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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 Isaac.

From Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children, as too many from Christian families are walking away from their faith by the age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

We’re praising the Lord that the ministry continues to expand and impact more legacies. We couldn’t do this without you. Whether you pray for us, give us five star reviews, or share on social.

Or even if you purchase courses and merch, or join the Be Courageous app community, enjoy the coffee or support financially. We’re so thankful you are a big part of the 10 Million Legacies movement.

If you want access to all the episodes, show notes, and other biblically based resources, go to Be Courageous Ministry.

History.org join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Hey, guys. Wow. Talking about time management with kids is so important.

Especially.

During this time of year. I mean, there’s a portion of the year where the majority of society tends to have a transitional break. It’s called summer. Um, even if you are homeschooling, a lot of homeschoolers will lighten up. Maybe they’ll do a different curriculum on the side, or maybe they’ll do a light continuation of school that we’ve done that over the years, for sure. Um, but regardless, there’s two really big transition times. Well, then there’s some minor ones, like when there’s Christmas break and so forth. So I think that this topic is relevant all year throughout all seasons of parenting, regardless of how old you are, because time management is something that all people get challenged with at times, right? Isaac.

Yeah. And I think it’s more important than ever. I think we’re going to be seeing more and more Christians entering into entrepreneurship. And even if your children don’t. It is how it is. One of the key attributes of why people make progress within companies too. So either it lends them to be able to do entrepreneurship because they’re self-disciplined, they’re good with their time and they’re proactive at doing hard things and these kinds of things, or those are the people that get elevated in work environments. And if things change and so forth, and people are laid off, usually the most valuable people in a company are the ones that get to stay on.

That’s right. So I also think from a mom’s perspective, how much time management goes into managing my home, managing my day, many different people’s schedules, which at times, you know, when it comes to communication, especially as your family starts getting older and you’re trying to do holidays, it can be even trickier. But that’s why it’s so important that everyone is actually good at managing their time, because then it makes it easier for you guys to be able to find time together. Yeah. And so, um, you know, I think that there’s also this element of, you know, our ministry, courageous Parenting. The tagline for the last five and a half years since we began was raising confident Christian kids for an uncertain world. Right? So there’s this part of that tagline raising confident Christian kids. What do we want for our kids? There are many things that we all want for our kids. Obviously, there’s the spiritual legacy aspect of it, them knowing God and wanting to live for him and live out his purpose for their life. And and that’s something that is unique to each person.

But then there are some collective things that are the same, like the Great Commission and loving God, right? And making him known. But then there’s this other element of like wanting your kids to be successful, wanting them to be productive, wanting them to be able to contribute their best, give their best contribution to society wherever they live, right, or to their communities, to their churches. And the reality is, is when your kids grow up and they launch, right, because we’re raising confident Christian kids to launch from our homes. Time management is one of those skills that I think is is not taught very often in schools. Right. What are your kids actually experience? If they go to a school, what they’re experiencing is someone else managing their time for them. Yeah. And they’re just following along. Stand in this line. Go to this class. The bell rings. Go to your next class. The bell rings. Go to recess. Right. Like. And even with church and different things, there’s a schedule of events, and they’re following the leader, if you will.

Well, there’s a lot of you can read back. The industrial revolution really moved forward, how schools were ran and so forth. And there’s some thought that all of that was to create factory workers, and not that there’s anything wrong with working in a factory. But, you know, it definitely isn’t for everybody, right? People all have kinds of gifts and talents and abilities and and as far as making progress in uncertain times, you know, I think you want your kids to be able to make progress. And, you know, so kids, all that kind of controlled methodology doesn’t really lend to good time management. Also, micromanaging your kids if that’s your style of parenting, that also doesn’t lend well to giving space for your children to manage their own time.

That’s right.

It’s interesting because when I look back over the years, I think I was much more of a micromanager, especially in those early on years of homeschooling. I was really, um, hypersensitive, if you will, to other people’s outside judgments of what our homeschool looked like. And I honestly, I, I had to detox and that took a few years for me to truly understand that homeschool didn’t need to look like what my traditional public education looked like. And I share more about this in the Homeschool Blueprint course, which you can find on our website at Be Courageous Ministry. Org. But essentially, like recognizing that one of the best things that I could teach my kids is giving them some space to have to manage their own time, and that that is actually part of their education, too.

All right. We’re going to get all into this. I do want to start with a scripture. Proverbs 16 three. Commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. First and foremost, teaching our kids to commit their plans to the Lord, to make sure they’re on the right track. To make sure God’s involved in giving them wisdom and so forth. But we have something to talk about.

You know, it’s interesting, as we’re starting this next school year, I’ve shared a couple times about the curriculum that I’m using with the kids this year, where we’re going with master books. And if you haven’t heard of them, I’m going to share briefly if you’re watching our YouTube channel. By the way, I don’t know if you knew this. We have a YouTube channel. We just hit.

Half a million views, 494,000 of which are from this year, because we really just restarted the YouTube.

Yeah. So the YouTube channel got started like the last week of December, probably something like that, right? And so it’s exciting. So thank you to those of you who are watching. But if you are watching it really.

It really is part of the double impact vision for this year. So if you love the episode, please share it. Comment everywhere. It helps the algorithms, whether it’s on YouTube or Apple. Google play Spotify. Subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss them. So they’re teed up and you’re getting a regular flow of the good, courageous parenting wisdom.

That’s right. And you know, every week for the last couple of months or two, we’ve been sharing some really special insights about different sponsors. And one of them that we’ve been working with for the last couple of months is master books. And so if you’re watching the YouTube channel, you can see one of the curriculums I’m using with my eighth grader this year. It’s called The Stargazers Guide to the night Sky by Doctor Jason Lisle. And what I love about this, this is this can be used with seventh graders or eighth graders as a one year curriculum for science, but they actually have like nine different science curriculum options for like 14 year olds, which is like rad, because when you go to like a school, you really only get to choose between like 1 or 2. And what’s also awesome about this? All of master books curriculums are vetted by a team of people who are making sure that it’s coming through a biblical worldview, which obviously is very different than what your kids are going to be getting in a school system as well. And so I’m really excited because this curriculum I’m going to be using with my middle schooler has the teacher guide in it. I’ll just show you briefly for a second. It goes through and tells you that the lessons are about 30 to 45 minutes. Hey, that’s awesome. 30 to 45 minutes. And and I have little kids that’ll probably be listening in because they’re really excited about learning about stars, right. And looking at telescopes and different things in the night sky. Right now we have a lot of smoke. And so we have to wait to get started till the night sky clears up a little bit.

But what’s awesome is the different images, the beautiful images that are in this curriculum on every single page. There’s so much scientific evidence. Um, doctor Jason Lyle is a PhD and a masters as well, and he just kind of goes through it with you, um, through a biblical worldview, how to view the cosmos and just grow in a in a deeper respect and awe of our creator, which that really is the ultimate goal as we’re educating our kids. You know, when it comes to science, wouldn’t we want that to be pointing to our creator and revealing his glory and His Majesty, rather than creating opposition in something that’s going to be tempting our children to doubt? And so I just love that. Meanwhile, I’m also going to be reading Defeating Darwinism with that eighth grader as well, which is a book I absolutely love. But if you are interested in learning about more about master books, we’re actually hosting a giveaway along with them. So go to Master books.com/courageous to enter the giveaway. There’s three different packages of my favorite curriculums, one for either young kids, middle aged kids, and then high schoolers. So you can kind of see the things that we’re using this year as well. Um, and we just absolutely appreciate that there is a curriculum company out there that is is doing due diligence to bring forth really powerful material that is also vetted and in alignment with God’s Word, and not going to be in opposition to it. So. So again, Master Books.com forward slash courageous.

Go check it out. Let’s dive in. So the first, um, point on this teaching your children time management, equipping them for a different world they’re going to be launching into that requires, in our opinion, more self-discipline than ever, an ability to manage their time well is the first thing is, you got to give them opportunities to manage their time. Likely they already have some of those opportunities, but here’s the last piece that’s so important while observing them, they don’t need to know that you’re observing them. It’s better, probably if they don’t. But you need to be paying attention. It’s one thing that your children have things to do. It’s another thing when you’re paying attention with an eye towards how are they at managing their time? How quickly do they get distracted? How much time can they spend in one sitting doing something right?

Uh, are they giving their best, or are they just doing what is gonna be sufficient? Right? Like, that’s a really big deal. Colossians 323 says, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. Serving the Lord Christ.

And it’s good to use these scriptures with your children as you’re teaching time management too. We’re giving you, for at least in this episode, that you should jot down. You can always get the show notes at Courageous Parenting.com to get those, you know, just listed off, and you can take a screenshot of them on your phone and then have those scriptures to as you’re teaching your children time management. But yeah, it’s key.

You know, it hit me, Isaac, one of the things that we talk about so often is that discipleship is not an event. It’s not like a curriculum where you sit down and you have this like specific thing that you’re necessarily teaching, although that will happen in the discipleship process. And we talk more about that in the Parenting Mentor program and the actual like lesson that’s on discipleship, right?

It’s amazing.

Yeah, yeah. And but this actually what we’re going over with you guys today, these these 3 or 4 tips or processes in teaching time management is actually what we say. Discipleship is woven through the fabric of your daily lives with your kids. And so your kids like what we’re going to be sharing with you guys today. They’re not going to feel like mom and dad are teaching at them like pounding in, are you? Did you check things off your box? Did you do this? Did you do that? Although checklists can be really helpful, especially with how certain kids are wired, right? But with some kids it might not actually be the way that is best for them. And so having this subtle woven through your daily fabric, the daily fabric of your lives way of teaching time management is actually going to be much more empowering to them because it will become part of their way of life.

So you’re going to notice you’re going to pay attention. And they might all be in different places with their ability to manage time. Do you know? I mean, you probably heard me say this before, but Harvard Business Review, not that that’s a great publication or anything, but back in my business days, I used to look at it once in a while. They did have a good stat that it takes 17 minutes for someone to get back to the same level of focus they were in before they were distracted with the notification. Looked at their phone, someone said hi to them, 17 minutes.

That’s a long time.

And so the truth is, most people never actually get to their full momentum and best work because most people in society today are distracted within 17 minutes. I know that’s a significant challenge for moms, for example. Right. And part of what they’re doing and.

For dads who work at home.

Yeah, that’s true.

But in addition, if you’re trying to get really good work, like if your children are writing a paper or they’re reading a book or they’re doing art or something like that, it’s going to be hampered with distractions. And so what the challenge today is people are seeking distraction. So you want to raise kids that are not seeking distraction? What do I mean by that? Well, they’re drawn towards there’s this FOMO. They’re drawn towards fear of missing out. For example, did I get a text message? Now, I know if you have younger kids, they probably don’t get text messages, but all, all kinds of parents listen. But you know what’s happening in the other room? They might come out and say, I’m hungry, but really, they just have fear of missing out and they’re distracted from their work.

You know what I think is probably the biggest temptation when I reflect on my own life is when I’m doing something that I actually don’t want to do. That’s when the distraction factor is a harder temptation. Yeah. And I think that we need to recognize that for our kids. So if if a kid doesn’t like science, for example, or math, and you have said, hey, have you done your math homework yet? Right. And they’re like hating that thought it might be harder for them if they have the temptation easily, readily available. So, you know, on this, this would be a perfect opportunity for you to teach some self-discipline to your kids in regards to. Okay, well know yourself. What is your biggest temptation? Getting distracted by checking text messages like you just said. Let’s just use that. Let’s just say that there’s like a high schooler that needs to do math homework, and they hate math, and they just keep going back to the phone. So they’re getting distracted over and over and over again, which means that they’re really never optimizing their focus. Right. And so having that conversation and going, hey, I know you don’t like this, but this is something you have to do. And this is why.

And you need to be self-disciplined and you need to have self-control. And if you can’t sit here at the table and exercise self-control and not look at your phone, then maybe you need to discipline yourself by moving that phone to a different location. So it’s not something that’s readily available for you to grab. And I think that that’s like a perfect example of what it looks like to discipline yourself, and I think that so can I just say, I think that that’s something that a lot of parents don’t think about teaching their older kids. Yeah. To discipline themselves. But the reality is, is the Bible actually charges us to have self-control, to have self discipline. Paul talks about it in regards to bodily. Um, just exercising your body and running your race. And I think that there’s a huge lesson for us in recognizing if we’re going to launch confident kids who are going to be productive. They’re going to work heartily as unto the Lord. They’re going to be reliable, trustworthy, whether they are entrepreneurs or working for a master like we want them to have good, godly character. And so that means that they have to learn self-control and self-discipline. Yeah.

And that’s our second point, which is but it’s more than that. It’s to motivate them to be self-disciplined because nobody really does things with all their ability and motivations.

Unless they love it.

