are. It’s like working a new muscle and yeah, it can be hard at first, but hard is sometimes what is necessary in order for us to actually make a difference in this world.

I know some people listening will be like, well, that’s so legalistic and or or oh, you know, with it’s just everything’s corrupted. So how can we make decisions like that when, you know, really that doesn’t seem like there are any good companies? I mean, that can be a real legitimate feeling and it’s so much easier just to go to Target because there’s everything there and I like it. I know where it is. And changing my behaviors can really disrupt my pattern of travel. When I drop the kids off to do this and I get shopping done in between that and.

You know, and I get the I get where they’re coming from. And just so you guys know, like, my heart is never to be like, oh, legalistic, you went to Target or look at all those cars in the Starbucks drive thru. Like I literally never think those things. So I’m really glad that you brought this topic up because I think a lot of moms need this encouragement. The Bible actually commands us not to judge one another’s hearts on convictions like this. If you were to read Romans Chapter 14, read the entire thing and then read the entire chapter of Romans 15, I cannot read all of that right now because we still have a whole lot that we need to cover on the specific topic. But I am going to read a few things and give you like an overview. We did talk about this specific scripture in our buying and endorsing podcast as well. So if you want to hear us go in depth on this, you can go listen to that. But it says as for one, that is we welcome him but do not quarrel over opinions. So it’s kind of like even the first Corinthians 11 one is talking about head coverings. It says if there’s any contentions among you, we have no such practice like Paul over and over again as saying, stop being divided, be of one sound mind.

And so what we are trying to bring to you is this topic that like the Bible doesn’t actually talk about the specific title. Navigating woke companies was your spending. It doesn’t actually talk about that. But there is guidance based upon what the the word of God says regarding stewardship and how we should use our money, and also that it’s connected to our hearts and that we need to be mindful of that. And when you take verses like Love the Lord, your God with your own heart, mind, soul and strength, that to me is all encompassing. It’s like God is saying, Don’t compartmentalize me, don’t compartmentalize my word. My word is alive and active, and I’ve given you the Holy Spirit to be able to discern these things. And so when there’s verses like Romans 14 that pierce your heart, that say, don’t judge a brother or sister who has a conviction on their heart not to eat a certain food because it’s been sacrificed by idols, which is what the Scripture is talking about. That is equally the message for this specific topic. Do not judge the brother or sister who has parked at the Starbucks parking lot because guess what? Maybe they have a three year old that has to go potty and that’s why they’re in there. And that’s not your job, anyway.

Or maybe you’re not.

The Holy Spirit.

Or maybe all the mom pop Christian owned coffee shops close at 4:00 and you need to send an email. Right. And you go into Starbucks. That happens to me sometimes.

So this is the thing, though. At the end of the day, we need to be walking with our hearts and our consciences. This is all about like to one man something his conscience. It is sin, but to another it is not. You have to obey your conscience. So to you, for you. Would it be sin? To buy something from a company that is bailing out aggressive protesters who were thrown in jail at an abortion protest that are pro-choice. Is it a conviction on your heart to buy something from a company that is bailing those people out? For me, it would be for you. Would it be a conviction? Let’s just like you even had a different example of this. Like if you had a choice on going to grocery shopping at different stores, won’t you share that? I think it’s so relevant. If you had an option to go grocery shopping at a place that was bailing out pedophiles. Would you grocery shop there? Like I literally get sick to my stomach.

Well, I was just I wasn’t going to bring it up in this podcast because it’s such a crazy topic, but it’s like it’s just bring some contrast to it. I think that, you know what’s worse, pedophilia or abortion, and I’m not going to give the answer to that. You think about it.

They are both sin.

They’re both sin. And so, you know, but that for some reason that seems to jar our minds, you know, and if a company was for that kind of thing, how would we react to that? Well, if a company is for abortion proactively and helping.

People.

To do it, you know, how should we respond to that? But at the same time, you know, we can only do so much, right? So, yeah, you know, so there’s there’s grace and you have to make your own decisions and and what works for you. But hey, let’s just try. Why not just what if we just all tried to put our money in places that were productive and either neutral or for good things and the best we can? And where we can’t, we can’t. But if we just made that effort, I think it would make a massive shift. See, the way companies work, big companies, is it’s about revenue. They’re publicly traded, most of them, and they have board meetings and it’s about revenue growth. That bottom line is actually no matter not always, but most of the time, no matter what anybody says in their mission and cause, a lot of the time it is about the bottom line because they have to please the stock market. They have to please stock brokers and investors. And so just think about that. If their bottom line gets hurt, they do listen. They do listen.

Mm hmm. So I just want to read from the just share a couple of the verses that are in Romans chapter one. It says Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind, this is verse I’m going into verse six of chapter 14 in Romans, the one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord, the one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since He gives thanks to God, while the One who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. Do you see how there’s two different actions happening? But they’re both honoring God, for none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord. And if we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die or we are the Lords, for to this end, Christ died and lived again. He lived again. That he might be lured both of the dead and the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother or why do you despise your brother for we will all stand before the judgment seat of God and then it continues on. It says So then each of us will give an account of Himself to God. This is the heart of what we want to share, like you guys there. There is a need for us to understand. That we are not the Holy Spirit. We do not convict hearts, but we are called to be iron in each other’s lives as iron sharpens iron.

And many of you listening today don’t have iron in your life. So that’s why you’re listening. And I hope that you can hear our heart in this, that, yes, this is like an exciting opportunity that we have to make our dollars be like they can count, we can buy mustard from this company or that company, and it can literally make a difference because of where the revenues are going. And a lot of times people get really like legalistic about the nitty gritty and that is not where we want to go. We don’t want to do this with compulsion, right? Where we’re obsessed and overwhelmed. And we definitely don’t want to give the devil a foothold of guilt in our life because there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And so we need to understand, like and when I said guilt, okay, so I actually need to like clarify because that was a mistake. There’s a difference between condemnation. There is no condemnation. And then there’s the guilt, which is like conviction of the Holy Spirit. Right. And we need to discern honestly about what’s going on in our minds and in our hearts regarding all of the things that are being exposed today. And we need to teach those things to our children because that’s how they learn. They see us walking out our faith, not compartmentalizing Jesus and going, Whoa, my mom’s faith. Is that important to her, that she’s willing to stop going to Albertson’s or stop going to wherever? Right. Like, I’m just saying, like.

I don’t think you have an issue with Albertson’s, though.

Right? Well, not at this point, but there. Oh, with Kroger there there is an issue with Kroger. So we don’t have any Kroger’s here. But the point is, is like if we are willing to verbalize with our kids why we’re not any longer going to go to Target or Kroger, but we are going to go over here and we teach them like the behind the scenes. Guess how much our stock of respect goes up with our kids?

It really does. And remember where you’re taking a dollar away from over here. You’re contributing over here. And that encourages a business to be either neutral or pro-life or whatever the good thing is. And so so you’re encouraging in a direction, I think, you know, it’s just realize some of these companies what they stand for, they actually don’t like you. They actually, in some cases, hate you. And so I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of giving money to people that hate me and that don’t like what courageous parenting podcast, for example, puts out or, you know, would be for big tech censoring something like Courageous Parenting podcast. Since we’re in ministry and think about whatever you do, but I know I can feel it. I can feel the dislike towards me and I’m not going to let it affect me, but I’m not going to support people and companies that don’t like us. And I think you should be encouraged by that to think about that. One of the things we’re doing is, you know, it’s it’s interesting because we’re a ministry, but we’re for profit for social good ministry. And what that means is we’re not tied into the government control of being a nonprofit where they can really have more grip on what we say and do, because there will come a time, unfortunately, where parts of the Bible might become outlawed, and we don’t want to be controlled by that.

So we’re building a foundation for the ministry that is for profit. What does that mean? That just means that we sell things to support the ministry now because we’re in that building phase. Still, donations are still incredibly important. In fact, we got two donations this week that literally made things happen and we’re crucial to what we’re doing. And huge answered our prayers. So they’re needed right now. But what we’re trying to do is build for profit things, to bring value to the marketplace where people can make a choice to spend money on coffee, for example, we’re going to come out with courageous coffee. And so they can really amazing coffee that also supports something good, courageous parenting and what we’re doing. And so, you know, I think that more Christian based things should think about that and conservative things should think about that. And how can we provide value and give more options? Maybe you’re a business person or you’re thinking about starting a business. What options could you provide to the marketplace that are really good quality and at the same time they support something good and gives people that choice? We’re trying to give that choice and support something as we go into these inflationary times.

As you’re talking about this, I’m even wanting to give another resource because I got a lot of messages from people that were saying, Man, I’ve worked for that company for nine years or I’ve worked for that company for 11 years. And yep, that’s right. I got an email this week from da da da da da. And I got a lot of messages like that on Instagram. And so someone also though gave me the resource. I think it’s called public. Where you can look them up and they have what’s called a job board, and it’s for conservatives so that you can align your values with the person that you’re working for, which I think is just another genius idea. And and this is like a coming together of people that have like minded values where we’re helping one another to be able to move forward with a clear conscience. Again, it goes back to the clear conscience, right? Like and having a master and I even think about like the parable of the talents. We talked about how stewardship is definitely a biblical concept that we are all responsible for any of the money that you have is actually given to you. By God, the job you have is given to you by God.

Any provision you have is God’s provision, actually. And we need to be thankful for the things that we have, not be discontent with those things. But in Matthew Chapter 25, which by the way, is after one of my favorite chapters that talks about End Times, which is Matthew 24, we’ve talked about that very like a lot of times. So it’s interesting to me that Jesus is words here are chronologically spoken right after he’s warning us about rumors of wars and pestilence and famines and all these things, which, by the way, he doesn’t say if they’re induced or not. And so obviously this would be categorized in that category. Then in chapter 25, he talks about the parable of the talents, and he’s talking about how we use what he’s given us. Right? And he gave to different people a different amount. And they were charged with this, like go and make more out of it. Right. Well, in verse 21, it says his master said to them, well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. That’s what we want to hear.

At the end of the day, that’s like that. We’ve just done our best and we give God the rest and we’re trying to glorify Him through it all. And we’re trying to be a good example to our kids and to raise them up with the knowledge of how to make wise, discerning decisions and understand that they actually do make a mark in this world. They do make a difference. And by George, guess what? Roe versus Wade can be overturned then that means that other things can be changed to. Yeah, and and but we so we have to stop believing lies that like things like this is never going to happen. And instead we need to have hope that we have been put here in this generation for a reason and so have our kids. But we need to equip them so that when big issues like this hit them hard, like this is hitting our generation, all parents right now are going, Whoa, I didn’t see that coming. Yeah, like or maybe they did. And they’re like, not surprised. Not shocked after everything I’ve seen in the last three years. But we all are in a place of having to figure it out, navigate it, and.

We need to be proactive thinkers. You hear us talk about that a lot, but we need to think ahead. It’s not like things just get easier or better. We can’t just hope for the old. We have to embrace the time God has given us to be alive and to raise our kids, and that it was on purpose and to be on purpose and to think critically, proactively, have clear thinking, not based on the past and so forth, but to make good decisions. A thing we’ve we’ve done is we started a year ago, started working on an app so that we because our parenting mentor program used to have a Facebook group as soon as, you know, they were talking about turning it into meta and then that happened and all that and meta in Hebrew means death, I’m pretty sure. Yeah. And so we’re just like we’re seeing the way things are going, the virtual reality and all that.

We don’t.

Want we don’t want to.

Force people.

To spend, invest money in the parenting program, although it’s incredible, but then have to use Facebook groups or be reliant on meta.

Like.

For something the ministry provides. And so what did we do? We researched and we go, you know, the best option is to have an.

App, build an app.

And even though people have to pay for it monthly once they’re outside of the parent mentor program or if they just want to use it. But, you know, over 700 people have and I think that people are waking up and they’re starting to say, okay, I’m willing to pay a little bit to have a safe environment or to have a product.

To be able to get off of things like.

Get off of things like that. And so and to be able to be have community in an area or to buy a product and spend a little bit more because they don’t have economies of scale like a huge company has. So the product might cost a little bit more. You know, where we can we should support those things and be willing to. And we’re seeing that. I just want you to know we’re doing that and we’re seeing that we’re so over 700 people, you know, in the.

App and you can find out more about the app. If you go to courageous parenting dot com and you hit the little menu bar, it’ll say app in there and you just click on that and that shows you how to get into the app. Yeah, we’d love to have you guys join us. We do monthly Q&A that are an hour long in the app and then we have like different groups. A couple of them are private.