Why? If they understand why it’s beneficial to them. Even the hard things that you’re mentioning that you don’t want to do. How do you get yourself to do those? Because you understand why it’s important. There’s something bigger than the thing that’s important to you, and so you’re willing to do hard things and things you don’t like, because it leads to a greater thing that you do like. And, and I just want my children to be motivated to be self-disciplined people. That could be motivation in and of itself. Why do you follow through? Because you’re working a muscle of being self-disciplined, and if you shortcut this thing, you’re going to shortcut the better things. And so you have to motivate them on what the why is and and motivate me to do that. And I one thing several things you can share with your kids. But people that aren’t self-disciplined, they pretty much stagnate in their roles in life. And if they want expanded roles in life, they have to show that they’re self-disciplined. Not by what they say, not by what’s on social media, but what they actually do, the reality of their life and what people see and in real time. And so Self-discipline is what yes, yields to great entrepreneurship, right? But it also yields to people making progress in businesses and companies as an employee.

People that are proactive can take initiative and get things done. Even the hardest things, and even do those hardest things first, are the ones that looked at as employers. Wow, that person stands out. Their attitude is great, their character is great, but I know they’re going to get it done. And by the way, businesses are ran based on revenue. Okay. There’s some that are purpose driven too, but if there’s no revenue, they’re not going to be able to keep being purpose driven. Revenue matters, okay. And it’s not a bad thing. And when they’re looking at your children, when they’re older, they’re going to care about is this person going to make the company more revenue. And people are proactive, diligent, self-disciplined are the ones that are valuable and that make them X number of more revenue by their actions and can trust them. They’re also people that are considered for leadership, for management, for these kinds of things. And it’s because it’s the same quality that would work well for entrepreneurship when they’re managing their own business. And so self-discipline, they have to be motivated. So painting those pictures, you know, either you’re going to be self-motivated or you’re going to be micromanaged at a lower role in your life.

And that’s a.

Choice because anybody can learn that. Right. And so I think that that’s what it really comes down to is what do they want for their life? Do they see the purpose behind having a choice, recognizing that we do have choices in this life? I think that that’s one of my biggest faux pas, or issues with the public education system, is that there is this underlying, um, compartmentalized way of educating people to make them all fall in line and be a certain way and do a certain thing. And I think that that’s one of the beautiful aspects that, you know, as parents, when we recognize that we can try hard to have out of the box experiences for our kids. Um, even if you can’t homeschool per se, right? Like, what are you doing extracurricular wise, where you can be helping your kids to learn self discipline and learning self discipline? I don’t want you to be confused and thinking that just because your kids are doing a sport where their coach is helping them to be self disciplined in physical exercise, for example, that that is like that is still being managed. Is your child going to continue working out after that sport is over on their own free will, choosing to be disciplined themselves because that if they can take something that they have learned and it becomes a lifestyle that is a choice that they are made and they’re intrinsically motivated to do that, then that thing that they were doing before that sport activity does reap a positive benefit in your child’s life. If it does not, then you need to evaluate and go, okay, so that didn’t work. We’re not going to do that again. Let’s find something else that’s going to help my kid to be intrinsically motivated.

Yeah, because in.

The sports thing, they could be motivated to work out just to win and be stronger and knock people over. Right. That I want to be stronger and bigger and more muscular so we can win so our team can win. What happens when there’s no team anymore?

Right? Yeah.

The motivation if the why is is singularly focused on a sport that’s a problem.

Yeah.

So you know, as parenting like understanding that those can be great. Like pivotal experiences for your kids to understand what it feels like to have a reason for why they’re doing something. But then don’t let it stop there. Like you need to take it a step further and go, okay, so what are you intrinsically motivated to do in your life? And how can we help you to remember that cause remember that motivation and support you in being diligent and focused and committed to what you desire. And I think that that really like and this is something you can even do with a kid who’s playing soccer when they’re nine years old. Like, yeah, that’s great, buddy, but here’s the real thing you should be thinking about. Like, are we having those conversations in the cars with our kids after the games, after the practices?

It even has to do with your littles, your three year old, your two year old, your four year old, your six year old. Cleaning the room, putting toys away. Right? And here’s a scripture you can use with all aged kids, which is Proverbs six six through eight and it says, go to the ant, O sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise. Without having any chief officer or ruler. She prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. Wow, that one is powerful because it is directly talking about the example of not having a ruler, a chief, a boss, for example. Right.

Micromanaging.

Micromanaging, mother. And this one. And you can start this and create intrigue with your kids. Just got to be like the ants. What do you mean, mom? And then you can teach the scripture. It’s such a it gets their attention.

And it really talks about.

Not being a sluggard. What is a sluggard? A lazy person?

Lazy.

It’s self-gratifying seeking comfort only and selfish. Isn’t that what a sluggard is? That’s what leads to those actions. I’m just going to do what feels best in the moment. I don’t care about the future. I’m not even thinking about the future. Not even thinking about the ramifications of me eating cake every single day. I’m not thinking about it. I just want comfort. And if you raise kids that only want comfort, they’re going to have a terrible life.

Mhm.

Seeking comfort. The Bible doesn’t give us prescription to seek comfort. Mhm. It actually gives something very different. Now it’s okay to live comfortable lives and enjoy things and rejoice. And God made raspberries taste good for a reason. He could have made them not taste so good. Right. There’s lots of God is good, and he wants us to enjoy and have joy and so forth. But it’s not. But our purpose in life is not to seek comfort. Mhm.

Let’s go on to the third thing that we wanted to talk to you guys about. And it’s teaching this concept of time management to kids, because we know that God calls us to be stewards and biblical stewards of the things that he’s given us, and he’s given us all an undisclosed amount of time that we are to steward. Time is truly our greatest commodity. You know, Isaac and I are pretty passionate about that, and we try to do our best with our time. We don’t really have extra time for laissez faire, um, sitting around mulling about things because we we’ve chosen certain things in our life that we feel called to. You may not feel called to them, but they’re things that we believe God has called us to, um, whether that’s a specific lifestyle, so that we can be teaching certain children those skills because we we wonder if maybe that’s part of their purpose that God has for their life. And we want them to learn and grow in that as much as possible, or even just looking at the world around us and saying, Lord, you’ve given us this land, how can we steward it for your glory and bless other people and take care of our family and be tending the land.

And I think there’s something really powerful in that. And I know that that’s not for everybody, but for us, that’s something that we’ve been called to. We know that because God gave us this place, and in that there has been a lot of lessons, there’s been a lot of lessons as far as like being diligent, having hard work ethic, being faithful, being a wise manager of the land. Um, you know, recognizing, oh, wow, I can’t handle that. So maybe that has to go off the plate. And I have to say no to that so that I can say yes to this actually producing more fruit. Right. There have been sections of the property that were like, you know what? This year is not the year for that section. It’s just not. And you just you have to be okay with that so that you can say yes to the garden or yes to having cows or whatever it was. Right?

You know, it makes me think of, too. I was just thinking this this morning, actually. Do you ever get that moment of feeling overwhelmed? I think everybody raises their hand to that, right? Yeah. And, uh, I feel overwhelmed sometimes, And it’s a human feeling. And we have a choice when we’re feeling that way. Okay. You can feel weakened by it and stay weakened by it. Okay. And that is just going. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do. And you just kind of. And then you let it sit and you just keep doing things, and then that’s not helpful because that’s still there. You’ve allowed that feeling to be permanent. And I just refuse to allow that feeling to be permanent. I just refuse it. I will not allow being overwhelmed to stay because it weakens me even further from getting my things done that I need to get done that God’s calling me to do. I don’t need to know how I get everything done. I don’t even need to feel like I’m gonna get everything done. I live in an existence where there’s always things that don’t get done, actually. And you know what? Executives of big companies, they live in that existence, too. And so it just depends on what you’re allowing God to do through you. You know, we just committed to planting a church. Why? Because we feel like we’re being obedient to God to do that. Well, what about all the work you do, Isaac? Full time for the ministry? Yep. I’ve got to keep doing that. That is the most important thing we do. This ministry is impacting people in 194 countries. And it’s incredible the impact way over a million people are going to be impacted this year by the ministry. And we thank you for your support, prayers and giving and all the things we need it and it’s important. But I get a little overwhelmed sometimes because I take on some more. So how does that get to give? Well, I got to get better. And that’s the choice. That’s the choice I make is like, okay, I got to trust God and I’ve got to get better.

And there are some I’ve got to say no to.

Also. And I think that that’s part of prioritizing, which is a really important key. It’s another thing that we want to talk to you guys about, and teaching your kids the importance of prioritizing when it comes to their time. You just can’t do it. All right. And so every human’s been given the same amount of hours in a day. And so choosing to prioritize what is the most important and looking at those different things and going, okay, what enables the other things to get done as well? Those end up being pretty high on my list. Prioritizing relationships is always at the top, whether that’s relationship with God, my husband or my kids. And I think that that’s something that your kids experience. That’s an experiential. They’re going to see that modeled by how you communicate and how you are with them, right. Like if you’re willing to stop doing the dishes or sweeping to kiss the boo boo. Now, I will say there are times when I struggle with that. I’m not naturally artistic, at least not in the fine art sense. So when my kids showed early on that they loved art, I wanted to nurture that creativity. That’s why we love creating a masterpiece. They’re award winning art programs are for everyone ages four ish through 104. Plus, your family gets to practice drawing, using watercolors, charcoal sculpting, painting, and so much more. And the best part? You get to do it all together. Building relationships, making memories, and letting creativity grow. Visit creating a masterpiece.com/courageous to sign up for one low rate for your entire family that’s creating a masterpiece.com/courageous because anyone can create a masterpiece.

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

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

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

This class has just really rocked my world.

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

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

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

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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’m just going to be really honest with you. I’m not perfect at this. Sometimes I get in my driven, productive mom mode and I’m like, on a mission getting this house picked up. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. And then all of a sudden, a little three year old comes around the corner. I need help, and I’m just like, uh, inside. But I think to myself, I don’t want them to see me grumbling. I don’t want them to feel like a burden. And I go, what is it? And I like, I have to lead myself again, not perfect at this all the time, but but I’m sharing this with you guys because when you’re prioritizing relationships, that’s one example of how it can look prior to prioritizing relationships isn’t always, um, not doing things in order to go out one on one with a kid, although that is important to prioritizing relationships is the daily grind. Little things moment to moment, just as much as it is finding the one on one time with a kid, it’s just as much showing up and being there cheering them on at a spikeball tournament as it is, listening for hours to another kid, talk about a relationship issue or wanting advice on something. And I think that that’s the thing is, like when you are God honoring and you pray that prayer that we read to you, that was from Proverbs 16 three about the Lord directing your plans and committing your ways to the Lord. When you’ve done that, then he burdens in a good way your heart with the the importance of understanding that the first thing he’s called you to is eternal.

And that’s relationships. And so teaching your kids to put relationships over rules, relationships over getting things done is incredibly important. At the same time is how important it is to teach your kids to have good work ethic and follow through and get their things done. And so prioritizing is like a whole nother topic. But this is the thing. Like when you’re having this conversation with your kids because, yeah, you could sit down, you could talk about this at a family meeting. Right? And that would be incredibly powerful for your kids. But they’re really what’s going to be the most impactful is the unspoken, lived out, day by day faithfulness that they experience in their relationship with you throughout your life with them. And I think that that goes un undervalued. It’s undervalued. It’s not something that’s necessarily like, oh, you had me read this specific book on time management, and I really wish you would have taught me how to fill out a planner and this and that, although those things are incredibly important, and I have done that with my older kids at different points, but I also think that there’s this element of like, as humans, we need to have the ability to choose in the moment to have Self-control. Prioritize relationships, but also be a hard worker at getting things done. Understanding that, okay, I can either fold these blankets and put them in the basket and it can take me five minutes, or it can take me ten minutes. If it takes me five minutes, then I have five extra minutes to sit down and read a book.

To my kids.

So now you’re modeling it, which is our first tip. We’re going to rattle off some tips here. You’re modeling for your children how to be. And it just so happens in most homes moms are around the children way more. And so I think it’s really important that moms model good time management and putting relationships first and getting things done and so forth, and that’s hard. There’s a lot of pieces to that. But yeah. Um, here’s a tip to to give your children list management okay. So making lists people make lists in different ways. But it is proven they’ve done studies that people who get everything out of their mind that they need to do or want to do onto paper or electronic device or something. I like journals for kids, then they are not circling those things in their heads anymore, wondering or worried about forgetting them. When people most worry about forgetting things is when their head hits the pillow and they’re thinking about their day, they’re thinking about tomorrow and these kinds of things. And worry can set in simply because they did not write it down. When people actually write something down, they don’t have to. The mind relaxes about it because they know it’s somewhere. And now you can have your best thinking, creative thinking, positive thinking, things like that.

So getting things out of your mind onto paper is vital. Now, when you have things on paper or list the way I do it and the way I’ve taught my kids to do it, is to have a today list and have it this week list at a minimum, have those two lists and here’s how this can flow. So on Monday, you make your list for this week and you make your today list, which come from things on from this week that need to be done. Right. Well, what happens tomorrow? Well, tomorrow you look at you crossed off everything you got done for today. If something didn’t get done for today, what happens tomorrow? Will you put it on to Tuesday? And you’re crossing things off of this week list? What if something just popped up that you need to do? You put it on either this week because today is too full. I don’t want to do it today. It’s not as important as other things is today. And you put it on this week and then tomorrow I can decide if it goes on Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, you know. So you’re managing these two lists? I found that to be incredibly. I can get so many things done.

I don’t miss things. I can run customer service for the ministry, which I’m going to delegate soon to content production, to video production, to content creation, to social media, to, you know, the church plant stuff to, you know, things with the family around the property, all the different things, financial investments, different things that are going on. How? Because I have huge lists that I’m checking off and knocking things out. How does that now you know what it also enables you to do? Celebrate. You can’t celebrate if things are meandering in your mind and not written down, because you’re still meandering about a couple of things you never wrote down. Instead of celebrating about the nine things you got done. And so it’s really important that their celebration. What does it enable you as a parent to do if your children are doing this? It enables them to celebrate with their parents because the parents know they can celebrate because they’re like, mom, look, I got these things done, which is super cool. Now what does it also enable you to do? Prioritize. Prioritize the things that are most important, usually the hardest things, and teaching your children to do the hardest things first. The hardest things first.

That’s one of the biggest. How do you know.

What’s the hardest thing if you don’t even have a list of things, you haven’t even been thoughtful about what your things are. See, everything’s out of whack and it becomes this just overwhelm, chaotic brain thinking, cycling that ruins your best thinking and positive nature about yourself.

It probably even ruins productivity because you never know if you’re actually getting things done. Or maybe you don’t feel good about the things that you’re getting done because you have this big thing looming that you should have gotten done first, right? Like so. For me, if I don’t get the hardest thing done first, then it just actually makes every other thing that I’m trying to get done agonizing in the process, because I feel this guilt of needing to get that other thing done. And so it really is an important it’s an important skill. I’m going to call it a skill because this is really something that you have to learn, just like how learning to sit and listen and be still is a skill. Right? And it’s it’s counter to how we were created as humans, right? To actually do the hardest thing first. Most people try to avoid the hardest thing. So it’s counter to who we are in our human nature to do the hardest thing first. It’s also counter to who we are and our human nature to be still and just be in the presence of the Lord, and to hear from him and wait patiently for him to guide you and to be willing to go through whatever sanctification that he’s doing in your heart, so that you respond in the way that you’re supposed to respond to something. Right? And that’s a process.

And so I think that when it comes to like getting things done, there is so much more that is actually taught to our children that is equipping their character, that is building their character. That’s far beyond getting things done. It’s life is not about getting things done. It’s not about how much we got done compared to how much that person got done. It has nothing to do with that. It’s about it’s it’s about the Lord, actually. And so when we put too much of an emphasis on getting things done, getting things done, getting things done, which is sometimes what if you’re just teaching your kids list making only that can actually be portrayed as like, this is how I’m most valued is by working really hard all the time. So when you take this, this concept of celebrating and you put it in there as like, once we get these things done, we’re going to celebrate kids. We call that work hard, play hard. That’s been like one of the Tolpin family models for many, many years. Work hard, play hard. Then it brings some kind of joy and purpose to it. Like, oh, this might be hard right now, but in a little bit we’re going to be at the beach. Well, this might be hard right now, but in a little bit we’re gonna go on that RV trip.

It’s so.

Important. It’s like yesterday we had a cow issue and the on our property and our neighbor’s property, we’re sharing it, doing cows together. There was not enough food anymore because we’re learning. And so the cow, one of them just kept getting out no matter what we did, kept getting out four.

Times in one day.

And that’s dangerous, right? There’s a big road with cars going fast. We can’t have cows getting out that could kill somebody, you know? And so, uh, coordinating with the neighbor and we were going to move him over to this other paddock, I guess pasture. And but it needed all prep work and needed all the, the wires fixed. It needed everything set up. It needed weed eating all around the five acres. It needed all of these things. The water brought over all these things done and we just did a pow wow. Me in the tolpin older kids and we go and we divided and conquered and we celebrated afterwards. And we and I acknowledged in front of the family that night, and we even had a guest over. I acknowledge some of the things that people did well and celebrated because we literally worked nonstop for five hours and we got it done and we moved the cows over, and that was pretty cool. It was.

Amazing. You can you.

Can do incredible things together quickly when you work together. But somebody’s got to be leading and creating lists and people have to be orientated towards, okay, I got my thing done. I’m not done. No, this is a teamwork. Now what’s the next thing to do versus just meandering after they get something done? You’ve probably experienced that with your kids before.

Where they like.

Do the chore you told them to do, and instead of going to the next thing that’s on the dry erase board list, they go to their room and they sit down for a second and you’re like, hey, are you done with that thing? Yeah. Okay, well then come and get a new thing off the list. Why didn’t you just do that? Right? Like, we’ve all been there before, and so teaching your kids, like what you’re talking about? That we’re a team and we’re going to get all of these things done. And so when you’re done with something, you just come to me if you don’t know what to do next. Otherwise, just start doing something next. You know, and and teaching that kind of working together is actually a really powerful experience for them, for their future also. Right. Because you in order to get big things done in life, you’ve got to be able to work as a team.

Now, this is hard for anybody to do to themselves. This next thing I’m going to teach you. But if you can teach your children to do this, it’s incredible. It’s to discipline themselves, meaning that they have their list. They have things if they procrastinate, if they allow things to sway them, if they if they’re a little bit lazy and they don’t get their stuff done.

Or they don’t have a good attitude to.

Actually have them themselves without a parent telling them to call their friend and go, you know what, I just need to get some things done tonight. And so I’m not going to be able to come over. I’m not going to be able to do the thing. If they ever can get to that point where they work a muscle, where they they have this, the sowing and reaping, right?

It’s an integrity thing.

They’re reaping what they sow, and they’re causing themselves to experience a consequence because they want to be self-disciplined. They want to make sure they get their stuff done, and they don’t want that weakness to creep in because you’ve sold them the value of it so much, right, that they cancel something positive. They want to do.

Because.

They didn’t follow.

Through on commitment or something. Yeah. And they.

Go and get it.

Done.

You know, and I think that that’s the hardest thing to teach kids. And I will say that I do think this is yes, for sure.

This is the hardest one.

This is the hardest thing to teach kids. Um, because and we’ve had older kids and I think that some of them are better at that than others, just naturally. Delayed gratification is another thing that can be taught to kids and what it means to delay gratification. It’s not just that there’s a consequence of not getting that thing. That was the example that you gave. Um, but even just disciplining yourself in a sense of like, no, I’m not going to spend this money. Even though I had told myself, I’m going to go do this, I’m actually going to save it for the next bigger thing, right? And so teaching them these principles of of sowing and reaping of self-discipline and following through on their commitment to themselves, because that’s really what we’re talking about. But also there’s this element of like their commitment to other people. Right? And so like when your kids are older, like, do they take care of their rooms and things? This has been a challenge for us with certain kids more than others, for sure. And I think that that’s true in any family. Right. Where some kids just are naturally more inclined to be organized and others less. Um, and I do think, though, that there’s this element of teaching your kids, like, okay, but you have a commitment to the family also. And if you follow through this commitment, then, yeah, sure, go ahead and do that.

But if you don’t, what are we going to suffer for it because you didn’t follow through on your commitment? No, it shouldn’t be that way. You should discipline yourself actually, because you’re older. And so I think that this is it’s a very complicated, hard thing for parents to, to teach their kids. But as we were going through and we were preparing for today, it’s just something that kind of came up that we were like, yeah, we we could be better at that. And I think that you guys, you know, anyone that’s listening, we’re talking about so many different aspects of time management and what are the different character qualities that are being instilled because of all these things. Think about this. We just made a short list. Self discipline is one. Self-control is another. Being a good steward of their time. Faithfulness, right? Because God calls us to be faithful. And he also says that if you’re faithful over little, you will be given much, right? So there’s this element of teaching your kids, like, If God can trust you. That’s something we’ve talked to our kids about a lot in the past is like, Can God trust us? We want God to be able to trust us. And so we are trying to be good stewards because we want that. We want God to be able to trust us.

Okay, here’s a final.

I want to get it in. Here’s a final tip. Is time blocking work expands to the time allotted for it. Someone once said, so work expands so that how long something takes takes longer. If we a lot more time for it.

Wait a minute. It takes.

Shorter if we lot less time.

For it. So if I.

Give myself 30 minutes to shower and get ready for the day, there are times. There are days where it actually takes longer than that. Yeah, and it’s because I haven’t given myself a deadline, right? This is something we were just talking to one of our kids about this morning. Is that like, if I have something I have to be at, isn’t it remarkable that I can literally get ready for the day in ten, 15 minutes and be out here shooting a podcast or be in the car ready to go and go into the errand or whatever needs to be done. If it if there’s a short period of time, we make it happen. As humans, I’m sure you’ve experienced that.

So teaching your.

Children that to put a deadline on it. So. Okay, I’m going to work on this. Well how long are you going to work on it and how much are you going to try and get done during that period of time? Like that can really speed things up. It can become fun to for children, younger children, especially as they like it becomes a game like how fast can I get this done with quality? Don’t sacrifice quality. You got to instill that.

To know halfway.

But you know, getting better at being efficient with their time, getting things done fast and effectively because work expands for the time allotted for it. And some things don’t get all done when you work on them in a day, right? So it’s portioning things out, like, I’m going to work on this for an hour, but for the next.

Hour I’m going to turn.

You know, if you’re older, I’m going to turn my phone off for the next hour. I’m going to go in a different part of the house and do my art undistracted, or do my math undistracted, and I’m going to see how much I can get done in one hour. Understanding that I’m going to get the favor of momentum, because I’m not going to allow any distractions to impact me for a solid hour. That principle is amazing, and they’re going to come out so refreshed, so excited, because they and they got their water ready. There’s no excuse to come get water. They got their snack ready and they go off into the room and they work on it for an hour. There’s no excuses, no distractions, no getting out of it.

We call that.

Knocking it out.

Knocking it out.

But what does that teach for the future? It’s unbelievable when most adults can’t get focused on anything because they’re checking their phone all the time. They’re getting notifications popping in and out all over the place, and they’re seeing it. And now they’re distracted. They think they’re good at it. They think, oh, that doesn’t affect me. It affects you. And it’s going to affect your children too. Yeah, right. So it’s super, super important.

So that would be that would fall under another biblical character quality of being a wise manager. Yeah. Time blocking would be a wise manager. And and there are so many aspects. It’s funny. People are always asking me for Angie, can you do a life in the day of do a, do a life in the day of? I mean, I might do it at some point, but well, you’re funny. I mean, that would just take time in and of itself that I don’t have, but I, I’m living my life right. And and I do time block actually in chunks. I do big chunks of time. So like, here’s my homeschooling time. Here’s our family house cleanup time. Oh, we’re going to work out in the pasture weeding, or we’re going to work in the garden for this chunk of time. And when I have like 4 or 5 big things in a day that need to get done, whether it’s, I got to go buy, get my milk or I got to go to the grocery store, that’s a chunk of time, right? I evaluate how much time is that actually going to take? And then I think about the day, right? When is nap time going to happen? So I’ll schedule anything where I’m going to have to be gone during nap time so that I’m here as much as possible. When my kids are awake and and the older kids will be in charge of the youngers while they’re napping so that they can still get school done or whatever.

Right? Like you, you time block and you prioritize when you’re going to do certain things based upon when it makes the most sense. Right? Like, I’m not going to go out in the hottest part of the day and go sit and weed out in the pasture for three hours with the kids. That would not be smart, but I could do that earlier in the morning when it’s less hot and we could get way more done because we’re not baking out there like in an oven. So you prioritize utilizing wisdom and being wise about the day. And I know that this might just seem super elementary to you, but I think that there’s something really powerful in acknowledging that as adults, we think this way easily, but kids don’t, and they actually need to be taught it. And so teaching okay, we’re going to do this first because it’s too hot. Later you see how your kids like they go, oh, oh they learn it. And so, you know, by the time they graduate, see how it’s woven throughout the fabric of your everyday life. And then they graduate or they launch out into the real world, and they just have this ability to do these things. And it wasn’t necessarily something where they sat down and they did a curriculum on time management, but it was something that was skills, life skills that were taught, woven throughout the fabric of their daily life as they’re doing life with mom and dad.

So let me ask you, what’s better starting things or finishing things. I think you’re going to say finishing things. Well, the Bible does have something to say about this. Ecclesiastes seven eight says, better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. So patience to finish things is what this is saying, and that the finishing is better than the starting. It’s making a point that we need to follow through, and that is.

An incredible.

Thing that needs to be taught to the next generation. Patience is patiently diligent to make sure that we follow through despite any and all obstacles, leaning on the Lord for his help and trusting that he will show up.

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Yeah, that is.

What we need to be teaching our children. So get that scripture to your kids.

So let’s share our unprecedented times tip.

Okay let’s do it. But first just a quick summary. First you got to assess. Then you got to motivate. And then you got to teach the tips. And then you got to model getting stuff done. And you’re not going to do all that in a sitting or something, but those are the points of the episode. But yeah, unprecedented times, isn’t it?