And it’s a social media platform where you can connect with other likeminded people. But this isn’t. Just a commercial for that when I was trying to make a point. And I want you to know that if you’re a business person, what proactive decisions do you need to be making? That was just an example of where are you reliant on companies that actually hate what you stand for? Yeah. And how do we get less reliant on those things? And I think that’s important to proactively do.

Yeah. You know, I think that it’s also an important topic because one of the other big, big questions I got from people is this concept of metas on all the lists, right? Which we obviously know we’ve been talking about censorship for a long time. I know that we don’t do ads. How long has it been now?

Ever since the election, this last presidential election in the United States.

So it was like September or October of 2020 when all that was exposed. I mean, when everything was exposed, we decided, no way.

We are not we’re not allowing to matter.

That’s right. And so for us, we are it is a social world. Our world is connected socially, online. It’s part of the fallen world today, for sure. But we feel called to be missionaries and lights there, and we will be there as long as they allow us to be there. Right. But we also created this app so that if we did get deleted, if you will, because that’s likely to happen eventually, we are already somewhere else. And we want you guys to know about where we are going to be in. Definitely.

So, yeah. So good.

Yeah. So you guys, thank you so much for joining us today. I just want to encourage you to be in prayer about this and to just praise God that good things are happening, that Roe versus Wade was overturned. That’s a huge praise report.

Amen.

And it’s and it’s a praise report that darkness is being exposed.

There’s a lot of good news right now. In fact, I’m trying to share more of it on my social just because, you know, it’s easy to see the bad news. Well, wow. When there’s good news, let’s talk about it. Let’s share.

It. Yeah. And on that note, the last thing I just wanted to say, another really big topic that we’re not going to dive into. But I just want to point you towards courageous mom. And in the menu bar, you can hit miscarriage. There has been some massive deception since this abortion thing has been overturned, where the left is emotionally manipulating women into feeling bad about making abortion illegal, saying that if you have a miscarriage, then you’re not going to be able to get the right services. And that’s just a lie. It’s literally a lie. It’s a deception. It’s a very personal point of reference on my heart because I almost died in a miscarriage. And I share that testimony on courageous moms. And I also have a bunch of other resources for you if you’ve experienced something like that or if you’ve seen what I’m talking about, this deception that’s going around the social world and it’s hurt you. I’m sorry. Like, I get that. It, like, really tugged on my heart hard because I believed a lie and not a lie that I believed regarding DAX, for example, which is a procedure I it almost killed me, was my the lie I believed and I believe it’s a spiritual lack of education in some regards, but then there’s also spiritual abuse that happens as well. And this manipulation that’s happening from the left wing agenda is just not okay. And to stop, maybe we’ll talk about it in another future podcast. Let us know in a comment. If you’d like us to cover that more, we would love to hear from you. But you guys, I just there are resources we are trying to bless you with those who take advantage of them.

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

Regardless of your past, don’t let it be an excuse to not parent Biblically in the present. We all have the same all-powerful father in heaven, the Holy Spirit in us, and the Bible to guide us. But unfortunately, the past often does limit us. Tune in to get a good grasp on this challenge and make sure you are overcoming it. Your legacy is worth it!

Main Points in This Episode:

1. Will your past be a yoke of bondage or a testimony to the power of God
2. Be honest about your past and any present negative influences
3. Forgive your parents, realize they are human
4. The truth is we have the ultimate father, Abba Father!
5. We are new in Christ, therefore our past doesn’t matter
6. You can create a new foundation for future generations
7. Make sure you approach thinking about this with a teachable heart
8. Is there anything you need to repent to God about?
9. Get accountability.
10. Make sure you have a clear vision for your new family legacy.

Scripture From This Episode:

Romans 8:13-17 – “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

Galatians 2:20 – “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

Joshua 24:15 – “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

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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 21 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. Hey, welcome back to the podcast, everyone.

Hey, guys, we’re.

So glad you’re here. If you’re a new listener, welcome. If you’ve been listening for a long time or one of those people that’s proclaimed it out there. We’ve been listening since episode one. You are amazing.

We just value you guys so much. We have some really fun announcements, actually, right? We’re going to share with them about some exciting news that’s coming soon.

Yeah, sure. Okay. So courageous coffee is coming soon. We’re going to be putting together a launch team. And if you looked at our Instagram or Facebook post recently and courageous parenting, you’ll see a picture of the packaging and so forth just to avoid all the questions because they’re hard to manage. We will have a decaf option. We will have regular options, obviously, and then whole bean and gram beans. And by the way, all these show notes and everything are courageous parenting. For every episode. We just value so much. There’s free resources there. There’s also worthy investments for your parenting there and for homeschooling and postpartum and birth and those kinds of resources that are biblically based and people have been transformed by them. Praise the.

Lord. Yeah, it’s been awesome over the years. I mean, we’ve been doing this a while, obviously courageous parenting. We started the podcast like in 2019 and December of 2018, right before 2020. And so we’ve been at this for a while now, but we have resources that we had developed even before that, right? Like the Christian postpartum course, redeeming childbirth, the homeschool blueprint, which is a course for moms. So if you are looking for encouragement in any of those seasons of life, if you will please go check them out. You can find out about them at courageous mom dot com or courage parenting dot com.

And the Be Courageous app too. That’s a community that is so powerful biblical community. Anyways, today we’re talking about don’t let your past hinder your legacy. We thought that would be such an important, poignant topic since Father’s Day just happened. And Mother’s Day was just a little ways back. And during those times, we tend to think about our own fathers or our own mothers. Then we reflect on how we’re doing as mothers and fathers. And it’s just important. We thought we this would be an important message for everybody to hear. That will be encouraging, but also important to be introspective so that you can build a new legacy.

I think a lot of times people don’t realize, especially for people who maybe were raised in Christian homes or in families where they believed in God and maybe they went to church even on Easter and on Christmas. And so they thought that their families were people of faith, but maybe would fall into the more nominal category. Right? Sometimes those that next generation rises up and they think that they know how to parent in and what they’re doing. Right. I think a majority of people today probably would say, I have no idea what I’m doing, but there are those who can like lean back on their previous experience growing up and go, Oh yeah, I mean, I want to raise my kids like how my parents raised me, but then maybe they’re like stuck somewhere in their parenting. They just feel stuck. Like they’ve come up against a hard cement wall and they need breakthrough and they don’t understand why they are struggling so much in this one category, whatever that category is. Right. And a lot of times what it comes down to is that there is some kind of bondage that is there generationally, maybe, maybe not. And we’re going to talk about all these different things. And we want to encourage you guys that it starts first with being introspective and thinking hard.

So if you fit into the category of parenting where you go, man, I, I don’t know what I’m doing. I, I didn’t have much of an example. Maybe you grew up and you didn’t have a mom, or maybe you didn’t have a dad, or maybe your mom and dad were divorced and you were going from one home to the next. And there’s confusion about things regarding how to raise a family of your own. Maybe there was no no Christianity at all. Maybe you didn’t know your parents very well. And you want to do things differently with your kids to where you know your kids and your kids know you. Right. I mean, it could be even that which is a lot less dramatic than maybe having lost a parent at a young age or a child having a parent that was MIA even. Right. I know that for Isaac and I, we when we first got married, we for sure were introspective right away and going, okay, what legacies do we want to continue on? What things do we not want to continue? Yeah, and we had to dream together. But Isaac, maybe you want to share a little bit.

Well, I think also maybe there was a legacy of sin in your and your family’s past and the lineage and so forth. Maybe they were good Christians, but you just want to change some things. You just want some adjustments. One thing I find that sometimes is a generational legacy is limiting beliefs, limiting beliefs about the power of God. And we don’t even realize we have them limiting beliefs about our own potential in this world and capabilities like maybe even just knowing how to use the Bible to teach our kids or to do a daily Bible time or something like that, there could be some limiting beliefs. And we have to remember there’s a spiritual battle and the enemy does not want us to lead. Well, so you have the wind of mediocrity pushing against you, which is blown by the enemy. And sometimes we believe these lies about ourselves and maybe our past legacy. Where we come from has also fed some of those lies. So we have to be careful about that because we are a new creation and we don’t want to let this be a yoke of bondage that hurts our present and your kids, kids and their kids, kids, future generations. It’s a new legacy. And instead, I like how you put this and it can be a new testimony, right?

Yeah. So, I mean, we were even talking about like what myths are out there that potentially limit parents in stepping up to their responsibilities and really embracing or engaging the duty of parenthood, if you will. And sometimes there is a yoke of bondage that has been like ancestral, if you will, or generational. And maybe you’re believing lies about yourself and who you are because of sins that your parents even struggled with. And you see your them in you. Right?

Like anger, for example.

Right, exactly. I don’t know how many parents come to us. That was one of our most popular podcast for over a year was How to basically rid your home of Anger. Right. And, you know, that would be like a yoke of bondage. That would that would simply be a yoke of bondage where you’re a slave to these myths and this lie from the enemy, that you are going to continue struggling with the specific sin, because that’s what you grew up with, and that’s the only way you know how to react in certain situations.

I think it’s motivating when you start to think about realize first of all, that I am continuing something negative from my past and if I don’t change it, my kids will likely continue that negative thing into their futures and with their kids and forward. And so I think that’s incredibly motivating when we think beyond our current present and to create change. And that really comes to our first point for you guys is that we have to be honest about our past. And while there’s good things, probably we need to be honest about what are the not so good things or just things that are neutral, but we don’t want to continue for some reason, maybe they’re not biblical and so we can really create a new legacy. You have a massive difference. This is you make a massive difference and you have a massive influence. And I think the enemy really wants to discount that in our minds. He really wants to go, No, you don’t really matter that much. What you say doesn’t really make a big difference stopping these things, you know? So I think we should be really honest about that and we should evaluate the past legacy we come from.

Yeah. And part of that is, again, it goes back to that same terminology that we’ve said over and over again, which is removing the rose tinted glasses and being realistic, operating in reality. What is the truth about not not your truth, but what is the truth? What is the reality of what you grew up with? What is the reality of what your kids are growing up with? And and then also thinking about like, what is the truth? Which is our second point is actually less about the reality and more about what the truth is about who you are in Christ because of what Jesus did for you on the cross and starting to walk in. And what’s amazing about this is it’s transformative. This is the testimony part, right? When you start recognizing that how God views you and who you are in him because of what his son did for you, you now like it’s all games off, like your new creation and nothing can hold you back. It’s absolutely the power of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Absolutely true. But one of the hangups that people have is they perhaps haven’t forgiven their own parents or somebody else in their past that is causing them to be stifled in a way. And I think that’s crucial, no matter how great your parents were or not great. No, parents are perfect. Are your parents are human beings, you are human beings. And your kids need to understand that, because if they don’t, there’s this this perfection that is sometimes silently expected, and then there can be disappointment about parents. And I think that it’s really important just to realize we have to have grace and we have to forgive. Forgiveness is so crucial. In fact, it’s not forgiveness for them, whoever they are. It’s forgiveness for you. Because until you forgive, you’re still going to be enslaved. Be enslaved? Yeah, it’s super important. So you got to forgive your parents regardless to think about is there anything you need to forgive them for them so you can move forward more confidently in raising your own kids, in starting a even better legacy that you really feel the spirit has prompted you and your spouse to do. And so the truth is powerful. You know, Jesus often referred to God as Abba father. He cries out to Abba Father in the Bible, and we are to as well. In fact, some good scripture on this is in Romans 813 through 17 if you’re following along.

If not, no worries for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry. Abba Father, by the way, in the Bible has an exclamation point and an exclamation point. I think it’s important to look at that because that is a just a a earnest desire and respect and love for God, the father. And that is so powerful. And then it says the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit. Wow, that is so cool that we are children of God. So what Jesus did on the cross enabled us to be right with God and have direct relationship with God and God loves us so much. One of the things that’s interesting, think about Father’s Day is that if you’re a parent, right, if you’re listening to this, is you understand a love for a child. And it is immense, isn’t it? It’s like I would do anything for my kids. That’s the thought, isn’t it? And that’s real and it’s genuine. And you have this desire for them. Now, think about this. God’s love for you is greater than your love for your kids.

Amazing. Think about that for a second.

You’re strong. It’s a way more strong. Love. God loves you so much. In fact, when we go to heaven, there’s a new earth. And God says he’s going to dwell with us because he loves us and wants to. He is the ultimate father. And I think that sometimes we can have hiccups with our own parenting if we don’t if we give too much credence to the influence of our own parents. Now, that’s in the past. Instead, we need that’s important, but we need to pay even more attention to God’s influence on us in God put His spirit inside of us. And so we need to allow God to communicate with us and to be used by God and to not be stifled by the past, but instead embrace the new creation that we are in that relationship with. Abba Father.