Okay, so we were just talking about teaching your kids time management. We’re talking about evaluating being observant as parents, letting them be tested, if you will, in a sense where you let them try to manage their time and you watch and you see how they’re doing, right. That’s a test. And then you go in and you give some suggestions. You lead, you teach, you motivate, you give them all the whys. But what about us as parents, right? There might be something on your, I don’t know, on your heart or in your mind, a skill or something big even that you want to build, that you’re like overwhelmed because you don’t have the time to do it right. And you’re thinking, how could I add baking bread to my already busy schedule? Like, I remember thinking that way that where there’s a will, there’s a way, and that is true. And so recognizing that these little statements. Right, like, um, what Isaac was just sharing about time I’m expands right for the the time allotted for something. Well, the reality is, is when it comes to baking bread, there’s Susie’s way of baking bread, and then there’s Angie’s way of baking bread. And so you can do the time consuming, you know, stretch the bread four times before you bake it kind of way. Or you can do Angie’s way, which is the nine minute before bed. Let it rise, no kneading overnight and then pop it in the oven after one stretch. Right. And it’s still amazing bread.

Are you gonna put that.

Recipe in the show notes?

Well, the rest.

You gotta be on our email news list for, for the newsletter for for that. And also it’s on Instagram somewhere you can go hunt that down. Um, but I will say my point though is that for years and years and years, I was even deceived in thinking I couldn’t do something as simple as adding baking bread or sourdough bread. Specifically, I used to make whole wheat bread all the time, and I had a daughter that was a huge helper in that. But I didn’t do sourdough because I thought it was this overwhelming over consuming thing because I watched how other people did it. We got to stop watching how other people are doing things, and we need to pray, and we need to just decide if we’re going to do it and if it’s important to us, we’ll make time for the things that are.

Important to us. All right.

We’re going to go more in tips in a second. But I think you created interest. So the next newsletter, which should come out in the next four days, is going to include her recipe on sourdough. Okay.

So make sure you’re on it.

And if you’re not getting emails from us, check your spam. I think we’re getting censored by Gmail, Google and all the things.

We’ve had some issues and.

Put it in your inbox, and then it’ll start going in your inbox again. We’ve had some serious issues with that. So the final kind of tips here on Unprecedented Times is that there needs to be more resolve in the next generation than previous generations. There needs to be, uh, you know, ability.

To try new things, try new.

Things, resiliency, uh, an ability to get more done, maybe even have three different projects going that earn money for future husbands, for your sons.

Um, being open to doing things.

By the way, I really believe that the future is going to demand that people have three sources of income. And ideally that wouldn’t be with, you know, moms feeling like they have to work. It’s ideal if moms are home with the kids, right? That’d be amazing if they want to do extra projects and things, awesome. But you know, your future son’s providing it’s multiple sources of income. And because one is this tumultuous times, one might stop working. You need others that you can pour into, you know? So I just think that this skill, the ability to handle more is vital. And you can only handle more with God, and you can only handle more if you’re good with your time, because we don’t get any more of it.

Right?

Exactly. So you have to be a wise manager of your time. Choose to say no to some things that maybe are not, um, you know, really part of the mission or your passion or the things that need to get done. But maybe they’ve just always been a part of your family. I don’t know, way of life. But is there something that you can cut back on to a lot more time? That’s another way to look at things too. And I know that for us, we we have to be wise about that. And sometimes that looks like there’s way too much than what can be actually accomplished on our plate. I’m just going to be really honest with you. I remember in May when I was speaking at homeschool conferences in Texas, and it was like the busiest season on the homestead. We were getting cows for the first time. I had seeds, thousands of seeds for the garden. And you know what? God is good. I prayed over that garden all the time, and the increase that he has been bringing is just it’s all the Lord. And so I think that when you commit your works to the Lord and you’re willing to be obedient to him and to make changes and to make sacrifices, he is faithful.

And so I just want to encourage you with that, not to let go of the dreams that you have, whether it’s something as simple as adding in baking bread or starting a new business. Right? Like both could be equally overwhelming to a husband and a wife. But the truth is, is that if you’re doing what God has called you to do, if you are committed to doing it for his glory, then he’s going to be behind it. Right? And so we just need to go back to committing our ways to the Lord. And don’t forget to teach your kids along the process. Like share with them. Hey, yeah, mommy’s never made bread, so the first few loaves are probably going to be terrible. Thanks for trying it. You know, like it’s good for them to see you try things and not do it, but not give up because they’re going to be hard things that they’re going to have to do in their life that might not work out the way they want them to at first, but they need to not give up. And and part of that is managing their time and having patience and continuing to not quitting.

So let’s not grow in weakness. Let’s not allow our children to grow in weakness. Let’s instead teach them how to rise up and be more effective and more proactive and more diligent with the time God has given them, which is the same amount of time in a day that he’s given everybody else. It’s what we do with it that matters. We hope this was helpful.

Hey, thanks for listening and being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement. Go to be Courageous ministry. Org for more biblically based resources, ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission, and information about the incredible Be Courageous app community for believers.

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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 Isaac.

From Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children, as too many from Christian families are walking away from their faith by the age of 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

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To Be Courageous Ministry. Org. Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Welcome to the podcast. We have a special guest today on the show, Jeff and Jessica Robertson from the Robertson family. You might know them from Duck.

Dynasty or Growing the Dynasty. They had their own reality TV shows for a long time, and now they are working on different projects like writing books and working with orphanage and adoption organizations. And so we had them on the podcast today to talk specifically about adoption, about their experience in adopting their youngest, their fifth child, as well as the book that they have created with Brave Books, which is awesome because it’s a it’s an opportunity for discussions on this really important topic that’s near and dear to God’s heart.

I think regardless of where you’re at this episode, be encouraging will be helpful because we all have a role to play in this, and it’s important to educate our children on this too. So tune in. But first.

First, we just want to mention to you guys, we have that awesome giveaway with Master Books.com. If you go to Master books.com/courageous, we have a giveaway going on there. You can enter the giveaway to receive some of my favorite curriculum items. There’s three different categories based upon um, you know, the person who wins will get to choose which of the packages, whether they have little kids, middle aged kids, or older kids. So you got to go check that out. But today I just want to mention something that’s pretty cool about their kindergarten curriculum. For those of you who maybe are just getting started with homeschooling, or maybe you just want to give it a try, you know, when I first started, I was a little bit overwhelmed. I don’t know about you guys, but I was overwhelmed because I was like, how am I supposed to even know all the things that I’m supposed to be teaching my child at a specific age, and all of their age categorized curriculums come with something awesome? I’m going to show you if you’re watching the Be Courageous Ministry YouTube channel, you can see I’m showing you guys a book of the scope and sequence that’s at the beginning of their curriculum guide, and this gives you a basic scope and sequence of what the weeks, the 36 weeks of school and what you’re going to be covering entail. Um, what’s also awesome is that there are four areas of focus in each lesson.

And so at the kindergarten age, of course, this is this is the four areas. So there’s Bible rhyme time, life skills, ABCs and more. And so you start teaching them phonics. You start teaching them, um, letter recognition reading skills. But they have some really practical, good guidance for parents in the front of this curriculum. That is really encouraging. One of those is watch out for fatigue with your child. Um, with little kids especially, their attention spans are pretty short. And so they recommend when you’re teaching a new concept to keep it around 20 minutes. Beyond that, you’ll start to see some brain fatigue, some focus fatigue. And so as a mom of many, having raised nine kids and I’ve been homeschooling for over 20 years, I would recommend to moms if you’re teaching a new concept to start working on it with your kids, but then have them take a jumping break or a running break. Have them run around the house and then give them an apple afterwards. Whatever it takes to have some of those little breaks. And that’s one of the benefits of homeschooling, is that you can take that time to meet your child’s mental, physical, and emotional and educational needs. So anyway, check out Master Books.com Forward Slash Courageous to learn more about their curriculum. And yeah, let me know how it goes if you try it out and be courageous.

Ministry. Org for all the show notes, resources and so forth. And we so appreciate your support in Double Impact this year. Whether you listen, pray for us, purchase things or give, we just really value that. Let’s jump into the show or welcome back to the show everyone. We have Jep and Jessica Robertson here. Welcome to the show you guys.

Thank you.

Howdy. Yeah. So you guys, we are excited to introduce you guys to them. Maybe some of you know them from the popular reality show Duck Dynasty. Um, but some of you guys might not know that they have a lot of experience as parents. Why don’t you guys introduce yourselves to the audience? Tell them how many kids you have, a little bit of your story, if you would.

So I’m Jessica Robertson, we have five kiddos. We have four biological kids. We have one adopted child, Gus. Uh, we adopted him when he was three days old. Um, so he’s been with our family a very, very long time now. Um, and we have all the way from college kids. Uh, one graduates college of 6th May and down to an eight year old. So it’s a pretty big span. Yeah.

Yeah, well, we know all about that. Yeah. What was that?

So it was very loud at my house.

Our home is loud, too. Uh, but usually a good loud, but not 100% of the time. Right. It’s, uh, it’s a journey. Well, that’s great. And you have your own show, too, right?

Yeah. So right now we have duck family treasure, um, that I do with my brother Jace. And, um, has a. It’s a fun, fun project. We did it just as a hobby. Um, because my brother kind of got into it through Mr. Murray, who’s kind of the old historian on our show, and, um, one of my dad’s very dear friends. And, uh, never thought I’d really get into metal detecting and stuff like that, but it’s actually really, once you start finding some stuff, like we found a meteorite, it’s like, oh, this is fun. Yeah.

Oh, that’s really.

Fun for the whole family. I feel like I love doing it. I like getting outdoors and doing things like that. So even though I love other treasure hunting, I love like antiquing and flea markets and estate sales, garage sales. I have my form of of treasure hunting too, but it’s still fun to get out there and even river actually river. How we got into it. Jace was doing it and then River was interested, so I bought him a detector years ago for Christmas. That was his big Christmas gift and ended up just taking it over and being like, let me, let me see this thing. And so that’s kind of how Jeff even started doing this, because River was interested in doing it. So that was cute.

How did how did these things turn into shows? I’m just kind of curious about that.

Well, this one in particular is funny because, uh, Jason kind of bought the oldest property in northeast Louisiana, and, uh, it has had a lot of historical significance. And then Mr. Murray was like, Jason, you know, you can find stuff in there. And Jason was like, well, I metal detector. And he was like, that’s what old men do at the beach, you know, when their wives are mad at them. He says, I’m like, you know. But anyway, he tried it. And then they found some, like, old coins from like the 1800s. And he’s like, sending me pictures. He’s like, dude, this is actually really fun. So I just started doing it over at his place. And, um, I found like my first awesome fan was like a 1881 Indian head penny. And I’ve always been a collector. Like coins and baseball cards, comic books. Like I have a lot of. I have a lot of different collections. So I was like, dang, I can put this in my my coin collection. And um, we were just doing it for fun. And then Fox reached out to us and said, would y’all want to do a show about this? And we’re like, yeah, I mean, we’re doing it anyway, and it’s a lot of fun. So yeah, we’ll film it.

That’s great. That’s great.

So, so fun.

That’s interesting. Well, you guys just recently came out with a book. A children’s book, um, through Brave Books. We’re big fans of Brave Books. We’ve been huge supporters of them for since the beginning. Really? Um, because there’s a need for parents to have stimulating conversation, topic based, um, reading material, really to get those conversations started with your kids, um, and on all the different topics that they cover. Right? Like there’s just so many. And so when a new book comes out, you know, our kids are really excited. We have three little boys under eight, and they’re all into the map and the different activities and stuff, which has been really fun for me as a homeschool mom. It’s totally different than all the other stuff that we do when we’re reading books. It’s usually, okay, you guys stuff your faces with food so you’re quiet while mom reads the Out loud book, you know? And this one’s so much more interactive, which is something that we’ve really loved about it. But why don’t you tell the audience the basic theme of this new book that has come out a little bit about it? Yeah.

So here is it’s Dear Valor. Um, so it’s such a sweet story, uh, really adoption and just unconditional family love. So, uh, valor is a tiger, and he is adopted by lion parents, Fiona and Arthur. Um, and there’s a moment where other kids are noticing he’s different than his mommy and daddy and asking questions. And we kind of relate to this in a lot of ways of when Gus was little. Our Gus is a black child adopted into a white family, and even at like an early age of two and a half, three, he would ask us why he’s different. And so, um, you know, he obviously he asked his parents and obviously they tell him it was easier for us as a we just kind of hit things head on as a family. And obviously we’re really blunt about stuff like, obviously you had different birth parents, you know, so we talked about that when he was two and a half and didn’t know anything about what we were saying. Um, but obviously the Adler wants to learn about his birth family, uh, which we haven’t experienced with ours yet because he is still young, but we probably will at some point. So obviously it goes through the book and you’ll have obviously, I don’t want to give the spoiler of what happens in the end of the book, but unconditional love of family is what that the basically the end of the book is. And it’s a beautiful story of just no matter where you come from, how you enter into a family. Um, just that support and unconditional love that you will experience. Um, and so we wanted to write this book because obviously other kids, like you said, those topics are hard to to start, right? Even especially other kids who don’t.

They’re not they don’t know anything about adoption. So to be able to like, talk to other kids and they can empathize and see like, oh, his parents are different or, you know, it’s a different dynamic there of how they enter into the family. Um, just this past summer, we, uh, guest was playing baseball made All-Star. So it was another group of boys, and there was a couple other black kids on there on their team. And when I came up to practice one day, he they were like, wait, you’re you’re his mom? And I was like, yeah, I’m, I’m his mom. And they were like, they were so confused. They were like, wait, like, I don’t understand, how are you? His mom. And I was like, well, Gus is adopted. And they were like, what? Like it was like this. It was like they had never even heard of the word adoption and let alone talked about it, you know, and so they never got to experience that. So these books, like you said, with Brave Books, they give such sweet life lessons that you can interact and talk about. And they make it to where these they’re sweet stories where it’s not awkward. It’s not a it’s not an awkward or a shameful thing to say. Wait, can I know about this topic? Can I know, you know, how do we broach this conversation? So, um, that was just one life lesson that I actually experienced with Gus. And and it was like it was totally fine. They were like, oh my goodness. Wow. You know, just sit here and know that he was adopted. Yes. He was three days old when he came in our life, you know. So it was a sweet moment.

It’s so good. I mean, that means the book is for everybody because all children need to be educated on this, whether the family is called towards adoption or not. Um, we’re called to have an understanding and equip our children and understanding this because they’re going to have playmates, they’re going to have friends that were adopted. Such a good example. I did read the book, and it is really good, and I won’t give it away either. But, uh, he’s just yearning for something, yearning for connection with, um, his, uh, real parents, even though his adopted parents are loving and doing a great job in the book. And then it’s so sweet what happens at the end? So you got to get the book so you can see what letter he gets in the mail. It’s very cool.

You know, I would really like to talk with you guys about the culture in your family regarding a love for orphans and adoption. I’m just curious because as we were kind of looking into this and then we looked into your family, there’s a few family members that have also adopted as well. And so Isaac and I, we were talking about that for a while, going, okay, this is obviously like a family culture thing and wanting to hear from you guys. Like, what was it other than Scripture? I mean, we’ve got there’s tons of verses where Jesus sets an example of like, I’m not going to leave you as orphans. So obviously we see that in John chapter 1418. Right. Um, and then what true religion is, that’s another scripture which maybe we can talk about. Um, but why don’t could you guys share about how that family culture was instilled? Or maybe were you inspired by seeing some family members go through adoption? Like, what was that heart change? And was this like a family conversation?

So for us specifically, um, when me and Jess were dating, she said, I want to have five kids. I was like, there’s a lot of kids. I mean, I don’t that seems like a hard thing to do. It’s your body, you know, it’s kind of like, uh. Anyway, so we we go about it and we have four and I’m like, oh man, this is going awesome. And then she couldn’t have any more kids. And she said, I want to adopt. And it is in our family. And so we’ll, will Willy’s boy is adopted and we actually used to babysit him quite often. And, um, so it was always an option, but I was like, no, we’re good. We have four kids. Like, why would we do that? We’ve been blessed. And she wanted to. So I went to the Dominican Republic on a mission trip, and, uh, our church had an orphanage there. And just meeting those kids, it was it was just like eight boys. I get home and I’m just like, alright, babe. I mean, I could have took every one of those kids home. I was like, I get it. And I and I always knew, you know, it was there, I guess, but I was slow to come to it. I mean, I think it took God opening my heart and saying, no, this is what you need to do.

So yeah, the backstory too is like our church. Obviously lots of churches work, you know, with different orphanages. And I don’t know, it just always was on my heart to like, I don’t know, I was like, I could love any kid. If you put any child in my life, you know, I would. I would love them unconditionally. So, you know, for me it was. And that’s probably a mom thing is like it was easy for that to do that. And I don’t think I would ever get sick of having little ones around. So I just keep adopting if it possible.

But now we adopt a lot of pets. We do.

Have lots.

Of animals. I’m like not as excited.

But it was, you know, we were really blessed because when we when we first got married, Willie and Cori adopted Will and we kept him a lot when he was little bitty. And you know, I come I mean, I my family, we don’t have anybody adopted, but, um, my mom was a teacher and she always we took people in at times. We always she always gave and helped and gave Christmas presents to kids that didn’t have things we always did, like charitable things where we were aware of other people, um, that did not have those opportunities. And um, so for me, I was like, it became like, why wouldn’t we do this? Like, we have the love. We were fortunate enough that we could financially do it. And um, and so but obviously it had just had to come to that realization, like the Holy Spirit definitely spoke to him when it was his time, when it was when when he was ready, you know. So, um, when he came home, it took about nine and a half, ten months for us to go through the process. And we did a private adoption agency because, um, obviously we had other kids and we were filming the show, and we just wanted to make sure they were protected. And, um, we had a closed adoption, but, uh, yeah, basically a guest came into our life out of the blue that we got a phone call on a Saturday, went and saw him on a Sunday, brought him home on a Monday. It was that quick. So we had nothing. We had no diapers, pack and play nothing. So we went and got everything. And um, but we just knew at that moment, like, God put us in this, in this moment for this child. And he’s forever changed us in amazing ways.

Wow, wow. What’s what’s some encouragement for people thinking about adopting? But it’s overwhelming to them. Or they just their community. There’s nobody around them that is doing it. Maybe they don’t have any knowledge about it. What are some lessons learned and maybe realizations now that you’ve gone moved forward with it?

And we kind of like just said it’s like, you know, you’re thinking, oh, I’m going to help this kid. And he would have been or she would have been so worse without us. And then it’s like, the more they’re into your life, it’s like, oh my gosh, they’re blessing you and you. You just honestly see, like when I see verses in the Bible now about how we’re adopted, uh, sons and daughters of Christ, I’m like, oh, it makes so much more sense because we don’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve it. It just I’m just like, oh, that. I totally get that now where I did. Not before. Yeah, yeah, I.

Think that it’s not I would say it’s not always easy. We had a couple, um, opportunities fall through last minute like I’d already shared with the family. This is what, you know, we’re fixing to adopt this, this child. And so it’s not always easy, but it’s totally worth it. I mean, we, uh, we just. We were, like you said, we went into it thinking we’re going to bless this child. We’re going to change this legacy. And he’s more blessed our lives and and we’ve grown spiritually. We I mean, it was not always easy either, because genetically, they’re not the same, right? Even your own kids, they’re all different, right? You go through ups and downs with them and you could raise them all the same way, but they they don’t always act the same way. And what works with one doesn’t work with another. So Gus had some sensory issues and different things. We challenges we had to face that we didn’t have to face with our biological kids. Um, so those were things, little bumps in the road that were different for us. And, and it’s not always easy, but it’s it’s totally worth it. And God will always, you know, get you through those, those hard times and, and you’ll come out stronger on the other side. And I think about that versus what we were talking about, adopted as Ephesians one four and five, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. And that that scripture just blows me away because it’s just affirmation of like we are adopted into his kingdom, right? And so adoption is beautiful. It’s biblical. And so, you know, if someone was thinking about it, I would say think more about it, pray about it, look into it. It’s not for everyone, but it can definitely change your life and it will change that child’s life forever. Their legacy will change forever.

I love what you’re saying there. I mean, I think that, you know, we’ve known some really dear people over the years that have adopted and been able to participate in doing respite care and different things as well, to be able to help as much as you can. And, and I think that while not everyone is necessarily called to it, like you just said, the church is right. The body of Christ is. And so that’s why I think that this topic is such an important one to be raising our kids up in and communicating with them, reading the scriptures to them, teaching them. Um, but this is the thing we all know that more is caught than taught, right? And living it out is is totally different than just saying the words like, oh, the Bible says this. And so for those who are listening, like I would just encourage you guys, if you are not in community with someone who has adopted like search them out. Ask if there’s any family in your church that has adopted or is thinking about adopting, and see what ways you can bless that family. Because like you guys have just shared over and over again that Gus has blessed you more than you thought you were going to. You know, you thought it was going to be the other way around more, right? And that was your heart was, Lord, help us, bless him, help us change this legacy.

Let’s, Lord, may you be glorified. Right? But as Christians, we’re all a part of the family of God like you just said, adopted into his kingdom. And so to to put that in another child’s heart that even they might be God might be calling you to adopt someday, right? Like that’s huge. Especially if we’re going to be people that are like pro-life and speaking truth about how life begins at conception and raising our kids up in that. It’s like, that’s the proof in the pudding. When you’re willing to adopt, when you’re willing to serve families that have adopted. And so I think this is like the book, in a way. And there’s another book that Missy wrote. Right. Because they also went through this. Um, I had interviewed her a while ago when that book came out about adoption as well. And I think that these are two good, like, starting points to even start the conversation with your kids. But then parents need to go a step farther, right? So maybe you guys could share with people. Having been adoptive parents, what are the best ways that people can help other families who have adopted?

Uh, I mean, I think just being an ear forum, I mean, kind of like Jess said, it’s not always easy. I got a buddy I grew up with, um, and they adopted not too long ago. And it’s funny because she’s has a lot of the same traits that Gus has had. Um, kind of, uh, my, my dad would say, um, it’s a little high strung. It’s a, it’s a southern way of being just kind of ADHD or however you want to say it. Now, off the charts. Yeah, kind of like he’s got a lot of energy, um, which he, we, we we’ve learned sports for Gus. Yeah. Super. I mean, he’s really gifted at sports as well, but it gets a lot of that drive out. He’s he needs to be moving like, all times, which is, you know, there’s a lot of people like that. I have a lot of friends like that. And um, so and also I will say I work so, you know, this this drove me into my full time job is I work for an adoption. We are an adoption agency and we do orphan care, but it’s called All God’s Children International and so you can definitely look that up at ECI. Um.org and, and, and we have a lot of resources about people who are thinking about adopting and want to know more about it and have adopted and maybe struggling like, oh man, this kid is not like my other kids or whatever. And we have some good resources. So yeah.

I mean, there’s obviously Pregnancy Resource Center is a different there’s an organization out of Austin because we lived there for five years as Foster the Village. And you know, they cater to like, you know if you’re a foster family his one of his our close friends here um, fostered for years and adopted a child through that. But they had a few come in and out. Um, but those are just like certain organizations that I mean, there’s some even in your churches, probably that you you don’t even know about that, um, you know, or just places that you could serve or or donate, right? It’s not even about, hey, I can’t give this time, but I can give this money or I can’t give this money, but I can I can give this time. And, um, you know, just having a support system is awesome because it takes a village. It. I mean, we say it like there is. We missed a ball game this, um, summer. And, um, Jason, Missy showed up for the ball game, and Gus didn’t know they were coming, and so my mom was there watching him.

But at the end of the game, he didn’t even know they were there till the end of the game. And he was like, all smiles and like, did you see my hit Uncle Jase? You know, did you see that hit? And so it was like just having that support. You don’t realize even that child, like he feels different. He’s felt different since he could realize. He said, I’m. I’m brown and you’re gray. You know? I mean, he’s always felt different. He’s also a foot taller than anybody in his grade. And, um, so he felt, you know, he feels he’s bigger. He’s also dark skinned. And, um, so for him, he just wants to fit in. What he thinks fitting in is, you know, and so, um, you know, just having that, like, being friends, like, we’ve had friends that will come and support him at his little things. And so the support system it takes to raising a child that already feels not a part of the family is, is super important as well. So just those connections, you know, friendships.

Hey guys, thanks so much for listening to the Courageous Parenting podcast. We just want to take a moment to highlight some of our awesome sponsors who are actually there making the Courageous Parenting Podcast possible. And so let’s just take a moment and listen to the sponsors, and then we’ll get back to the show. I want to share a really amazing personal testimony with you guys. The first 20 years Isaac and I were married, we primarily went the traditional health insurance route. Being entrepreneurs. In those first 20 years, we had nine pregnancies, one loss, and eight babies birthed Earthside. Each time we were pregnant, we felt limited by our insurance coverage when making the decision on where we were going to have our babies When looking into coverage for those births, home birth exclusions were a really big deal for us because of the risk of liability in case of an emergency. As we continued having babies later into life and being older, I was labeled geriatric. I was considered high risk, which made it even more difficult to find the care that I wanted with the assurance of support. Then, four years ago, we switched over to Samaritan Ministries, which is a health sharing organization. A few years into switching, we experienced another pregnancy loss and then we became pregnant for the 11th time. Still desiring to have a home birth. We were so blessed and surprised to find out that all our needs were shareable within the organization and that I could choose the provider I wanted. So we moved forward to have the home birth of our dreams. If you’re looking for an alternative option to being able to pay for medical expenses incurred in raising a family, and you desire the freedom to choose your own providers, including alternative providers like chiropractors and naturopaths, we want to encourage you to check out Samaritan Ministries at our link Samaritan ministries.org slash. Be courageous. In the video, we share how it works and answer a bunch of frequently asked questions. So check out our link at Samaritan Ministries. Org slash be courageous.

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

Children, but Angie and Isaac have done in creating. This is literally phenomenal.

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

This class has just really rocked my world.

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

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

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

Do your legacy a favor and 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.