It’s interesting. So on Sunday you were teaching on this concept of fatherhood, right? And really, if you haven’t had a father in your life, like in a real life tangible experience that you can have that with God, the Father. And you know, as we were talking about and just preparing for this podcast, I think that that is ultimately the life giving. Bread right there like that message that it doesn’t matter what has happened to you in the past in the sense that it does not dictate your future because your real father, now that you’ve been adopted into the family, has a whole new lineage and legacy and inheritance for you.

And I just want to say that again, because it’s so important, especially to the dads listening, is that your past is has no bearing and has no qualified excuse for your present. In terms of parenting and leading your family biblically. We all have the same roadmap given by God. Yep, written by God through his people that we have. And we can let go of our hang ups because we have the power of Christ in us. He will help us to do it, but we also need to make decisions. A decision actually means to cut away from people don’t actually make very many decisions anymore. They usually respond to circumstances and they’re moved around by circumstances and don’t even realize it when actually you make a decision as to cut away from. I’m never going back to the previous. Making a new decision. And I’m going in a new direction. And we have the power of God to help us do that. There is no excuse because of our past, no matter what happened. I know this is a hard word for some people, no matter what happened in our past. You need to deal with the past. But no matter what happened, the past is not an excuse not to be there for your kids to parent biblically and to be engaged in an intentional father. And of course, that’s true for mothers, too. But I just wanted to speak to the dads out there, and I know that’s a deep, heavy message right in your Father’s Day. But you know what? If we’re going to impact the world, US fathers need to be in the game. We need to be in the trenches. We need to be intentional. We need not hang ups of the past or present with our kids. We don’t want our kids to adopt the same legacy negatives that we’ve adopted if we have and we need to move forward in a more powerful way, God can help you.

Yeah. And so, you know, as we were thinking about this specific concept of like moving forward, regardless of your past, here’s a word from Galatians 220 that is super encouraging. It says, I have been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That is the most essential thing that we need to remember all the time, regardless of the circumstance, regardless of of potential lies coming at us, that we need to take those thoughts captive. And when it means when we’re taking our thoughts captive under the obedience of Christ, what are we doing? We’re remembering scriptures such as Galatians 220. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. You guys, at the end of the day, yes, we want to like Isaac said, you want to heal and deal with your past.

You need to because it’s going to make you actually a better person. Actually, it becomes tools. It takes the tests and the hardships, and it turns them into tools. It turns them into testimonies that you then can bring glory to God. Because the truth is, is that you are a changed person, not because of you, but because of what Christ did when He gave himself for you. It’s because you are no longer you. You are his ambassador. You are his vessel, his jar of clay, and he is living and active and his spirit is in dwell in you giving you the strength and power that you need, giving you the wisdom to make the decisions like Isaac’s talking about, to choose when to cut things off, such as myths and lies, like never go back and believe that lie that maybe your dad told you or your mom told you or your friend told you or your past boss told you. You make a choice. You make a decision to cut off those lies and walk in the truth of what the Bible says about who you are.

Amen. And that enables you to build a new foundation. You have the ability to build a new legacy from this point forward, no matter what’s happened so far, it’s never too late. But you need to take action. And that’s where we’re talking. Talk about next some steps, take action. But first, I just want to mention the parenting mentor program for a second. This is the biblical program that gives a foundation for parenting from the scriptures and from our 20 some odd years of experience raising up our kids from one to age, 21 years old. And we are really appreciating the fruit that God has done through our family. And but there’s definitely decisions we made. We lay it out there in a framework that’s easy to digest and will have a profound impact on your parenting and will likely help with these things we’re talking about today. By the way, why do we talk about things that are for sale and things like that? Because we are for profit for social good company. The only way we’re able to give the free podcast or any of the free workshops. The other things that we do, all the social posts and everything, is because there’s revenue coming in that supports the ministry and our large family. So we’re walking by faith every single week and we so appreciate your involvement with that. If you want to join the next Parenting Mentor program, you can check it out at courageous parenting. All right. Back into.

Action. So, you know, as far as taking action goes, a lot of times people don’t recognize how powerful the very first action that you need to take is, which is choosing to walk in humility. It’s choosing to view yourself. We were just talking about viewing yourself as God does, but also viewing God. In reality, like looking at the scriptures and remembering who he is and then who you are in light of who he is, which should be both encouraging and empowering, but also humbling, right? When we recognize our humanity, our finite, our our our our issues, our hang ups, the sins that maybe we’ve fallen to, the temptations of right. And recognizing that should lead us to a heart posture of humility. If it doesn’t, there’s definitely something wrong that we need to, like, really dig into. But I’m not talking about that in depth today. But the truth is, is that all of these things, like if you want to leave a new legacy first, it starts with humility and recognizing that something needs to change. That’s really where it starts. Then the second place that it starts is going, Okay, well, I’m not just going to be like broken, recognizing who I really am. And yeah, I’m humbled, but like now I’m. I have broken confidence and I’m not going to do anything.

No, no. Instead, we we have humility, but we have a teachable, malleable heart and go, Lord, you are the potter. I am the clay. Mold me and make me today, right now, in this moment and recognizing that we can we can start over. We can learn new things. So it doesn’t matter if you were raised in very precarious situations. Right. And now I get it. Like we listed a whole bunch of different situations off at the very beginning of this. But there’s there’s so many more you guys. You know what? I’m sure there’s somebody listening here who went through the foster care system and had probably a very broken experience. Maybe someone went through the foster care system and was adopted and had a fantastic experience. Maybe some of you were, by God’s grace, adopted into a godly family. Maybe some of you were adopted, but not into a Christian family. And maybe there was brokenness and hurt and pain and abuse that followed through that experience as well. Whatever your story is, because there are millions of different kinds of stories, doesn’t matter how different your story is. This same message applies to you that we need to remember who we are in Christ, that we are heirs like Isaac Reed and Romans eight, that we are children of God.

Like He read in Romans eight that we are a new creation like we were just talking about in Galatians 220, where we’re no longer living. It’s Christ who’s living in us. And that gives us the ability to make wise decisions when maybe we weren’t making wise decisions before. But guys, that humble posture takes us to a teachable place that literally the sky’s the limit. That means there are no limits because God is limitless. He can teach us in all things his body, the body of Christ here on Earth. God had a design for people to learn things, and that was through this gift right here, the word of God. Like Isaac was saying, you have the exact same Bible that we have. This is the roadmap, this is the guidebook. This is it. This is all you need. You don’t need X, Y, and Z books that are on the the Christian bookstore or the most popular ad that you see on Instagram promoting the next book. You need the Bible. And then God’s next step was in Titus when he talked about the older men and women teaching the younger. And what did he say to teach? He told the older women are to teach the younger women to love their husbands and children and be busy in the home.

So you got to find a mentor perhaps, and you’ve got to look for some godly person that can help you. And she’s written on that at Grace Mom dot com many blog posts. You can check that out. But mentorship is super important, really important to pick the right person and pray about it. But also we need to repent. What do we need to repent about? To God that might be blocking us from having.

A teachable.

Heart to heart and to seeing what God’s trying to tell us.

Or even being humble, right?

All of those things. And we need accountability that can come from the mentorship and come from pastor. Most importantly, you know, I think that spouses should be holding each other accountable. And, you know, let’s lean in and let’s have a marriage meeting and talk about these things and go, hey, you know what? How are we doing? Let’s let’s be introspective. Is there anything from your past that you’re bringing in? Is there anything from my past I’m bringing in and coming together with just talking about those things so you can pray about those things. You can start the healing process on those things. You can be introspective about. Do I really need to forgive somebody? You do know that you can forgive somebody without even saying something to them. Like if it’s something in the past now it can be healing to. Talk to somebody, too, if you need to. But remember that forgiveness is I am letting something go. I forgive that. It’s not.

Maturity.

Hold onto me anymore. I’m not going to think about it anymore. It’s not part of my identity anymore. My identity is in Christ. And so that’s part of the action, is to really think about those things, to repent, to have teachable heart and get that accountability we think is so important.

Now, the last thing that we want to talk to you guys about is vision. Because the truth is, is that a lot of people, they have a hard time with having vision of where they’re going if they didn’t have it modeled for them in what it looks like. So if you come from brokenness, whether it’s that you don’t want the marriage that your parents had and that was all you saw and all of your friends also had came from broken homes and you never really got to see what a biblical marriage could look like. And you’re looking at your spouse and you’re going, I want things different, but I don’t know what I want because I haven’t actually seen it up close and personal. I just want to encourage you guys. You need to dream together. You need to have vision together. You need to read the word together. You need to discuss what a biblical marriage looks like and don’t allow your past or the past of others. When I say the past of others, I’m talking about your own parents or your friend’s parents or whatever.

You don’t allow their mistakes that they made hinder your marriage. You own your marriage and there’s no blame shifting allowed here because the reality is, is, yeah, we could we could all say, oh, well, all I know is that because that’s all I learned. But the reality is, is we all have choices here. And as adults and as people who are new creations, we really have no excuse because if we’re living and walking by the spirit, then we have untapped potential in Jesus Christ and in his word. And so, yes, maybe we need mentors. Yes, maybe we need accountability outside of our marriage. But first and foremost, like I was saying, Isaac was saying, you guys have to be talking together, dreaming together, and in choosing to. What is the vision for your family 20 years down the road? 30 years down the road? What about two years? What about six months from now? What is the vision for your marriage? First was the vision for your household. What is the vision for your legacy? Talk about it, right?

Yeah. God is all powerful. He can move through you. Maybe we’re just not letting him. Maybe there’s something that we talked about here that’s going to stir some kind of letting go of the past, not moving forward with something we’re currently doing that’s harmful to our legacy. Maybe your vision needs to become so clear. What do you want it to look like when your kids launch from your home, when they have their own kids, and when you guys all get together? What does that look like? Do you have a vision for the attitudes, the behaviors, the culture of the legacy? Is it biblical? Are people believers? Do they love one another? Do they have great relationships? Do people want to and can’t wait to get back together for whatever festivities they are? You know, is there’s this mutual love amongst all of the family, from your kids to their kids and so forth. And you might be thinking, well, Isaac, I have a two year old right now.

Perfect timing. Perfect timing. You guys, I want to share with you from Joshua, chapter 24, verse 14 and 15. It says, Now, therefore, fear the Lord. What do you say? Fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. If you have the two year old, just be faithful, be sincere, be genuine, be faithful. Serving God, serving your family is as you as if you were serving God because you are put away the gods that your fathers served, be on the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. Put it away. It doesn’t matter what they did, and if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve. Whether the Gods of your father served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me, in my house, we will serve the Lord. You need to own it. You make a decision like Isaac was saying, and then you you embrace it. If that means that you’re going to be anointing your home, or maybe that means that you’re going to have a family meeting and you’re going to say, kids. We’ve screwed up. Forgive us. We haven’t been intentional enough with our first love, which was Jesus.

And so there’s going to be some changes around here, starting with me, that maybe that’s the husband speaking. There’s gonna be changes, starting with me. And here’s one of the things I’m going to work on. I’m not going to be perfect. I may make a mistake once in a while, but this is my goal. I’m going to work on this. Be praying for me. I’m going to be praying and spending more time in the Word and asking God to help me. Because I want you guys to have a better legacy to leap off of as you build your own legacy someday. And I think that heart to heart with them is wonderful. If your kids are really young, then it’s just you and your spouse talking about this. And there’s still you know, they don’t even really recognize yet that there’s been a huge change, although they’ll feel it and they’ll respond to it very well. Now, don’t be discouraged, because sometimes in the short term there’s friction when you create change. And I just want to warn you that sometimes the friction and stay the course, make a decision, stay the course, and have the Lord, you know, able to communicate directly with you because you’re spending more time in the world. Mm hmm.

Thanks so much for joining us, you guys. I hope that you have been encouraged today. And just remember that no matter what has happened in the past, God has a bright future for you. It just takes being humble, repenting and walking in his spirit and in obedience to his word. Thanks for joining us 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

Biblical parenting isn’t a precise equation; what works for one kid may need adjusting for the next. While there are some major areas where Christians should have commonality in their parenting based on Biblical truth, in so many other areas there’s liberty to make wise choices based on the uniqueness of your kids and your circumstances. This episode is an encouragement to discern well what’s best for your family while discouraging the comparison trap.

Main Points in This Episode:

1. Do all you can to prevent division based on parenting decisions
2. There are things we should have in common as believers in terms of: Discipleship, discipline, not exasperating our kids, love, grace…
3. Be ware of a deep rooted problem in comparing to others
4. Be careful not to let people pleasing prevent you from making the best decision for your own families
5. Know your kids well as each are different and need different things at different times
6. Don’t be swayed by others opinions when you have a strong gut feeling about doing something different that aligns with Biblical truth.

[RUMBLE]

Scripture From This Episode:

Galatians 5:1 – “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”

2 Corinthians 10:12 – “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”

1 John 4:1 – “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”

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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 21 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 a following. Hey, welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Hey, guys. We have a unique topic today we’ve never talked about in this way. So God’s way isn’t cookie cutter parenting. Interesting.

You might be thinking, wait a second, but you guys run a parenting ministry and you have a parenting program. Are you saying that what you teach in the parenting program isn’t the same for everybody and they shouldn’t implement it?

Well, I mean, there is a desire out there for an equation, isn’t there?

Right. I mean, how many parenting courses or books are written that I mean, in a in a way, try to promise a behavior modification plan, if you will, or, you know, if you do these things, then your parenting will be easier, your kids will behave more, all those kinds of things. Well, you know, guys, a heart behind is parenting. And the mentor program is not that everybody would parent exactly the same and that you would even parent each of your children exactly the same. Because the truth is, is that God uniquely designed each of your children and uniquely designed your family. And your family is not exactly the same as the next person, right?

Yeah.

However, there are some timeless truths that are scriptural teachings that are there for us as parents to guide us in the way that we should go as parents in our parenting that are really God’s way is the best way. And so, you know, today’s podcast is we’re talking about God’s ways and cookie cutter parenting. The reality is that not everything that we do would be prescriptive for you guys, but what God’s word says is unchanging. And so we want to encourage you with God’s word. And and we recognize that a lot of people struggle today with, you know, doubting themselves as parents, doubting the decisions that they make. Because aren’t there a lot of decisions that we make in the life span of parenting? There are so many different decisions. And I think that I know for myself, especially as I look back on my younger parenting years, I was so unconfident that I would look to what other people were doing for validation of if I was doing it right or God’s way.

And we’ll talk about that. It’s so important. And, you know, we have nine kids from age one all the way to 21. And so and all of our kids are so different. And so while one thing worked with a slew of kids, it maybe didn’t work for every one of our kids in practice. And while we always are striving to stay biblical in our approach and grounded in biblical truth in how we do things, there is a different nuance to these things based on who each of our kids are, and that will be the same for you.

It’s an element called grace and understanding, and it takes intentionality and it takes time to know each of your kids, which we’ll talk about in just a few minutes. But before we do, we just want to say thank you. Yeah. Thank you for joining us in this Million Legacies movement. We’ve been so encouraged by you guys, and we just wanted to thank you for all of the donations, all of the purchases and the shop lately as as Father’s Day is approaching, it’s just been really, really encouraging. We love hearing comments and messages from you guys. So thanks so much for joining us in this and sharing the podcast.

And by the way, all show notes and free resources and the courses and things you can buy to or at courageous parenting dot com. And don’t forget to check out the Be Courageous app. There’s information about it at the website or you can just download it in your app store.

Which I don’t know if you guys know this, but in the Be Courageous app, Isaac and I do a monthly live Q&A for an hour in the app, which has been a really fun way to engage with everybody who’s in there, and it’s just been super encouraging. I love the questions that people give us. It’s been a great way for us to know what is relevant to speaking to your heart on issues in the podcast, because we’re getting questions from them there. And so if you’re in the if you’re in the app, thank you. It’s been really fun engaging with you guys there.

All right. So let’s continue on. So God’s way. Isn’t cookie cutter? Well, isn’t that true? If God’s way was cookie cutter, he would have descriptive details on every aspect of parenting, perhaps in the Bible. That’s right. But he doesn’t. But he has core principles of how were to treat people, how kids are to treat their parents, how were to approach our kids, our children marriage wisdom. There’s all of these really important things. And from that foundation, we can extrapolate, you know, what is best for this particular kid in this situation.

That’s right. So as when you’re a parent, oftentimes there’s a few different ways that you learn, right? Like reading the Bible, I would say, is the first and foremost like you want to be. In your word to understand what God is guiding you in what His wisdom is, and ask the Holy Spirit to really lead and give you wisdom. And His Word says that He will give it without reproach. The second way that you’re going to want to be approaching learning, because I know that for Isaac and I, neither of us knew what we were doing when we first started parenting and we knew what things we didn’t want to do, and we knew a few things that we did want to do. But really, it’s been a learning journey, right?

It absolutely.

Has. So having mentors in our life was super powerful for both of us, especially earlier on.

And we sharpened each other to we would go learn something from someone. We go to a church class or we’d read a book or you’d hear something from somewhere and we would discuss it together and we would test it against the biblical truth. And then we’d also discern the Holy Spirit is in you, is in us. And so we would discern whether this is good for our family or not. Right. And I think that’s really important.

Oh, super important. Just as you were sharing that, I was even thinking of a few times where I had met with someone and the wisdom, quote unquote, that that they were giving was actually not something that we decided to utilize because it would not have been a good thing for that specific child. Regarding like discipline.

I would think we said no to more things than we said yes to. Yeah. After we learned them. We’re respectful during the time. Right. But then when we talk about it, we’ve said no to more things than we said yes to. And sometimes we take a piece of it as.

Well and morph it into something that will work because sometimes it inspires creative thinking and gets us being creative, right? It can be insightful, but but we’re sharing this with you guys because that that is an element of how it’s not cookie cutter. Like, I think it’s important for you guys to hear that like from us over the years we went into parenting and we try to still be in a place with a teachable heart. Parenting is sanctifying. It’s not this. It’s not always easy. But as a friend that online says Hard does not equal bad. That’s true. We’ve also said that we’ve taught our kids we want to try to do hard things because the hard things are usually well worth it. Right? Anything worth doing is hard. That’s a motto that we’ve taught our kids over the years. And the truth is, is when you’re parenting, sometimes you have to do the hard thing to get the fruit that you want later. And the truth is, is that God calls all of us up. He calls us to to something higher at times. Right? He calls us to be holy because he is holy. And that takes self-control. It takes patience. It takes doing hard things.

Yeah. And usually the harder choice goes against our flesh. It goes against you. It takes more time, it takes more patience. It takes more diligence.

To.

Having a hard marriage conversation. It takes all of these things. And there’s a lot of decisions you have to make as parents, aren’t there? There’s actually a ton of decisions you have to make over time, and those decisions are often what can divide people. And we shouldn’t be divisive at all, in fact, but we should have agreement on some things.

Right? Right. I mean, we were even just talking about this. The first issue that we’re going to talk about is this deep rooted issue of comparison, which is what you’re leading into. Right. That decisions can become divisive when there’s comparing or when there’s a impression that in order for us to be close in friendship, you have to do things my way. Or in order for me to view you as a biblical parent, you’re going to do X, Y and Z. And when I say that, I’m always nervous to say that sort of thing, right? I was like, There are times where we both go, okay, but when it comes to like discipleship and discipline and different things like that, the Bible is actually very clear and gives some very clear guidance to parents. And we don’t want to cut corners on those things. And it is important that within the church we actually do judge. That’s a lie from the devil not to do that. We’re supposed to judge fruit to make wise decisions and friendships, for example. So as we’re talking about this, we’re not giving people like the the freedom to just go, oh, it doesn’t matter. And just, you know, because the reality is, is, as you know from other podcasts, we encourage you guys like peers have huge impression on your kids. They massively influence your children. They massively influence you. So if all the people that are in your community are nominal, how are you going to stay strong and growing in the Lord if people are nominal and digressing in their relationship with the Lord?

So what you’re saying is there’s a balance. There are certain things where we should look similar around discipleship, around discipline, around loving, well, around having. Praise fruits of the spirit that are in the Bible. We should be similar in in.

Fruit.

In expression and fruit in those things. But then there’s these other areas where there’s liberty and there’s liberty for a reason. God gives liberty because he created certain parents different than other parents. Right. First of all. And their kids are different than other kids. And there’s different dynamics happening. And while certain core things need to be should be very similar, these other things we shouldn’t create division over.

Yeah, I think that when you talk about Liberty, one of the verses that comes to mind is in Galatians five one, it says Stand fast, therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. This is super important because can’t decisions that you make as a parent sometimes feel so heavy and so burdensome and so weighty that you can become overwhelmed?

Hmm.

That would be a yoke of bondage. And right here, Paul is literally saying, do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage, because we were once under a yoke of bondage before we were saved. And then Christ set us free when we in in our relationship with him and in faith in him and being justified in him, we are set free in Jesus Christ. So why would we then again take on a yoke of bondage? It’s interesting that he’s telling us not to do that because it’s something that we actually can do. We can create a yoke of bondage. And I just think of this concept of like division and decisions and comparison trap especially. I think it’s probably a bigger issue among women, I.

Would say certainly in bombing. Right. I don’t think a lot of dads are really highly comparing each other in their dad life. Maybe, maybe actually dads need more of that sharpening and caring on that side. I’m not sure, but women definitely have that in one thing. This is a message for dads out there. You husbands out there is that one of the things I found really useful and I’m thankful for this, that I had a strength in this area when we’re young and still do, which is having a good smell test for people pleasing. And to really understand when my wife is expressing something is that coming from a place of pressure from other women around her to comply and to be doing things like them? Or is this a right thing that we should be doing and what’s best for our kids and our family? And I would say it’s gone both ways. And sometimes we have these discussions and I’m able to with grace and love, of course, hopefully, maybe not always, but but I do my best and it is to kind of talk through it. And sometimes I think the other spouse doesn’t even realize that that’s some of the motivation. Where is the motivation coming from for your decisions? It should be biblical truth, sound, wisdom, discernment, marriage conversations.

Guide and.

Guidance. The Holy Spirit because you know your kids best.

Right. So it’s interesting, you know, when it comes to liberty, what are the decisions? What are the things? Let me just give you an idea. Isaac kind of mentioned some of the things that are, you know, biblical based that should look similar. And I’m going to emphasize the word similar because similar doesn’t mean the same as same. Yeah, similar and same are not equal. And so when we say things like discipleship, discipline, different things like that, we’re not saying that there’s one way to discipline that should be used for all kids at all times, in all circumstances. That’s the opposite of what we believe. It’s the opposite of what we’ve practiced, and it’s the opposite of what we teach. And the parenting mentor program, it requires literally like this concept in John 15 of abiding in him. Just to bring that up briefly for a second, as a parent, we have to be abiding in him so that his spirit is flowing through us and we’re able to rely on him and not do things in our own strength. And part of that is this awesome creativity. God is a creator that had He’s massively creative and we can be creative as well, even in our parenting as we are seeking to love our children well in the same kind of way that Jesus loved us well when he was here.

If you think about how He preached to the masses and even to just the 12 disciples, he used parables. He gave lots of different kinds of stories. It wasn’t just like, Do this, this way. One story repeated over and over and over again. It was literally inspired because he’s God. And it was inspired. And he spoke to hearts where hearts were at in that moment. He healed and he spoke to their heart and then change occurred. And that’s what we want to try to do as parents. We want to speak to our kids hearts. We want to love to their hearts. We want to discipline to their hearts. We want to disciple to their hearts. And that’s not always going to look the same. It may look similar because it’s going to produce a similar fruit, which would be the fruit of the spirit in your child. Right. But it’s not going to be the same. So when I think of liberties and what kinds of things would be parenting liberties, I’m just going to rattle off a few. Let’s start with curriculum. For those of you who are homeschooling, you know the pressure that I’m talking about. If you’re not homeschooling, how about education choices? It’s not cookie cutter. It’s not going to be exactly the same for every single kid, for every single family. How about.

Sports? Sports is another.

One exactly where.

We have chosen for various reasons not to overly participate in sports. And in some families that becomes an important thing. And it’s good for their family.

And for some families it can become an idol because it was just a thing that a parent did when they were younger and they’re vicariously living. They’re reliving their childhood through their kids again. And so there’s this element of like, it could be different for each family, but you have to judge yourself honestly and go, Is this what’s best for my child? Not what’s best for me and not what’s best for my family. Right. And so there’s liberty in those decisions on sports, on curriculum. There’s liberty on what foods you feed your family. Right? There’s no like you have to do this this way as far as scripture goes, regarding what you eat, how you eat it, when can I say when you eat it, like what your routine is? There’s a part in our parenting mentor program where we teach mild, moderate and extensive routine for the day, and we give examples of what that’s looked like, because over the years we’ve had mild, moderate and extensively routine, structured days. While I believe that young kids really thrive in structure and some things never go for our family, but that’s that’s partially because of, like, what I’ve learned over the years. Right? And what rhythms need to stay in place, like nap time, for example, different things like that. But does your nap time need to look like our nap time at the exact same time of the day?