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That’s so good. It’s so good. And you know, there’s something that hasn’t totally been mentioned yet, which is your marriage and what’s what I get the sense of is when you mentioned this, that God put on your heart to have five children, and then there was an obstacle to that. And in that moment, I think a lot of marriages have these kinds of moments in different ways for different things. And it seems in a lot of a lot of ways that the women, the wives get touched by God in some way. And that challenges the husband and, husbands are supposed to be spiritual, leading their families. But at the same time, sometimes we get busy, we have ambitious things going on. We’re trying to provide, we’re trying to do these things. And the best leadership is servant leadership. And listening to your wife and understanding what God’s communicating to her and then supporting those initiatives forward. And I sense that. But it sounds like, Jeff, it took a little bit of time. It took going on this mission trip. Um, because sometimes within us we there’s always selfishness. We’re fighting. Right? Everybody has a certain degree of selfishness. And, you know, there’s the expense, there’s the time, there’s the how is this going to work out, you know, and some people are even like, no, I just want to have my own kids, right. And these kinds of things. But if God’s prompting us to do something at one of the spouses, then the other needs to pay attention. And I think it’s really cool, Jeff, that you paid attention. Um, and I’d just like to hear a little bit more about what God was doing wrestling on your heart and how you came around in a in a selfless way, um, to lead this effort.

Yeah. Um, I mean, I guess I sometimes I don’t pay attention like I should. I always say when we talk about marriage, I mean, just us specifically is, uh, I always say seven years, but what do you say, ten years? I’m like first seven years now.

I think you said the first year, and I said no, it was the first seven years was hard. Okay.

I was like, we had to communicate.

Right?

And, and and for us and I think for a lot of people and my I have two daughters that just got married. So and I’ve told them this several times, I’m like, what happens is you you’re on different teams. Like you say, you’re on same team, but really you’re not. Somebody makes a mistake. You’re like, I can’t believe you did that. You’re in the penalty box. Whatever. You’re you’re mad at them. And then as time goes by, I think as God molds you, it’s like at some point somebody makes a mistake and you’re like, you know what? It’s okay. Yeah, you know, I make mistakes all the time. We’re on the same team. Let’s keep moving on. Once you get to that point, um, things like, yeah, adopting or just any big things in your life get a lot easier when you’re when you’re rooting for your teammate instead of just showing them all the things that they’re doing wrong.

Yeah.

I think too, like when you’re struggling, like, you know, you’re young and your Christian faith, it’s hard to, you know, let those things go. But when you can truly let lay down and surrender everything to Christ, like, you know, it’s easy to it’s easy for me to show grace and forgiveness to jump at that because I’m like, I, I need it every day. I need that too. So when you can really understand that, like understand what he the way God showed you grace and mercy, it’s so much easier which then everything else which are big things. There’s still big things, right? Adoption, kids, finances, whatever, every those are big things in your marriage you have to deal with and you should communicate. But then that trust is there, that trust of like, hey, you know, I mean, he wasn’t ready for a while, you know, to adopt. And maybe it was early on my heart because I was being exposed. And I also being a mom, I saw the miracle of life. I mean, I got to I mean, I always say the biggest miracle. Besides, you know, God calling me to be a child of his is getting to experience life, bringing life into the world. I mean, it’s such an amazing gift. So that probably played a big role too, in knowing seeing kids all over the world that needed just want a loving home. Like, why wouldn’t I give them a loving home, you know? So obviously that probably played a big role being a mom, you know, of yearning and wanting to do that. And we we were fortunate. We had four biological kids by the time we were. I was 28. We had four kids. So then in my early 30s, you know, early to mid 30s is when I was really felt like, wait, I really feel like we, I want to have another child, but I can’t. And um, so let’s look into adoption. And then I think I was 35 when we adopted Gus, so.

Wow.

Do you guys think that this, um, this heart for adoption has been passed down to your kids?

Oh, I don’t know.

We probably think.

So. So, I mean, for sure.

I mean, there were definitely times where, like I said, he was hard at times, you know, and we didn’t know how to deal with certain things. So there’s probably bumps in the road. They were like, uh, we’re I’m not gonna do this because you don’t. But I was like, I think as they grow and mature, they know, like, it doesn’t matter if they’re your biological kids or they’re adopted you. Every personality is different. God made each one. And you’re going to both have different strengths. One of one strength and one daughter is a weakness in another, but she has a different strength that the other one doesn’t have. So when you start to look at individually and and really just to see the goodness of God in each, each, you know, to see good fruits and you point those things out, then I feel like all the other things, like I said with grace, have showing that grace and forgiveness and mercy to each one is like they’ll learn that too in life. They’re going to need it for their spouse. They’re going to need it with their own, their kids, biological or adopted. So, well, we.

Talk a lot about leaving a legacy of faith, a multi-generational legacy. And just, Jeff, you know, looking at Phil’s story had a lot of people are probably familiar with your dad’s story now because there’s a movie out. But, um, you know, overcoming massive obstacles. And then today, what everybody is seeing is children following the Lord and a multi-generational legacy of faith and adoption and fruit. There’s you can’t deny that there’s fruit in the family legacy. And I think that’s encouraging, because things don’t have to be perfect for a multi-generational legacy to happen. Um, but I just love to hear some of either of your thoughts on that and encouragement to others that are trying to do that. And maybe they have a broken past and mistakes in the beginning with when their children were around and so forth. I wonder your guys’s thoughts.

Well, it was funny because, um, remember we just saw something about dad saying, um, you know, it’s the little things you do that can make a legacy. It doesn’t have to be as grand as my family obviously has been on TV and done some bigger things and they they like to speak, I hate it, I hate speaking in front of people. I can’t, they think it’s the funniest thing ever. And it’s I’m gonna get up and talk for about 10,000 people. I’m like, that’s a nightmare for me. I’ve done it and I get super nervous and it’s like, I don’t think that’s my calling. I will do it because I’m not ashamed of the gospel and I will tell my story. But, oh, it’s it’s tough. So, I mean, I’m not called to be a preacher or anything like that, which is I’m totally fine with that. I was like, there’s other ways we can write books and and do even smaller things than that. It’s helping my community and just helping people to to see Jesus and to help kids. I, I do feel like that is a calling. And it’s something, you know, since we adopted that and now I work with AGC, it’s like, I love doing that. I love shining a light on kids. I think if we could help the kids around the world, we can change the world. You know, it’s not about politics and all this other stuff. People think I’m like, no, it’s kids helping kids who’ve been through trauma and stuff like that. Like that can change the world. So. But that’s what.

But but Jeff, you know, a lot of people, you see Christian families go up and the kids go wayward. They don’t come back to the Lord. Um, and you see these fragmented families and so forth. And I guess, what are some things that your parents did right once they got on track with the Lord and and the marriage was stronger and these kinds of things. What do you think are just a couple things that turned it around, for sure.

Just staying in the Bible and just realizing that it is the supreme word on all things. I always tell people I learn so much from my grandmother. Uh, I was basically a human trolling motor. We’d go fishing, I had a paddle, and I’d paddle around, and I’d made her hook, and she would catch the fish. I’d get them off her hook for her. I mean, I was a little kid, like, I probably should not have been doing this, but I was, and, um. And she would tell me about life and why what’s marriage like? And she would tell me about like when she went through the Great Depression. I mean, I just learned like, I, I think that’s how you can really impact your, your families, like, like let them know what all you’ve been through and, and how God has, has been guided you through your story. So it’s really just being a mentor for your family. And then I mean.

That’s.

That’s it. That’s really all all you have to do. I mean, you don’t, you know, to to make a big impact on your family as far as legacy, it doesn’t have to be these big, grand things.

So that’s your first ministry is in your home, you know. And so but also on the other side of that is we’ve had these conversations with our kids. I’m like, there’s times where they thought a little different. They were hearing certain, you know, things and they were like, well, maybe that’s right, you know? But ultimately I said, you know, the gospel and ultimately it’s you and Jesus. It’s not me, you and Jesus. I wish I could do it. I wish I could go through a checklist and do everything right and, and and, you know, get all my people right into heaven. But it’s not me, you and Jesus. You have to own your faith. And, you know, that’s something even Jeff talks about when, you know, growing up in a Christian environment. But then he had to kind of go out and he had to see Jesus for himself. You know, he had to be called himself. And so, uh, same with me. And so that’s that’s one thing is. Yeah, you you obviously all parents know we don’t we want every child to, you know, follow Jesus from an early age. We don’t want them to have to go through. My father was older when he, you know, came to follow Jesus. And I think about how many years were wasted that he could have known him and and what that would have been like, you know, for him and our family. But but ultimately, I’m like, he’s a believer, you know, and he’s going to be with Jesus already. But I was like, so you never know. That’s why you never give up on anybody. That’s why we teach our kids to hey, so and so, ma’am. You know, it’s sometimes it’s hard if you don’t struggle with something to have sympathy or, you know, for another person struggling with with something. And so, you know, it’s it’s showing grace because you never know when God is going to call someone to follow him. It’s not on your timeline, it’s on his.

No. So true. And I think what you’re talking about is having quantity time with your children and building the kind of relationship with them where they feel comfortable talking to you about anything. The fact that you know about, I don’t know if there were doubts or different thoughts about, uh, Christianity or whatever it was, but that that, you know, about it. That’s the key. Because then and then knowing about it is one thing, but then how you respond to that will determine whether that child feels comfortable talking to you again about a doubt or fear or any of those things. And because you have created a comfort in your home, it’s not like one of these religious homes where we just believe. We just believe. But there’s no real conversation about there’s no room for doubt or questions or these kinds of things. And then pretty soon it’s just becomes a heritage Christianity versus an authentic individual relationship with God between your child and God. And I think that is so important. So you’re encouraging that individual relationship with the Lord. And I think everybody listening. That’s it. We’re we’re imperfect people. We’re imperfect parents. There’s no perfect parents. But if you can be sharing the gospel and sharing your stories like grandma did on the boat and, uh, real life stories, um, of your walk and challenges and how God helped you through it, that I think that is it.

Um, but back on adoption, I’m just even thinking about people. You know a lot of times our audience will come and they’ll listen to the podcast because they want to take something away that they can teach their kids. They want to take something away, that, oh, maybe I missed this in Scripture, and this is something that I need to teach my kids. They don’t even know. Right. And so, you know, as we’re we’re talking about this topic of adoption, and I’m reflecting as having been raised in a Christian home my whole life, gone to church my whole life, and thinking about how many people I actually knew that were adopted, like how many kids throughout my lifetime. And and sadly, I think that it’s very few that I actually knew. I don’t know about you guys, but and, and we’ve been a part of many different kinds of churches, but but like even then there wasn’t this like openness to talk about it when it was the obvious adoption. Right. Like the the like you said, Caucasian family adopting someone of a different ethnicity where it’s obvious. Right. And I, I think that there’s a need, especially in today’s day and age where the young people are just, like hungry for authentic, right? They’re hungry for like, don’t gaslight me. Don’t let’s talk about things. Let’s be real. Let’s be honest. But God’s word has so many different things to say that. And when I say different, I mean different than what Christian culture on the outside looks like regarding adoption. And you guys hit on it how like now you from the scripture that you shared and your testimony, you can relate to Christ, to God in a different kind of way because you’ve lived out being that father, that mother that adopted someone that, like, opens your mind of being able to relate to God in a totally different kind of way.

Right? But sharing that with other people is it’s inspiring. It’s it’s it’s challenging, exhausting. Iron sharpens iron. And that kind of a way where we all should be like thinking, okay, so, you know, God does give different passions to different people, right? The gifts are dispersed among the body for the edification of the whole. And so there are going to be those that go before and work in an adoption clinic, or they’re working with an organization that’s empowering people and educating them on adoption and all the things they need to know. And then there’s people who are, like, super passionate about pro-life. But like, for them to come together and recognize that they’re actually partners in the same cause, which is what James 127 says, I’m just going to read it for a second, says religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the before God the Father is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. And so recognizing that, like we need to be in community with these people, we need to like search them out and see how we can help. Like, that’s what God’s saying. Like even just the visiting or portion of it, right? That’s not necessarily adopting but visiting them. And as I look back again thinking, how many did I know?

She can take a moment to listen about you thrive, our children going through this this summer. And it is so good to feel the gaps of financial education. We’ll be right back to the show. I want to.

Pause for a second and share something that’s been on my heart. This economy has changed, and it takes more to equip your children to thrive financially. Today, we can’t just assume that sending them off to college or helping them get a job will make them successful. Youth Thrive Academy is filling in the gap left by educational efforts, and offers a personal finance online course that’s relevant to today’s economy. I’m excited my teenagers are taking this comprehensive course knowing any gaps will be filled in. Financial preparedness. They’re learning career readiness skills and how to manage their money through budgeting, saving, investing, borrowing, and protecting their assets Make you thrive. Academy a part of your summer. Initiatives like We Are go to Youth Thrive Academy for parents, that’s the letter U and get 66% off retail, which is exclusive only for our listeners. Use the code courageous at checkout before it expires. And again, that’s Youth Thrive dot Academy forward slash parents okay, very small amount of people did I know other than the few families when we were older and married and had our own kids and and then we had friends who were infertile and they decided to adopt a sibling group, you know, and then we’re having them over and our kids are becoming friends. And obviously that was a very real experience, and it was a powerful one for us and our children to know kids that were adopted, to hear their hard stories. I think there was really an element of them even growing in appreciation for what God had given them because of what that family had experienced when they were in Africa before they were adopted. You know what I mean? And I just think that there’s this need for people to be more aware and open to looking for families, looking for adopted kids, that they’re not ostracized as being different, but teaching our kids to befriend them. Right? Sure.