There’s no big difference in how you start the day and how you end the day. And all these things can can look different. We do Bible time in the morning, but you could do it at lunchtime. You could do it at evening. You could do it at bedtime. It’s I think we need to get away from the precision and of of the real minutia, of the details.

The nitty gritty.

And we need to get to the core thing. Are you actually reading the Bible to your kids? Because that’s discipleship. That should be part of everybody’s routine somewhere. And we have to have grace for one another, too, because everybody has different work, jobs and schedules and responsibilities. Some really hard working men are traveling and they’re providing for their family, and it’s a good thing and they’re serving out there in the marketplace, or they’re serving in the armed forces or doing different things that are important. And God has them doing those things. And, you know, if if you have a different schedule, we shouldn’t judge that differently. We should embrace the texture at which God has created in the creativity, in the different families and what they’re doing in their time table and all those kinds of things.

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting too, as I was thinking about like what are some other liberties and things, this concept of having grace for one another because we have liberties so that we’re not putting the yoke of bondage within this comparison trap. We need to be careful not to compare our husbands. Isaac was just talking about all the things that husbands potentially are out there doing in the marketplace. And it would be easy, especially with social media today, for a woman to become discontent with her marriage and with her family and be put under a yoke of bondage like it talked about in Galatians five one, simply because she sees other people doing other things like other dads doing things with their kids and wanting her husband to do that and not being content with what God has given her in that moment and and not understanding that it’s the husband does desire that. Right. And so I think that there is a huge need for protection within ourselves and for for those of us who are mentors. Like I look at myself as a Titus two older woman. I’ve been parenting for over 20 years. I’ve been married for over obviously almost 23 years. And I know that God placed circumstances, situations, even certain children and their temperaments and personalities in my life to yes, number one, sanctify me. But also to humble me.

And that is a really important thing when we are not honest, when we’re mentoring other people and we’re not honest with ourselves. First, remembering where God’s brought us from and what we’ve walked through. Our leadership changes and I’m saying this because I’ve struggled with it at times. You guys have even heard it within a podcast where Isaac and I will be talking and I’ll start sharing on something and he’ll go, But hey, and you also experience this ba ba ba ba. And it reminds me in the moment and I go, Oh yeah, I’m so glad you said that. And it literally changes my heart right then in, in that podcast and that moment, and I go, Oh yeah. And then I felt really bad, like actually because I was kind of chuckling before and then all of a sudden I had all this compassion for young moms, and we have to remember where we’ve come from. That’s the point. Like we as teachers, as women who are walking in each other’s lives, we have to remember humbly who we are before the Lord and where we’ve come from and what we’ve learned. And if we can’t remember what it was like even in the baby years, I remember this was a big deal when I had Solomon. There’s almost six years between our sixth and our seventh, and I thought after having had six kids and here I am a doula and I’ve written redeemed childbirth and I’ve been teaching all this stuff.

And then I have a baby and I’m like, Whoa, I forgot so much in six years. And I praise God that I’ve had five more pregnancies since then because it’s helped me to remember up front and personal what those hard, sleepless nights can be like when you have a teething baby or when they’re sick. I can remember like literally just got out of a year of postpartum with Zander and you guys. He had the tongue tie, lip tie thing and we chose to go a hard route. I’m not saying harder because getting a connectome is also hard and you have to do therapy in different things as well. But we went a hard route of not doing that and doing cranial sacral therapy and exercises and yes, triple feeding for a season, which makes it difficult to do other things right. It makes it hard on the family, but it’s a small sacrifice for a great gain that we personally as a couple had a conviction on something that’s not prescriptive for you. But we had a conviction to exclusively breastfeed because I had done that for 12 years. And so like that is just one example. We could talk about homeschool. There’s literally any there’s so many.

Or even I would say to just with Zander, our one year old, we’re learning new things with Zander, not because we could have learned them before. I guess we could have, but because Zander is different actually, than the rest of them is because some things he is responding differently to. And we’re once again made aware that every kid is unique. And just because all these things worked with other kids doesn’t mean this thing works with him.

It’s exactly right. You know, it’s funny. People will often ask me, so did you ever have a kid climb out of a crib? And I’m like, Nope. Well, I wouldn’t put it past Zander to be the first. And we’ve used the exact same crib with all nine of them. But, you know, the point is, is that, yes, every kid is different. And so when we get stuck in these comparisons, that’s when we put this yoke of bondage on. And it’s like, why? Why do we even do that as women? Why? Why do we impose extra biblical expectations on ourself and then get overwhelmed or feel bad about ourselves? Because we’re not we’re missing a mark. That’s not even something that God prescribed for us.

I think there’s too much mommy guilt happening and too much pressure. And we should go back to the simple things that the Bible talks about, the basic things, and focus, most importantly, on that discipleship of our children and loving them well. And that takes patience. And I think sometimes when we heap on too many things, it creates anxiety. And then we can’t do the core things that we really desire as well as we should in the Bible here. And of course, I’m not a mom, so I can only speak from watching Angie, so I’m not trying to be an expert.

Good encouragement, baby.

Yeah. So second Corinthians 1012 says for we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves, but they measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise.

So it’s really we’ve got to be careful that we are not becoming these kind of people. First of all, when I read that well, whenever I read Scripture and I hope you do too, maybe this is an encouragement or an exhortation for some of you. But when I read Scripture, I always think, first, what does this mean for me? And there’s either warnings, convictions, encouragements, exhortations. And this would be like a warning, right? To not measure my success by my success. Right. And also not to measure my failings by by my feelings. And not to commend myself, not to boast, not to prop myself up. Like all of these things are warnings that Scripture talks about don’t do not boast in yourself. Do not be haughty in your own eyes. Do not. There’s so many scriptures that warn us about being humble. And and I think that especially as a Titus two teacher, for those of you who are looking for someone, this would be something that you want to look for in someone, is that they have humility enough to say, I did that wrong or I wish I would have, or this worked for this kid, but it didn’t work for these ones, but it might be worth a try. Do you see how it’s like not cookie cutter? If you do X, Y, Z, you’re going to have this success and bam like an easy fix, because that’s not necessarily true with every single child. And that’s something that we’ve learned.

I think it’s fine to give wisdom and to give it confidently with assertiveness, but we should always leave the opportunity open for, you know, trying it a little bit differently and things like that. I think that’s important if it’s not one of those core things.

Yeah. So be careful about prescriptive advice unless it’s scriptural. Like here’s a prescriptive scriptural advice that you definitely want to heed. Fathers do not exasperate your children lest they become discouraged. Write the Colossians three, 21 and Season six four. That’s for both parents. Like that would be a prescriptive biblical exhortation that we definitely all need to listen to.

That’s like, you know, we get frustrated and we kind of raise our voice and start yelling at our kids. That’s exasperating kids, right?

But here’s an example of something that’s not prescriptive. I loved using classical conversations for eight years with my kids, and it was an awesome experience. That doesn’t mean it’s prescriptive, be the right curriculum for you to use so you see the difference. Or like even when I think about you think about oils or homeopathy or any of the things that you can do as a mom. Like just because something worked in a situation with treating my child who had some similar symptoms to what your child may have, does not mean that it’s going to be the cure. Right. And so we just need to be careful as women to not like automatically think that people aren’t doing their best. But we need to expect virtue in one another and encourage one another, really be cheerleading each other on.

I think that’s when we see a challenge someone’s having with their child. We assume virtue in that moment. Yeah. Versus assuming they’re not doing this thing that, you know, you do that works. Right. And I think that while it might be true, they could do something better. We need to earn that opportunity to speak into someone’s life by being humble, by being asked, by being encouraged in that way. And that’s through relationship. And so if you want to help somebody build a strong relationship with them that’s loving and full of grace, and oftentimes I think what will happen I find this in the business world, too, is that what we first might have thought is different after we really get to know someone and we speak to them and we see more of the whole picture, and sometimes we just get little soundbites of someone’s life and what’s happening or with their kids, and we can really misunderstand what’s actually happening in the inn and not see that there really is an intentional heart behind it. Maybe it’s misapplied, maybe there’s an intentional heart that’s not applying things correctly, and they do need help. And maybe God has provided you as a person to help them. But let’s approach that in a way where we’re not just heaping mommy guilt on top or dad guilt for that matter, on top. And but maybe there needs to be a little more grace, dad. Guilt. I’m just kidding.

You’re so funny. Oh, you’re so funny. So, you guys, the second thing that we really wanted to hit home and these are going to go pretty fast is obviously you need to know your kids. You have to know your kids well. And the best way to know them well is to invest time in those relationships. To be able to decide what is best. You need to go with your gut, not with her gut, not with his gut, with your gut. And and you need to do it with confidence because of what you’ve read in Scripture. And so not just like knowing your kids and deciding what’s best without any guidance. That’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying invest time, know your kids, ask God to really guide you, decide what’s best and own it. And I think that part of this is that a lot of parents are just going about their days, like the regular rhythm, the regular routine, without actually seeking God and saying, Lord, what’s your opinion on this? And how should I be treating this specific situation? And is this kid, you know, acting out because of something else, like understanding that there are symptoms? Of a deeper heart issue and really digging in like that’s knowing your kids investing the time versus just cookie cutter boom, boom, boom, boom that leads to relationships that are not close when they’re older.

At least that’s what I’ve witnessed among the vast majority of older parents. Right. And a lot of times when I’ve sought out a mentor or something or I’ve asked someone to meet with me, a lot of times they’ll humbly go, You know what? I don’t know if I can speak to this because I don’t my kids are not close to me or they’re not walking with the Lord or this and that. And those are those are actually like the warning signs. You need to be really careful not to choose those people as mentors. Or if you do that, they are being humble enough to share with you the mistakes that they made, because sometimes that can be valuable as well. But you got to know your kids and you’ve got to understand that what works with one isn’t going to work with the.

Other or may not in May. Yeah. Yeah. And the final point is don’t be swayed by mere opinions. There’s opinions flying at us left and right. You could be looking at a real you could be in a group with other people. You can all these things, all these opinions. You could overhear a conversation in a coffee shop that puts pressure on you in some weird way and you don’t even know these people. Right? So you really have to take your thoughts captive, which is a biblical scriptural idea and not be swayed just by mere opinions. Test it by the Word of God. Test it by thinking and asking God to reveal to you, have the Holy Spirit in you. Test it by talking to your spouse and really having a conversation about this, because oftentimes we could not even realize it. And there’s a motivation building for something just because of other people’s unbiblical opinions and you don’t even realize it. And it’s building over time and pretty soon it becomes doctrine. It becomes this is super important, deep conviction. This is what we need to do. And you might be a little off the rails and you don’t even realize it, and it might not be the very best thing for your particular kids. And so just remember that that or a lot of times I think there’s a nuance to somebody saying something with power and authority. But really, if you watched it in their own life, it was more nuanced. It wasn’t always done the exact way maybe they said, but it was there was a situational awareness happening and there was an understanding of different kids and the different marriage and all these kinds of things. I think it’s super important. And first, Jon, for one, this is important. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they have God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. And yeah, that’s so important because there’s all kinds of ideas happening now and I.

Think so many parenting philosophies like so many when we’re talking about this specific topic of cookie cutter parenting that God’s Way isn’t cookie cutter, but that there is guidelines that He has in his word. We need to know what those are so that we can discern what false teachings there are in the world. Right. And so I know that just even being on social media at times, I see things promoted different movements, different parenting philosophies, different things like this. And it’s it’s very concerning for me because when they may look good on the outside and you’re like, Oh, that’s interesting. And then you dig a little deeper and you find out that they’re not Christian in root and that it actually teaches some other things that your belief system would be the humanly against, actually. And so it’s important that we do our research, we do due diligence, that we don’t fall for wayward philosophy. But part of that can’t happen unless we do know what God’s word says regarding our jurisdiction and our duty as parents.

Just remember, just because something feels good doesn’t mean it’s best. And often what feels good isn’t best. Yeah, because what is best usually.

Is.

Harder. Yeah. So I always, if something’s easier, here’s, for example, I’ll give you kind of a cheesy example. Here’s a quick way to make lots of money. You’ve seen those things all over the place, right? That’s not true. It’s hard work to make money. It takes diligence. It’s always harder than they’re saying, right?

Would be a scam. So if you see someone going, here’s a fast way to fix your kids behavior and have them be obedient all the time.

By Monday.

At 12:00 am, I think they scam. I just think that like deep down inside, we don’t want our kids to just be performing. You guys like that is truly the heart of why we’re talking about this. We shouldn’t want God doesn’t want us to be performing for anyone. We have an audience of one and it’s him. He doesn’t even want us performing for him. You guys, we. We should do things because we want to glorify him doing everything as unto the Lord right, but not from a heart attitude of Watch me Jesus, because you’re going to love me more if I do this right. No, our relationship with God doesn’t work that way. There’s nothing that we can do to make him love us more. Did you know that? And there’s nothing that we can do to make him love us less. He died on the cross. Past tense for our sins, period. Like it’s finished. And so we need to be careful not to, again, take on a yoke of bondage by burdening ourselves with extra biblical or anti biblical expectations that we see maybe out there that can I just also remind us that maybe are influenced by not seeing a reality and just hearing the good part or seeing the good part.

There’s this real out there that’s that says skip to the good part. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. I know I probably just sang that wrong, but that doesn’t exist in real life. The reality is that we need to try to operate in reality, not constantly desiring to skip to the good part. Because the good part only happens when you’ve done the hard work in them now. So I hope that you guys are encouraged by what we’ve been talking about today, that sometimes what is the best is that we personally as parents are humbled. Sometimes that’s the lesson because God loves art, loves us and wants us to be walking in good character also, and he wants to equip us, right, so that we can actually impact the kingdom of God and the edification of the whole church. So that when we’re teaching, we’re teaching with a message of grace and not prescriptive, do this, do that, but instead having compassion and empathy and understanding. And that only comes from a place of humility and being truly honest with ourselves about what we walked through as parents, what we’re walking through as parents.

And so and so if you’re like after this, okay, what do I do? Well, lean into the Lord. Read Scripture, saturate your mind with the word, because the more you do that, the more you’re going to discern what’s good and not so good, the better. You’re going to be up to stand against bad opinions and wrong opinions and wrong advice and embrace the good wisdom because you’ll have the power of God running through you more clearly. So I think that’s really important to tap into God’s wisdom, to be reading His Word, to be praying for God, to reveal to you the right thing to do for your family. And I mean, that’s the whole reason we built the parenting mentor program, is to give people the scriptures and the practical knowledge to in the education, to become these biblically minded thinkers and to sirnas about the things that really matter.

When you’re asking God for wisdom, you can pray. Lord, help me to recall the Scripture. That is what you want me to do right now, like lead me, Lord. And I think that when we saturate, when we do the work that God calls us to do in saturating ourselves and abiding in Him and learning what the Word says and educating us ourselves on like what is the theology of parenting? What is the vision? God’s vision for parenting? What like.

How do you get to.

The heart of how do you get to the heart of your kids talking about purity, whether that’s physical, spiritual, all, all different aspects of purity. When we talk about obedience, discipleship, these are like literally the main sessions in the parenting program. And that’s so that parents have a full understanding of what God’s word actually says regarding these things so that we aren’t swayed by the opinions of the world. So we can stand firm, stand strong and go, Nope, I know my identity is in Christ. I know that that is a wayward philosophy. I am not going that direction. But you can’t guard your heart or guard your family or protect your family if you don’t know. And so, yes, the first step is sinking into the word. We have the same word you guys have. The Bible is good for teaching, rebuke, exhortation, all the things. And we just want to encourage you guys more than anything to reevaluate. Like if you’re in a place where you feel heavy and overwhelmed in your parenting, maybe it’s because you’ve you’ve fallen into a comparison trap of bondage. Maybe it’s because you’ve imposed extra biblical expectations from other people. Maybe you’ve been people pleasing too much in your parenting, and maybe you need an encouragement from the Word of God to stand firm in the things that He calls all of us to as parents, but in the liberty and freedom that he also gave us as a gift when Jesus died on the cross.

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. Com 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

Every family has a culture, a way about it. The culture in a family is revealed by the fruits within the family dynamics and relationships, the family morals, beliefs, and convictions, but it’s also more than that. The family culture is displayed most practically by the interactions between the members within the family, the atmosphere, and the morale, if you will. 

All of these things can and should be shaped and modeled by the parents, but often in today’s culture what we witness is parents less engaged than ever, over delegating their God-given authority, children influencing and manipulating their parents’ beliefs and convictions, and “worldly” authorities limiting or undervaluing the impact of the Father and Mother in the leadership of their children. The result is catastrophic and legacy damaging. 

In this podcast episode, “Building a New Family Culture This Summer” is relevant anytime time of year or season, just pick a few months to engage and implement what we have taught in this episode and begin seeing real change occur at the heart level of your family culture. There is no time to spare. God has given you a unique insight into the realities of your family dynamics and the hearts of your children. Dig in, invest time, love well, and serve faithfully. I promise you won’t regret it.

Main Points in This Episode:

1. What IS culture.
2. What IS TRULY YOUR FAMILY CULTURE? Spiritually, Relationally, Emotionally, Home Atmosphere, Financially, Politically, Character-wise, Manners, Learning, Work Ethic, 
3. What Do You Want as Your Family Culture? You could easily make an enormous list, but don’t, just pick a few things to execute and implement. 
4. Make a Strategy with your spouse then share it with your family. (1. Communicate (this is where you discuss and evaluate) (2. Alignment (you need to be a united front) (3. Vision (communicate the potential and hopeful fruit to come from ____ to the kids such as “closer relationships” and then make sure you and your spouse write down your vision somewhere it will be an encouragement to you, 6 weeks in when you need a reminder to motivate you).
5. Commit to Your Family Culture, Own it, and Lead Well. 
6. Pray with your spouse and invite someone in your community to be praying for your family too bc we know the enemy will be threatened by your proactive and intentional leadership and try to discourage you. You MUST have prayer support. 

Scripture From This Episode:

Gal. 5:22-23 – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

Romans 12:2-4 – “ And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:”

Habakkuk 2:1-2 – “I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.”

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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 21 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 following. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast.

Hey, guys.

We’re so glad you’re here. We’re amped about this topic today.

This is going to be a slightly different outline. I told Isaac when we were planning out I go, this is kind of like it’s an empowering coaching call with Isaac and Angie on family culture. Tell them the title, babe.

So build a new family culture this summer. So what is culture? We’ll talk about that in a second. But this is a huge impact. I mean, when you do this, when you recalibrate and you meet as a married couple and you do these things we’re going to talk about, it really can make a massive difference. You may not see it immediately, although some of it, but where you really will see it as you go into the fall and the fall matters, a lot of people getting home, school going and all kinds of different things.

We were even just talking about like the different questions that people have been sending into us because we like to keep the podcast relevant. Yeah. And, and really going to meet you where you’re at in that season of life. And a lot of you guys have been such faithful listeners to the podcast. You’ve been so awesome at leaving reviews and five star ratings on iTunes and sharing with people. We appreciate that so much. And so we know that you guys have been faithful listening regularly on Tuesday, so hopefully you’re listening to this and you’re like, Oh, this is perfect for me right now because yes, the summer is here. And and if you’re not, guess what? You can do this any time of year. Absolutely. But where we are right now, it’s the beginning of June. And we realize that a lot of people are either trying to decide if they’re going to homeschool or their kids are just getting out of school and they’re going, oh, wow, my kids are going to be home for the summer. And and maybe at my the kids don’t have the closest relationships that you like or there’s just different things, right?

You want them to be more obedient or they see character qualities that could be improved, all kinds of different things from a variety of things you’ll discover as you do this process. So by the way, courageous parenting, all the show notes, free resources and our courses and so forth are there too. So anyways, let’s dive in. So awesome. We the first thing that’s very important when you’re well, let’s talk about culture first because that word sometimes gets misconstrued because what you say your family is about is one thing, but what your family actually is about, the attitudes, behaviors, the, the, the, all those things that is your culture. So it is the ethos of the organization. It’s what is it’s the unwritten rules, if you will. It’s how the behavior actually happens. It’s the rhythms of communication. It’s it’s all of the things. And so if you disrupt that, give it a positive disruption by purposefully recalibrating and looking at what is and then what you want and doing something about it, it makes a massive difference in your family.

That’s right. And, you know, it was interesting as we were getting started talking about this just before we shot, one of the things that we talked about when we first started the courageous parenting podcast, you guys, I’m talking season one podcast, episode one and two. They are largely about family culture. And I want to I want to share that with you because if you’ve been listening for a brief period of time, I would encourage you to go back and listen to those first two episodes also along with this to help you, because you might find more encouragement in that as well.

Isn’t that interesting? Just let’s take a note on that for a second. I’m glad you brought that up because let’s see, God called us to start Courageous Parenting Podcast. And in the very beginning, when you have zero audience, you want to capture your audience by doing the most relevant episodes possible in your first few episodes. And we pick vision and culture as our first two.

That’s right.

And and while we believe that’s right, it’s not a intuitive choice. And intuitive choice would be how to get your kids to respect you, how to have more obedient kids, how.

To get rid of ageism, how to help siblings have better relationships and and your kids to be best friends with each other.

And we did all those later. Yeah, but the first two are. So that’s how important this is. So we’re bringing it back with some new twists in this episode.

And honestly, you guys, you know, if you’ve been listening to the podcast for any amount of time, you know that we’re like digging into scripture and we have some just fresh ideas and things that we’re going to talk about. But today I really hope that you have pen and paper nearby, or you can listen to this a couple of times or maybe send it to a spouse so that you both hear it. Because we’re going to give you some steps, actually some action steps as we like to call them when we’re doing these kinds of things with people and with our family. Right. That are going to help you to actually be more intentional in the moment as you are proactively moving forward to either recalibrate. Right. Or to build a.

New.

Family culture. Maybe you don’t have a family culture that you’ve actually created purposefully, but every family has one, right?

There’s always a culture. You’re either purposely improving it or it’s digressing. Naturally, there is no in between, right? And so now.

There’s either a healthy one or an unhealthy.

And in a marriage, sometimes one of you might think it’s better than the other. And so it’s really important to talk to each other, because if you come to the spouse and you go, Well, I really think we need to work on a family culture, they might go, Well, I think we have one. But a lot of times we’re thinking what we have is good, almost subconsciously compared to maybe others around us. That’s not a good thing. But that’s kind of naturally what happens with people, and that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re going, What is best? What could it be? And if we’re not working on it, then we don’t know. And by the way, when you do what we’re about to say, you will discover to become more transparent now, you have to be really honest with yourself when you do this first step.

No, it is tinted glasses.

It is super important. So not in comparison to other families. You don’t want to do that. Let’s get that out of the way. And then what you want to do is sit down together and talk about what is what is the actual reality, not what we would like, not what we think we’re good at. What actually is in your family under a number of topics. We’ll give you a few here, but you might add to it.

That’s right. So before we dive into these different topics, we wanted to share a passage of scripture with you guys.

So we’re going to read from Galatians 522 through 23. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law so important. We want to think about those things. It’s just some of the things to kind of evaluate where our family is at. What is your culture? And related to those things, is there self-control? Is the gentleness.

Right? Is there peace in your home, in your atmosphere? I would say that, you know, as especially as kids are coming home from school or maybe you’re breaking for the summer if you are, I know that for us, our family kind of does some different things in the summer months than normal, right? So the schedule changes. But when schedules change or transitions happen, say you’re having a baby, right? There’s another transition. Maybe dad changes jobs or maybe you move or just some of the kids come home from school. All of these are transitions that can rock the boat and potentially the peace in the atmosphere of the home can get rocked a bit, do you know what I mean? And so as the reason why we wanted to bring up this scripture more than anything to you guys is to remind you of what the fruit of the spirit is. And if we’re people who are purposefully trying to walk by the Spirit, there should be evidence within our family culture of that because we are the leaders of each of our homes. And so if there isn’t peace in your home, you’ve got to take ownership over that as a leader and go, How can I influence the peace to come back? Well, it always goes back to coming back to Jesus. Are you washed in the Word? Are you focused on him or are you anxious? Are you competitive with neighbors? Are you competitive with other people? Are you stressed out about finances? Are there things that you are discontent with, if you will? There are so many things that I could literally just like do do that could potentially create unrest.

So what is the spiritual condition of your home? What is the spiritual condition within you, your spouse, your kids? And think about that in terms of what’s good. Yes. We don’t want to just focus on all the bad. What are the good things? But also what are the things that need to be improved, maybe with a couple of the kids or with yourself or whatever it is, and kind of identify those things so that you can distill down what are the most important things to work on because you can’t work on everything at once, but you do want to be aware of those things, which is important.