100%.

It’s funny, even this book, uh, my oldest brother al, um, has he’s he’s 15 years older than me, so there’s a big gap. He’s almost 60. Isn’t that weird? I have a brother that’s almost 60. That makes me feel weird. Um, and he’s he’s got a lot of grandkids. And so they were reading the book, and he’s reading it to them, and. And even then, what’s funny, because Gus plays with them, you know, quite often go swimming over there all the time and they’re like, oh, now we see. I mean, he said it got them talking about they didn’t realize exactly how Gus got adopted and like, and why he looks so different. And so even in my own family, this this book has made a difference. It just having other kids talk about adoption and like how that all works. So it’s pretty cool.

That’s great. Well, hey, this has been such a great time talking with you both. Any, uh, any place you want to send people here at the end? I know we talked about your work and we talked about the book, but maybe you could just share that again. And any any last encouragement for people listening in?

Yeah, I.

Would say, um, you can go get our new book, Your Valor, along with all, uh, some amazing other authors you will not regret. Brave books. It, um, every book has a different life lesson. You can grow with these characters. There’s fun activities in the back of the book that families can do with their kids. Um, that kind of gets them to enter, interact with each other and talk a little bit more, um, about the topic. Uh, but you can go to Brave Books.com to get those. And yeah, if I would say look into, um, those organizations that we talked about, look into church and ask your church if there’s different, you know, organizations or different, um, places that you could serve or seek out to be able to go see foster kids or, or an orphanage or the elderly, like you said, like that’s what we’re called to do.

Um, and mine is all God’s children. Org so if you want to check that out, it’s amazing organization. I’ve been to Colombia, Ethiopia. I’m actually going back to both of those places fairly soon. So, uh, and we do a lot of good work. It’s awesome. God’s doing a lot of good work.

That’s right. Yeah.

Amen. Amen. Well, so good to meet you both and have you on the show. Uh, so appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

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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 Isaac from Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children, as too many from Christian families are walking away from their faith by the age of 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

We’re praising the Lord. That ministry continues to expand and impact more legacies. We couldn’t do this without you. Whether you pray for us, give us five star reviews, or share on social.

Or even if you purchase courses in merch or join the Be Courageous app community, enjoy the coffee or support financially. We’re so thankful you are a big part of the 10 Million Legacies.

Movement If you want access to all the episodes, show notes, and other biblically based resources, go to Be Courageous.

Ministry. Org. Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Hey everyone! Welcome to the podcast. Hey everybody, so glad you’re here talking about some good practical insights here, relevant to what’s happening in the world, practical to what the Bible says.

Be alert, hate evil, and love your enemy. That’s today’s podcast title, and you may be thinking, wow, this is a parenting podcast. How does this relate? But trust me, this is probably one of the most, um, motivating parental motivation podcasts you will hear for a while. This is we’re going to actually talk about what some of the vision was, why we started Courageous Parenting. Right? Was to really wake people up and say, hey.

Oh, it’s so important because, you know, normal Christian rhythms are largely failing when you look out there. How do I know? You look at the stats, about 70 to 80% of kids raised in Christian homes are falling away from the faith by age 18. So despite more efforts in church with youth programs, more efforts at putting kids in great schools and all of these things, we’re We’re still seeing these stats, and it’s because of what it really comes down to. Is the noise controlled by the enemy in the world is becoming stronger, and a laser beam target towards children to confuse their minds. And parents must be more intentional than ever.

You know, one of the verses that we often use in the podcast is Romans chapter 12. It’s one of the chapters that we quote a lot, right? Romans chapter 12 two specifically. Um, and today, you know, one of part of the title is Hate Evil. And so I thought that I would share from Romans chapter 12 also, which verse nine says, let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, and hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. And do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit and serve the Lord. But this is this is the point is that this is a command from God. This is him giving us direction and guidance in his holy Word that is going to outlive all things. There’s another scripture that says Heaven and earth will pass away, but his world word will endure forever. So, you know, recognizing the power and importance of God’s Word and that he wrote it for us to read and obey.

And when you hate something, you distance yourself from it. You’re not wanting to participate in it. You are opposed to what it represents. And nowhere does the Scripture or what we just said say anything about people. Mhm. No, no it’s interesting. It’s all about hating what is evil. The evil things that are happening, the evil behind what people are doing. And it’s really important to think about that and then hold fast to what is good. When you hold fast, when you look up that word, it is completely embraced with all your might. It is to hold on strong to what is good. And there has to be both of those things happening in Christians. And we have to be educating and living out by example to our children in these things.

You know, Ecclesiastes chapter three, verse eight, you know, chapter three is the whole seasons of life, chapter a time to heal, a time to kill, a time. You know, we all know that verse pretty well. But verse eight even says, there’s a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. And I think that, you know, for us as Christians to recognize that there are seasons and in our lives where there’s going to be more of one than the other. Right? And as we are aware and not asleep as some are, but as we are aware and we’re seeing what’s happening in the world, we might feel disgusted. We might be overwhelmed at times with like thinking, wow, there’s just so much evil happening. And I hear this from a lot of moms, Isaac, I hear that there’s a lot of anxiety or just even just sick to their stomach thinking about the influence that it could have upon their kids. And that’s why we’re talking about this today, right? Is that parents need to have their eyes wide open. We need to be awake and alert.

And not operating in fear. Not at all. In fact, the more intentional you are with your children. I’m not talking about helicopter mom in the negative sense. I’m not talking about overprotective in the negative sense, but intentional in discipling in the purest sense is what we’re talking about actually equipping so that your children can stand on their own two feet in this world. Gradually, as they get older, the more intentional you are, the more proactive, the more you work at this and work this muscle. There’s nothing to fear because you trust God, right? And you completely trust God. But it’s not a naivety in trusting God. You trust his sovereign power, all powerful. But at the same time, we don’t mistake or forget our responsibility, right? We have a responsibility to protect, equip and disciple our children. God gave us that authority, the most important authority in our children’s lives. And so those have to go together. And sometimes subconsciously, you might not be even be aware of it. You might be just on one side. Right? And if you’re not trusting God in His sovereignty, then you might be really fearful. And being the negative sense of overprotective.

Well, when I think about fear, if I’m just transparent, honest about times when I struggle with fear, it’s usually when I believe the lie that what I do, it’s all weighing on what I do or don’t do like, as if somehow my what I do has control over it.

And that problem with that is, you know, you’re not perfect, right?

Well, not only that, but a lot of what we see happening in the world, we don’t actually have control over. Right, right. And so and you clearly don’t have control over changing another person’s heart or another person’s soul or saving them. That’s not something humans have the ability to do. And so when you when you recognize that that should for a Christian, lead us to full surrender in the name of Jesus interceding on behalf of those people and saying, Lord, thank you for opening my spiritual eyes that I see this evil that’s consuming this person. And I’m going to pray for them because I know that it’s by the power of your Holy Spirit that that change and being set free from that bondage can happen. It’s not by anything that I have control over. Right? And when you give that to God in that way, that changes everything. Um, second Timothy, which this is one of the verses that we also share here a lot, you guys in verse seven, it actually I’m going to go before it because it’s half of a sentence. Verse six says, for this reason I remind you to fan the flame of the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self control.

And I’m reminded even again, when there’s crazy things happening in the world. Where do you go to church? This is God’s command to people to be fanning the flames of one another. Where else is that supposed to happen, if not in the family, in your home, and in your church? Your family of God? Those are the two places where we should be experiencing the fanning of the flames, the equipping, the this has happened. I’m going to shepherd you. I’m going to make sure that your heart is is doing okay with the Lord. That is the job of the pastor. It’s also the job of the the father in the home, right, as the pastor of the home. And so if there isn’t an acknowledgement, especially for wives, because we do see what’s going on, we’re not blind, right? Although some of us would like to hide under a rock, the reality is, is we know the reality of what’s happening in the world. And so we need to be encouraged to have our flames fanned, if you will. Because we’re doing the grunt work every day and raising our kids and praying hard that they’re not going to be deceived when they launch from our home.

Absolutely. Hey, thank you for being part of the Be Courageous ministry. Uh, be Courageous ministry.org, all the show notes, everything you can find there, you can give there. You can buy the coffee, you can purchase courses. You can encourage us by sending us a message. Pray for us. Most importantly, we really appreciate it. Double vision is important this year for impact and you’re a part of that regardless of the role you’re playing. But thanks for raising up your hand, listening to the episode and so forth. One of the most important things that has happened in the ministry as of late is sponsors coming on board to really help us to be able to fund the impact growth, um, uh, along with the people giving and so forth. All of it is extremely important. So we thank you for that. But we want to kick it off just for a moment and talk about master books.

You know, I have shared a couple times in the last two podcasts about some of the stuff I’m doing with my older kids for home school this year. But if you are new to homeschooling, or you have a kindergartener first grader and you’re thinking about homeschooling for the first time, or maybe you have a different kid. Maybe you’ve been homeschooling, um, one of your kids or a couple of your kids, but you’ve got another one coming up in the ranks and you’re just not sure what you’re going to use because they maybe aren’t wired the way your other kids were. I want to invite you to check out Master Books.com forward slash courageous. We actually have a giveaway going on with them right now. I think there’s about six weeks left. Um, 5 or 6 weeks. And you know, when you enter the giveaway. The cool thing about this is we made packages of like what my favorite curriculums are for age categories. Because I have so many kids, we basically are parenting in every season of life right now. Um, but I want to share with you guys if you’re watching our YouTube channel, which, by the way, go and subscribe to that. You can find us at Be Courageous on YouTube. Um, I am using their kindergarten curriculum this year with Eli, and he has been asking a lot of questions about heaven. And because, you know, my dad passed away in April and we had the memorial and there’s just been a lot of questions because Zander, he forgets and he wants to pray for Papa all the time.

So we’re doing a science curriculum called Heaven and Earth for beginners. And I think that the more I go through this as I’ve just been like flipping through it, it’s a great conversation starter that will teach basic principles from a biblical perspective. It’s all, um, very, very carefully sifted through. Right. And so this is a great way to start initiating more conversations with your kiddo, to show them that you’re not scared to talk about things like heaven, because if they have questions, that is like the perfect time to really engage with your kids. Um, the other thing I’m doing this year that’s a little bit different. We are doing their kindergarten math curriculum, which if you’re watching, you can kind of see it’s very colorful, which my specific five year old is very creative. He loves art, and I know that he’s looked at his brother’s other curriculum, which was all black and white pages, and he was like, I don’t want to do that, mom. And so this one, I’m hoping, is going to be much more exciting for him, because it’s kind of meeting the way he’s wired. So if you’re interested, find out more at Master Books.com forward slash courageous. All right.

So let’s dive in. Why is it important to be aware, to be awake and to be alert about what’s happening around us, about the changes in our local community, changes in our broader community and around the world. Why is this important? Because we have to make sure that we are not deceived. And part of not being deceived as a parent is being able to make decisions that are the very best decisions based on the world that our children are going to be launching into. Again, not in fear, but in wisdom. It takes wisdom like you would all agree, right? We’re not to equip our children the exact same way as parents were doing 30 years ago. I think everybody would agree that there are some changes, there are some similarities and there are some changes. But how do you know what those changes are unless you are being proactive and being aware?

Yeah, I think too, there’s a you know, there’s a lot of people who because they know that there’s nothing they can do to change it. They just want to hunker down and focus on what they’re doing. And I get that. I totally get that. I struggle with that desire sometimes because I can. My life alone is so busy that it’s like taking on knowing more of what’s going on. That alone can just be, like, too much, right? Actually, um, but that’s why Isaac and I have had this conversation many times before, and he really loves knowing what’s going on and equipping the family so that actually lands more in his jurisdiction. Although I do know and can have conversations with people, a lot of it is because of stuff that I see and I bring to him, and I ask him about it and he’s already researched it, or he brings it to me or brings it to our family, depending on what it is. And I think that that’s really important that there is this like team effort between the couple to figure out who’s going to be heading that up, Because somebody’s got to be aware. Um, like you said, God doesn’t want us to be deceived. And we see that in Scripture. Um, we’re going to go over a few different passages of Scripture here in a few minutes to see what the Bible says about that. But we see words like awake, alert, sober minded, aware that you are not deceived, that you are not led astray. We see these these terms by Jesus and in the Word of God over and over and over again. And while I love, I would love to go over all of them. We have handpicked just a few. And we’re going to start out with Matthew chapter 24, verse 36 through 39. And then we’re going to jump to 44. Just because we have so many scriptures here.

And I would say that you might want to jot these down because they’re good scriptures to weave into your equipping of your children to keep on hand and go, oh, here’s a time to teach this at the dinner table.