So what, what are some of the things that we could if we were to rattle off a list? This is why I was saying, like maybe potentially having a piece of paper or journal or even just your your notes section and you’re on your iPhone or your android would be helpful. We want to list off some things to get you thinking. This is going to be like a brainstorming session of what is potentially in your family culture currently. Evaluate it and we’re going to go through a list of things. All of these things actually should be evaluated, right? Isaac Yeah, and so it’s not necessarily just like, Oh, that work ethic. That’s definitely something our family needs to work on. But I’m not going to really pay attention. No, we need to evaluate all these things because when we have like a concerted effort in a specific time period, like where this podcast is building a new family legacy this summer, or you could even say improving your family legacy this summer, your family culture, your family culture this summer. And if you’re doing it in the fall, in the next 12 weeks, during the fall, how could you do something to do a positive disruption like you were talking about? And would that mean bringing on new projects? Well, you can’t even get to the what would it look like until you’ve evaluated this list of what is currently.

And it might change even where you vacation vacation how you vacation. Right. Your approach to it this summer the way you set that up based on things you need to work on as a family.

Even just like family projects around your house or productive fellowship, helping other people who maybe have property. What are ways like so so start thinking creatively. We’re not going to give you all the answers because everybody has different situation. But we’re going to go through we’re going to list these things, right? So the first one is learning. And I would say that when we say learning, ask the question does does my family culture love learning? Now, learning is not just some people might automatically go to reading, well, my kids don’t like reading or whatever. The learning happens many different ways. We’re not going to get deep into that. Our previous podcast was on How to Cultivate a Teachable Heart. I would say that learning is part of that, so you should definitely listen to the last week’s podcast. Also, if you guys are in the Be Courageous app, I have to take a moment. My son Ethan, who is 11 years old, just did a podcast, right? Isaac What was on it was on cultivating a love for reading.

Love for reading, which he has recently. He was he was a slow start and he became really good.

We do this like kind of not a game, but it’s kind of a contest that we’ve done with our kids over the years where they there are certain books that also have been made into movies that are appropriate for kids to watch. Right? Kind of like how Little House is. And that was what we did with our oldest kids, like when they would read Little House on the Prairie, then they could watch Little House on Prairie. And so we’ve done that recently with him with some bigger books, and he just really started loving it. So anyway, he talks about his experience with that and you can listen to those podcasts in the app.

So what we’re talking about right now is looking at what is in your family. We talked about learning spiritual. How about family closeness? What is the level of family closeness among the siblings, amongst all of you?

Yeah. And even just thinking about when you talk about closeness, you can evaluate the trust, right? Like do your kids trust you? Do you have a close relationship where they trust you to come to you? Maybe that’s something you need to work on. Or maybe there is a lack of closeness between siblings, specific siblings. Maybe you have four children and two of them are just not getting along. Maybe this summer is when you actually have them room together if they’re the same gender and that’s appropriate. You know, if you’ve been listening to our podcast for any length of time, you know that Isaac and I run towards those situations and we kind of group and pair and partner those kids up. Another good example of how to do that. If you have two kids that are just butting heads and not getting along, make them be team members on a project. We have Dish crew and we’ve oftentimes paired up kids that had a harder time working together. That’s a great example. You could do that all summer long. You could say, Hey, you’re in, do it for a month, and if you guys can’t learn to work together, it’s going to be all summer.

So that’s one cooperation in your family. How about work ethic? How’s the work ethic in your family and so forth? How about fun?

That’s a good.

Thing to evaluate. Do we have.

Fun? I mean, think about like think for a moment and look back on your childhood. Do you have memories of having fun with your family? I think that. There is like if we love each other and we we really want to have a culture where in a legacy where our kids look back and they respect us and they want to raise their kids like how we raised our kids. Part of that is that you take time out to appreciate the hard work that you did together and that you really enjoy having fun together just as much as you enjoy working together, just as much as you enjoy supporting one another and cheering one another on. All these things are important, right?

Yeah. How about financial or character qualities? Just all the different character qualities. That’s kind of why we started with that scripture or obedience, you know, to parents.

What about even just other character qualities like lying? If you have like a specific like 12 weeks where you had evaluated something that maybe this kid struggling with this and this kid struggling with that, or our family needs to have fun together, for example, or our family needs more time where we’re actually just enjoying each other. Because this year has been a really hard year and maybe somebody died or, you know, like evaluating and putting a real verbal communication to it. This is going to require communication with your spouse, and we’re going to talk about that later in this podcast. But like really putting a label on it is super important for for this project of actually intentionally engaging your family culture and creating change. So the goal in this section, when you’re going through the what is my culture section you’re going on, what are the things that my current culture is? And then the next thing we do is well.

So the second thing is the it’s what are the things that are most important to improve? And so you’re looking through this, you can’t improve everything. But what are the most important things to improve? I did want to add one to what is which is service and generosity. So maybe those are a couple to add. But once you’ve looked at what is what are the most important things to improve and distill it down, you know, if you come at your family with we’re going to change everything, that usually isn’t going to go very well. It’s you pick a few things, but what are commonalities as you listed on a paper, all the different things that are what is that you want to improve? What are some of the commonalities? What are what is something that you could drive forward with your words over time that would impact many of those things? So we’re looking for a few things. I can think in past one of them was generosity eagles, not seagulls. These are cultural driving statements that we’ve used that really encompassed many different things producers versus consumers and a consumer world of social media and internet and all these things. We’re going to be producers or consumers. Look at all the production of this happen in the last four years since we started driving that in our family culture. Yeah. From a in terms of producing content from producers producing wood shelves. Luke to, you know, all these different things you can kind of see as you look back. You can look back. And it’s not that we don’t consume, it’s just that’s an example of we did this process, we’ve done it many times and we analyze what do we want to improve and then what are the most important things to improve? You might star them or something like that.

Yeah. And, and I would say to, I just want to encourage you guys like Isaac said, we do this like rate like regularly throughout the year. It’s not just a one time of year kind of thing, but we definitely thought that this was important because there is a transition period that hits when the seasons change so drastically, right? There’s the good temptation to get outside and and do more activity, whether that’s working in a garden or playing spike ball on the beach, which is what our family likes to do. Yeah, but the reality is, is that when there’s a transition like that, where even the daylight you get more daylight because the sun is up earlier and it’s up later, and so you have more hours to accomplish things. So it’s we really have this unique opportunity to seize the moment, if you will, and make real change. But like Isaac is saying, you got to take the rose tinted glasses off and evaluate all these different things and go, What is the culture and what do I want it to be? What change needs to happen? And I would say even like probably do a number system in evaluating which ones are most important to you or are not just to you. But can I just say like what is most important to God if there is a character issue like obedience or trust, or if there is a specific sin that a child is struggling with? I would even like evaluate those things and go, these are highest priority regarding dealing with them and then putting those at the highest priority.

So now you have your most important things prioritize to improve. But still you might. Let’s say you came up with ten things to improve. You still want to distill that down because what often happens when people do things like this is they make a great plan that doesn’t get executed and an executed plan just leads to guilt. And you don’t want to live a guilty life. You don’t want to put energy into something that actually doesn’t do anything because it’s too hard to implement. I’m all for simple implementation, and in order to do that, you can really only drive forward 1 to 3 things. So as you look at your list and you think about that, you need to steal it down to 1 to 3 core statements or small phrases that you’re going to bring meaning to in your family and you’re going to never stop talking about. So all summer long you’re going to talk about these things and weave them in. They’re going to be part of your family meetings, breakfast or dinner or whenever you do them. They’re going to be part of, you know, prepping for going somewhere or these kinds of things.

It’s really important. It can be you can weave it into how you do your vacation and different things this summer. It brings a sense of purpose and focus in your marriage to really influence forward culture. Now you might think do simple statements or a few sentences repeated over time actually make a difference? Well, let me ask you, does advertising work? Yes. Now, we all think the advertising doesn’t work on ourselves. At least some people think that. But it actually really works. Right? I said this in one other podcast, but don’t think Pink Elephant. And you can’t not think about a pink elephant when I say that. It’s true. So your words have unbelievable power. I didn’t come up with that. That’s from a book. But it has unbelievable power. And especially with your kids. And if you repeat something over and over again over a long period of time, it does influence them. The problem with a lot of leadership with parents and in the business world actually is that we’re constantly shifting what we talk about so we don’t get traction like we hope to.

Hmm. Yeah. So it takes patience, and we have to be really clear in our communication. So if you are struggling with knowing the right words to use, hopefully this podcast gives you guys some inspiration to be clear. And I just want to encourage you to that, you know, we say this a lot, but kids will rise to the level of responsibility you give them. And that is true as far as instilling some new things. So as you are trying to figure out what you want to do, think out of the box, think bigger than you might think you would think for your seven year old, for example. But the same goes for the words you use. You can use words like vision and culture with your kids when they’re four or five, six and seven. Respect the intelligence that God created them to have and challenge them. This is the time like if you are building a family culture to start even using that family culture. In our family culture, we are kind to one another. In our family culture, we don’t speak to one another disrespectfully or we don’t interrupt. Right. Those are some things that you would catch us potentially saying to kids under six. Right. And then for kids that are middles to preteens, you might hear us saying things like in our family culture, we get our chores done without having to be asked. Right. Or in our family culture, when you see someone needing help, you ask how you can help.

Another example that we’ve done forever is there’s a bad word in our family, and it’s the word or two words I can’t and it’s okay to need help, but it’s not okay to say I can’t. That vocabulary is usually used in a defeatist attitude. And so you can look at look at your list. How many things does not saying I can’t impact? Well, it impacts work ethic, it impacts cooperation, it impacts fun. Because when somebody is saying, I can’t someone else is not having fun, the character qualities, all these things instead of positively instead of saying, Oh, I can’t, positive thing, can you help me to a sibling? Right. That is also encouraging cooperation.

Obviously, people are not going to ask for help if it’s not a muscle that they have exercised, which requires humility, actually. And so there’s this level of like what is the spiritual character quality that God wants us to be intentionally instilling and encouraging in our child humility? Yeah. And then what would be the fruit of it walked out that they can ask for help.

And so if ever an actual bad word gets said around our kids or media somehow slips out a modestly bad word, but even still a bad word comes out. I always say bad word because I acknowledge that that’s just side note, but I do the same when I hear I can’t. So what is happening there growing up in a way of learning how to ask for help positively, but not having a defeatist attitude, instead being resilient and resourceful? Right. That is part of our culture. Yeah. And that just gives you another example. So the third step is the first step is what is second step is what’s most important to improve. And as you talked about prioritizing that, which is great. And the third thing is identify the strategy and we kind of talked about this a little bit already, but you got a scripture verse.

Yeah. So you guys, you know that we quote from Romans 12 to exhaustively sometimes. But I was even thinking about this concept where it says here, do not be conformed to this world, first of all, and then stop right there. Isn’t it easy for our family culture to become conformed to the world, to the influences that are either unintentionally or intentionally allowed into our home? When you’ve had your kids either at school or even Sunday school or at a neighbor’s house or anywhere, they are being influenced and they can be become somewhat conformed to the influences of whatever has been there. And then that can change the culture in your family. This is God’s word in Romans 12 to do not be conformed to this world. So we need to evaluate our family cultures, our family culture conform to the world. And in what? Was specifically as it conformed to the world. Is there too much media happening on phones, for example? That would be one example of being too conformed to the patterns of the world. The next part of that verse says, But be transformed by the renewal of your mind. This is an ongoing thing. That’s what this is saying. Be transformed by the renewal of your mind. It’s not a one time transformation of the renewal of your mind. This is something that we have to continually do because we as humans get influenced by each other, by our contacts, by our friends, by our churches, by the things that we listen to all the things.

And so right now is the perfect time as you’re evaluating your family culture to go what has influenced me, what is influencing my kids? And we need to spend more time in the Bible and prioritize that. It says By testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. God’s will for your life is God’s will for your life, our other people’s will for you influencing what you’re doing in your family culture and how you’re raising your family. We need to be aware of that because the truth is, is that God has a will. You have a will. I’m going to just say it. The enemy has a will and the world has a will. And we have to be aware of these influences and our own flesh also, and submit that to God and go, Lord, is this your will? And then the last thing I want to share in this particular chapter is we’re going into identifying the strategy, is that we need to recognize that our kids are part of a team. We talk about team parenting as a team, but also being a team as a family, and that is a huge family culture thing.

Is your family a team? Are you and your spouse a team? And do your kids see you being a team? Do they see you as a team supporting one another? These are all really important, pivotal questions in Romans, chapter 12, verse three. It continues on and it says, For by the grace given to me, I say to every one among you not to think of himself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. So each of us have been assigned a different measure of faith and four in as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same functions. So we though many are one in the body of Christ in individually members of it, having gifts differing according to the grace given us. Let us use them. I bring that up because our families, we talk about this in the parenting mentor program more in depth, but our family is an image bearer of the body of Christ, just as our marriage is an image bearer of the relationship between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church. And so our family your family is like a mini body of Christ. It’s a place where your kids are going to learn how to use their spiritual gifts.

It’s where they’re going to make their faith their own. It’s where they’re going to start practicing, serving, helping, administration, worshiping, teaching, even. They’re literally like all of these things, these gifts that God gives as your kids start walking with Jesus, and we pray that they start walking and knowing him at an early age, because that is not something that is far off for your child. God can do anything. Jesus was sitting with the little children and said, Let the little children come unto me. A little boy gave fish and loaves of bread that then Jesus turned into a miracle and fed 5000 people. Your kids can be used. They are they should believe that we need to speak that life into them and recognizing that there are many members of our family and they all have different functions. So when you’re thinking about your family culture this summer, even think like, how can I encourage my child spiritually to be knowing their spiritual gifts, especially as they are getting older, like we were talking about things like obedience and these these things with like little kids. But an example of when your kids start getting older and you start having teens is you want to be calling out the gifts in them, right as they’re serving and stuff.

And identify strategies. So good, make sure you have alignment. As a married couple, it is super important to remember we’re talking about words and we’re talking about again, how do you influence change? Well, prayer, including God, right? Of course. So you want to pray about this as you’re deciding things, decisions is the next you pray, the decisions you make as leaders and what comes out of your mouth. Can you think of any more prayer? The decisions you make, what comes out of your mouth? I like to keep things real simple. So if we can upgrade and change some of the things that comes out of your mouth. That’s a big deal. And if we can look at this and make some better decisions this summer because of what we’ve realized going through this exercise, that’s another amazing thing. And then if we can pray about the change we seek now, God has honed in on our desires of our heart, which He listens to. So now you have a powerful equation for change and you get aligned together as a married couple and you implement and you hold each other accountable. You encourage each other. You say, Great job. I noticed you did this when you were talking about this, and you encourage each other and spur each other on. That is so important as your strategy. So prayer, it’s upgrade your words and upgrade your decisions this summer that align with the change you’re seeking. And so the words new vocabulary, we naturally say what we say. We’ve so accustomed to our key sentences and our reactions and our rhythms of communication between each other and a family.

It’s so ingrained. It’s so hard to change, but you just change a few little things in that system. It makes a massive difference and so distilled down what I would call levers when you have a lever like a crowbar, and now you’re able to move far more weight than just trying to lift something with your hands. That’s what these key phrases are. So think about a sentence that’s very short and memorable that kids can remember. Eagles, not seagulls, write a lot of thought. Fulness went into that. It’s not simple. And I just we thought about these things together and brainstormed and it’s so important to do that. And once you’ve distilled it down, it could just be one thing. One of our Angie came up with a great one was just generosity. It actually had one of the biggest impacts in our family out of anything we’ve done in this regard. And so I just think it doesn’t have to be a pithy statement. It can be one just one word like that. And so come up with those that hit most as many as you possibly can, 1 to 3 of these things, 2 to 3, I think is ideal. And then you kind of have if you want. Yeah, I think that’s enough. But I think it’s important to have vision to be able to do this well. And right now you don’t have to vision for the next ten years. We’re talking about vision for the fall. Everybody can do.

That vision for like what? What are you going to do in the next 12 weeks and what is it going to what is your family culture going to look like at the end of that? Yeah, like just that simple and you know, communicating. Isaac was talking about how important it is that as a married couple, you have this meeting in your life communicating and you’re in alignment together first and you’re deciding these things. You’re evaluating what is and what you want, right, for the future. And when you’re evaluating these things, you also want to evaluate like what things have happened in your past or when you were a kid growing up that you have been negatively impacting you. Right. And communicate that with one another and hold each other accountable and be willing to speak into each other’s lives and and try to love one another. Well, and as you’re doing that, you’ll start to find out, like, what is your family culture when you put you two together? Yeah, right. Which is going to be slightly different than what ours is. And that’s a good thing. And recognizing that after you have that meeting together, then you’re going to do the exact same thing and having a family meeting, right?

Yeah. Initiate that family meeting, pray together beforehand and you just talk about it should be a real upbeat, visionary kind of meeting where we’re not talking about this big list of things to improve. I would never come to a meeting with just a big list of things that improve instead of come with excitement about the idea that together you can bring more glory to God, that our family can be a light of Christ to the community we’re in, and that we can all grow in maturity, in how we interact with each other, our attitudes, and live more in a peaceful home and give some positive goals versus talk about all the things.

That are right. Exactly. I think that’s so good to remember that as leaders, you don’t want to come down heavy on your kids with this. This should be a fun thing that, you know, when you’re creating vision for new change, you you know, it’s not always going to be fun. There’s going to be some hard, but instead maybe say, hey, guys, this summer is going to be awesome because we’re going to grow closer as a family and we’re going to grow closer as a family by how we work together, but also by how we play together.

And by the way, you might decide instead of renting hotel rooms or a beautiful Airbnb house, that you you get this one room cabin in the woods. And it’s because your desire is to grow closer together.

That’s right. Or maybe instead of flying and getting hotels, maybe you rent an RV or you get a trailer and you drive together and you’re in closer quarters. Right. Like, there’s so many things that you could choose to do differently that are going to potentially create closer relationships because you’re together longer. I just have to share with you for a brief second about our RV trip that we had. It was about four years ago. Now we do a RV trip every summer with our kids now, and it’s usually between three weeks and six, seven, eight weeks long now. But we did this three month RV trip where we saw about 43 states in the United States in those three months. I was pregnant with Eli, who is our eighth, and we had all seven of the kids. It was just before Kelsey went off to college and we were squished into our RV that we’ve had for a long time. But you guys listen, that literally brought our family so much closer simply because we were in closer quarters. It was undistracted time where we were really focused on building relationships. And when conflict arose because it did, because we were in like how many square feet? All of us. I don’t even know. You have to deal with it right then and there. And that’s one of the good boot camp parts of it. But did we have fun on that trip? Oh, yeah, we had fun. So that’s just one example of how like it can be hard but good and fun all mixed into one thing.

Not easy on us. I was working full time. I would go to coffee shops in the day and you would take them with the van. We had a van with us as well and she was super pregnant. Super pregnant?

Yeah. I was in my third trimester. We got home a month before the baby was born and I would take the kids out and do all of the big fun things, and then we’d pick up Isaac after work and he’d join us and we’d do some other stuff.

I would drive at night so I could work the next morning. Oh, man. Like it was it was a marathon for the parents.

It was it was a lot of work. I mean, a lot of the parenting during the day was just me with the kids because Isaac was working or we were driving and then stopping and he’d work. And so but there are things that you can work out. The point is, is, you know, you guys sometimes making that hard sacrifice is really what is best for your family and best for your kids. Sometimes pulling away from your current culture outside your family is super healthy and can help recalibrate.

I would say always help healthy. No matter how good.

Your community.

Is.

It.

Is very important to get undivided attention just with your kids for a couple of weeks, a week, a month, if you can.

Whatever you can. Yeah, I know that for us it was a very pivotal time for us to just make sure that we had our children’s hearts and that we were continuing to build and have deep conversations because we weren’t distracted by all the things. Right. And we were really focused on them. And, you know, there are different seasons when you can or cannot do that. That’s not going to be a make it or break it for building a new culture. If you don’t aren’t able to do something like that this summer, you can still rebuild a new family culture simply by doing the steps that we have talked about.

Your words are the most powerful thing here. And prayer. I would say prayer is the most powerful. But other than what God’s going to do, your words are so important. It is crucial.

Yeah. In fact, that reminds us of the last verse that we’re going to share with you guys today. It’s Inhabit Habakkuk chapter two. This is a time when this is an oracle of Habakkuk the Prophet, and he is kind of speaking to the Lord here in verse one it says, I’ll take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me. He’s talking about God like, what is he going to say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint? So he’s complaining, right? And the Lord answered me right. The vision make it plain on tablets so he may run who reads it? And you know what’s interesting about this passage of scripture, the reason why we’re bringing this up is because sometimes writing things down or making it very clear whether it’s on a dry erase board or just very clear, simple words like Isaac said, generosity. Right. Like with especially with little kids that works super good. Right. But why did God do this specifically? He is telling the Lord answered him and said, write the vision, make it plain on tablets. Where else have we heard this? God also told Moses to write the Ten Commandments on tablets. Why would God do this multiple times in Scripture? Because He designed and created us and he knows best how we learn. And He knows that we need to be reminded, even as adults, we need to be reminded of that culture. When you’re on week three of the summer, you need to be reminded that I am leaving a new family legacy and we can keep doing this. And. But. In the midst of it. You’ve if you haven’t written down or you have it somewhere to remind you when things start getting hard, that is going to be the make it or break it moments here.

Leaders usually don’t unders. They underestimate their influence. Parents underestimate their influence. And why I understand it is because kids don’t always listen and kids aren’t always paying attention. And sometimes we say things and it seems like it doesn’t do anything. But what you say has so much influence. It is huge, the words out of your mouth. And if you craft some new words and bring some meaning to it, it’s not like I say eagles versus eagles and it changes everything. No, it’s the meaning that was brought to that. It’s the understanding behind that, that where. Hey, remember being Eagle? They understand I am to lead. I’m not just to join in whatever the masses are doing, and I’m to help and bring people along and in share.

Not to compromise. That sometimes being an equal is that you are. It can be lonely at times and sometimes.

But that’s because the meaning we brought.

To it, right? Exactly. Yeah. And that kids need to be reminded of that and they need to see you walking in it yourself also, because then it’s there’s closeness that happens when you’re living out something like eagles versus seagulls, right? Which I would say we both have experienced that a lot in our life. And then to be teaching that to our children and watching them make the hard choices and stand up for righteousness when other people are falling away or they’re choosing the wrong thing or they’re falling into the temptation of sin, I am proud that my children are standing strong or choosing to have healthy boundaries that are that they’re going to impart.

And that’s part of the reason why we made the things we made be resolute, stand firm hats and these different things. It’s not obviously it supports the ministry, but the bigger reason we started coming out with merch is that it reminds you as a parent, it reminds you okay to stand firm, you can even make those. You’re part of your family culture if it fits the things that you need help with. That’s right. And so I think that’s so important. We get messages back, you know, oh, it reminds me to stand firm or be resolute, unwavering about my decisions.

I want to just read that verse that’s on your mug here. It’s first Corinthians 16, 13 and 14. It says, Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do. Be done in love.

Yeah, that last part be done in love is key for us dads. It’s so important. Sometimes people just quote the first part. That whole part needs to go together. All that you be, do be done in love. That’s so important. So, hey, the final thing is to commit. Commit. Once you come up with your few sentences, statements commit, a lot of people say they commit, but they don’t stay the course. Why? Because they’re looking for feedback. If you’re a leader looking for positive feedback for something you’re you came up with to influence against the natural negative behavior of humanity. Good luck ever following through with anything. I once had several times, actually, when I would speak in front of the business world, I go Raise your hand in front of leaders. I’d have like 500 or 1000 leaders from me. I go raise your hand if you’ve carefully crafted statements to influence the behavior, the overall culture actually of your organisation, and you never stopped talking about them at the right time, weaving them into things for one year and nobody zero ever raise their hand. And I don’t say that to discourage you, but I do say that to say that it’s not easy because you’re going to go well, is it really makes sense? Is it really is it really going to work? It’s going to work over a long period of time. We’re not giving you a quick fix here, but we are giving you a permanent transformation idea concept over a long.

Period, something that we personally have lived out on a regular basis few times a year where we just evaluate and we go, Hey, kids, boom. This is this is going to be exciting. And you know what? I cannot tell you how much. Just doing this process together when we do our vision sharing dates is literally the most fun that I have, either my favorite dates, I think they’re Isaac’s favorite dates, too. And when we are able to work as a team and implement and see the fruit, that’s what makes it all worth it. So as you’re committing to what you are specifically wanting to see changed in your family and you’re in alignment with your spouse, I want to encourage you guys to be praying together, but I also want to encourage you to think about if there’s someone outside of your marriage that you can each go to and ask for either accountability. And if there’s something that you need to change in order for your family culture to change. Right. But if you could also have someone that you could just say, hey, I’m I’m really wanting to see this change over the summer and I’m I’m making a commitment to really work hard at this. Will you be praying for me? I think that this is literally a game changer. That’s why we’re ending this podcast. On this concept. You need strong Bible believing Christians running the race that are parenting beside you, that want God’s best for you, not that are going to be competitive, not that are going to be laissez faire parents, but they’re going to be intentional, proactive biblical parents who want what’s best for themselves and want what’s best for you. And understand that what is best is God’s best and is God’s way.

Amen. Creating change is never easy, but it’s always worth it.

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