Totally. So obviously, Matthew chapter 24, the disciples are asking about when the end is coming, different things like that. And and you guys know from listening to the podcast, we are not of the mindset of like, oh, the end is coming. Now. We believe what the Bible says. There are birth pains where we read about that, the wars and rumors of wars. We do see this happening, but this has also been something we’ve seen all throughout history. There have been many of these things happening, but as time goes on, as Christians, we are still commanded by God to be alert and be awake so that we’re not deceived so that we are not led astray.

So if I could say something so I want to be like Paul, you know, I want to be Paul living in a way of fully extending myself for the gospel. And I can’t say that’s true all the time, actually. But I want to be like that, you know, we can want to be more of something, right? And I also want to be in a way of, wow, Jesus looking forward to Jesus coming back and that that could happen at any time, and at the same time, training up our kids that they might live long and prosper, have grandkids and they’ll have kids, and they’ll have kids and they’ll have kids. And I think that’s a really healthy perspective.

Because it could the truth is, is that nobody knows. Jesus says it over and over again, which you will see in some of these scriptures. In fact, Matthew 24 is one of those places. In verse 36 it says, but concerning that day and hour, no one knows. See? Who knows? No one knows, okay? Not even the angels of heaven, nor the son, but the father only. So if you’ve got somebody in your life that’s like prophesying that the end is coming, I would go look and read your Bible because this is really clear. It says not even the sun capital S knows, but the father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage. So they were ceremony was happening right until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came. I want to highlight that they were unaware until the flood came, like it came upon them all right. And they. And swept them all away. So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men, and then it just continues on. And we’re going to skip ahead to verse 44 says, therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Who then is faithful and wise servant? Listen, who and I actually want to read the next part.

Who then is faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household to give them food at the proper time and just continues on? There is a need for us as believers to really just tune out what other people are saying about what’s going on in the world. Yes, we do believe that we are living in unprecedented times. That is a term that we have used many times. Um, not because we’re shocked. If you listen to this podcast for any length of time, you know, we’re not shocked. I mean, we live in a sinful, fallen world. Um, obviously we just read about part of what was going on during Noah’s day. If you’ve studied that account in Scripture and you’ve read through Genesis and studied it in depth, You know, the debauchery and the the level of just immense sin that was occurring among the world. You know how bad it was. This has been a problem in humanity throughout the ages. Sin is sin, and as believers we are called to be set apart. But that doesn’t mean that we close our eyes to it. Set apart means I’m going to be aware of what’s happening so that I’m not led into it. So my children are not led into it. I’m going to teach them about what God’s Word says about that, so that they know that that is off limits and that is evil, because we, God’s people, are going to abhor and hate evil because God’s Word says to absolutely.

First Thessalonians five two through nine, I believe for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying this, there is peace and security. Then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep. Others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. So we have to be vigilant. And, you know, this Olympics thing that just happened. Very interesting, isn’t it? And, um, you know, it was, uh, terrible. It was literally terrible. And if you haven’t seen it, I’m sure you have. So I don’t need to talk too much about it. But the opening of the Olympics was the most ridiculous, evil, demonic thing.

If children saw it, I’m just going to be the mama bear. If children were there, that’s like pure child abuse being pushed on them. There was what they were depiction.

To look at, depiction of threesome kind of things, all kinds of weird stuff, uh, woven throughout. There was even a child at the table. Uh, it looked like they tried to mimic the Lord’s Supper. Now, I understand there’s some controversy about that. Oh my goodness. You know.

There’s we’re going to talk about that.

There’s there’s people that are saying, uh, they’re really kind of coming out at Christians for mocking, mocking other Christians, uh, online thinking that that was a depiction of the Lord’s Supper when they are saying that it had to do with, uh, the dizziness, I think, is his name. Uh, he’s a Greek, uh, guy in history. That was all about craziness and debauchery and wine and all these things. Mythology. Right? Yeah. So thank you. And anyways, um, there’s a lot that’s debunking that. And what’s interesting is Christians started coming out with this, and then it seems like the liberals picked it up as, uh, an argument for no, no, no, no, that’s not what they were doing. Christians, you shouldn’t be upset. They’re not doing well. You just look at it. It’s obvious and the history is debunked. Anyways. Uh, people saying that was part of history, that it was this other thing. There is some speculation even that that that those, those things, those things in history were also mocking the Lord’s Supper. So, um, I’m not perfect on the history of Greek mythology. I’d rather be, you know, stronger in the biblical history and so forth. But you know what? History is important. It’s a very good thing. But I think we need to not create division amongst Christians about things like this, especially when it gets debunked anyways. And it’s obvious pastors around the country, I hope, were at least mentioning this this last Sunday. Um, just how terrible this is.

You know what’s interesting, though, is that whoever did this knew that it would be offensive to other people, even if that was I mean, the guy that, like, um, organized and orchestrated the whole thing is saying that he didn’t intend for it to offend Christians. Right? Okay. You can say whatever you want, but the reality is, is what was cast was evil. We know this because we know what God’s standard is for purity. And this was evil. And so the reality is, is that there’s a blindness coming from him. And and whatever prompted him to do that knew that it would be offensive. I’m just saying that Satan wants to offend Christians, but here’s and he wants to mock and he’s a counterfeit. He can’t come up with anything creative.

Here’s Jill Biden saying it was spectacular and Kamala Harris saying it was amazing and perfect.

That she’s like, this is something that we Americans should strive for. Oh, make me want to vomit. Yeah.

Wow. It was, uh, absolutely atrocious. And you know what? You know why I think it’s such a big deal. Isaac, why are you making a big deal of this? I think it’s a really big deal. Because it could be one of the largest moments in history. Yeah, I’m going to say this one of the largest moments in history that the normalization of sin was broadcasted because so many people watched the Olympics, so many families together. Young people are watching, people are sitting together all over the world watching this, and they kick it right off with complete debauchery. And I just think that, you know, we should hate evil. I didn’t say hate anybody. I said hate evil. We need to hate evil and hold fast to what is good. And so you have to decide on for yourself what you’re going to do with the Olympics and these kinds of things. But for us, that’s not going to be on in our house. Now, if I had a relative performing and so forth, of course I would tune in to support them and watch that, that thing. But you know, you have to decide for yourself. It’s like, I don’t want to support what they’re doing.

I don’t think that this is a thing that should cause division. And if somebody’s watching a specific game or something, right in the church. But I do think that there is an element of voting with your dollar. Dollar, like we’ve talked about many times, where we have choices as believers to be good stewards and recognizing that we fund things and that should actually cause us to do things differently than the world. It just should. Um, I also think that when it comes to unprecedented times, I just want to reiterate something. I do believe that we’re living in unprecedented times. And you mentioned why you and I have talked about this a lot. It’s technology.

It’s because never before has, uh, has these kinds of messages been able to be broadcasted simultaneously. In addition, the speed of change through technology is rapid. Some of it, by the way, is good. So you can say unprecedented times in terms of wow, it’s unprecedented times in evil and unprecedented times good, good change happening, actually.

I mean, imagine how many people are being reached with the gospel because of the advancements of technology. So while you have the spiritual darkness rising, you also have spiritual regeneration and revivals happening because of it. And so the truth is, though, is that as believers, we need to recognize the times that we’re living in so that we are able to parent and equip our children to be able to stand firm. So anyone saying that these are not unprecedented times, it’s really ridiculous. Like, are you aware of the power of technology and how things have changed even in the last 4 to 5 years? I also think that there’s this element of like this sort of thing might have been a common occurrence in other cultures around the world. Right. In Greece, in Rome, you’ve got the Olympic Games, as you will. Right back in the gladiator days, it was just horrendous.

Tearing people apart.

It was just terrible, terrible, terrible stuff. But this is the first time ever that this has been something that has been popular, promoted in America. And so it is a different time for our country. And recognizing that we’re just actually catching up to the way the world has actually always been. You know, for me, having traveled overseas, you and I have traveled overseas a lot in our first 14 years that we were married, but I also had done missions overseas as well. And seeing the darkness and the spiritual warfare that is there and coming back and seeing the exact same attacks. But people are just desensitized to it here in America. The truth is, is it’s been there’s been a quiet sleeping that has been happening and it’s dangerous. And as Christians, we need to wake up. We need to be aware of the battle, the spiritual battle in high places, and read scriptures like Ephesians six four and be praying earnestly. Here’s the thing. Like we are not going to be led to prayer in the way that God wants his people praying to him. If we’re in darkness and not aware of what’s happening. So for the mom, that’s like feeling overwhelmed. I want to encourage you like cast that burden on God, but don’t close your eyes and and and pretend like everything is okay. Hey guys, it’s that time of year when we’re figuring out curriculums and you might be looking for a Bible based apologetics curriculum. Have the confidence to teach your kids and students about a biblical worldview. Summit Ministries Homeschool curriculum helps kindergarten through 12th grade.

Students understand more than individual verses or stories about the Bible. Your child will learn the overarching story of Scripture, and how the same truths about God that guided David, Daniel, and Paul shape their lives today. And as your children become older, they’ll learn how to defend their faith and respond to false ideas. Together, you’ll find answers to questions like why do we trust the Bible? What do other religions teach? How do I stand for truth when my friends are against it? Learn more at summit org slash courageous and use the code 15 at checkout for a discount on any summit curriculum that’s summit. Org forward slash courageous. I want to share a really amazing personal testimony with you guys. The first 20 years Isaac and I were married, we primarily went the traditional health insurance route. Being entrepreneurs in those first 20 years, we had nine pregnancies, one loss, and eight babies birthed Earthside. Each time we were pregnant, we felt limited by our insurance coverage when making the decision on where we were going to have our babies. When looking into coverage for those births, home birth exclusions were a really big deal for us because of the risk of liability in case of an emergency. As we continued having babies later into life and being older, I was labeled geriatric. I was considered high risk, which made it even more difficult to find the care that I wanted with the assurance of support. Then, four years ago, we switched over to Samaritan Ministries, which is a health sharing organization.

A few years into switching, we experienced another pregnancy loss and then we became pregnant for the 11th time. Still desiring to have a home birth, we were so blessed and surprised to find out that all our needs were shareable within the organization and that I could choose the provider I wanted. So we move forward to have the home birth of our dreams. If you’re looking for an alternative option to being able to pay for medical expenses incurred in raising a family, and you desire the freedom to choose your own providers, including alternative providers like chiropractors and naturopaths. We want to encourage you to check out Samaritan Ministries at our link Samaritan Ministries forward slash. Be courageous. In the video, we share how it works and answer a bunch of frequently asked questions. So check out our link at Samaritan Ministries. Org slash be courageous because that’s going to change how you actually parent. It’s going to change the decisions that you make on whether you send them to a certain school or not. It’s going to change the decisions that you make regarding what movies you’re going to allow them to watch, or if you’re just going to drop them off at soccer practice, because that’s what happened to you when you were a little kid and you were fine. The reality is, is things have changed today, and I think that we would be in a much better place today if our parents and the parents before them had actually been more awake and been intentionally parenting to.

I know 20 years ago we were thinking along these lines, actually. Right. And so we parented very much the same way from nearly the beginning. And we remember looking around, why? Why are people.

Okay with celebrating Halloween?

We didn’t have a ministry talking about parenting. You had you had a blog going, but we didn’t have something so public. But anyways.

But everything was so I felt so out of the loop. Like I remember we were.

So ostracized for what we.

Believed was because it was like, why do I have this deep conviction that I don’t want my three year old daughter, four year old daughter going to Christian preschool and having to be around goblins and bloody costumes and witches. When it’s evil, it’s just evil and everything in me. Because I love Jesus, abhorred evil. That’s what we’re talking about. You guys. Like, if your kids are scared, don’t go, oh, it’s okay. You don’t need to be scared. It’s okay. And I’m I’m speaking this loudly to you now because there are stores that are already putting Halloween merch out everywhere. Costco’s filled with it, you guys. And you know how I protect my children when they’re really young and they’re affected by that kind of stuff and they’re scared. I tell them, yeah, that is evil. We shouldn’t like that. And I protect them from going to places where they’re going to be exposed to those scary things when they’re really little. And then I as they get older, I talk to them about that evil and what that evil represents, and I affirm those feelings that they have in them versus trying to get them to, like, be desensitized, which is really what a lot of parents do.

I’m sorry, I’m on a soapbox because this kind of stuff makes me very like there’s this righteous anger that kind of rises up in me when I feel like there is a game being played on. Kids and parents are falling for it hook, line and sinker because they’re embarrassed that their kids have spiritual discernment at a young age and they’re like, oh, that’s scary, mommy. We should be. Yeah, it is scary. Yeah, you’re right. That’s not good, is it? That’s a witch. Witches are not good. Witches are evil. And witchcraft is real. Like, you know, I just think that as parents, we need to have our eyes wide open. We need to be more prepared. And Ephesians six is one of those passages that’s, you know, it’s all about the armor of God, right, Isaac? Like we’re supposed to be putting this on daily as Christians, we’re supposed to be teaching our kids to put this on. But then you read a verse like deep down inside, a lot of times people will read the beginning and then they don’t keep reading. I want to encourage you to go to verse 18. It says, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication.

To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. Here’s the deal. Keep alert. Why? Jesus tells us literally. God’s word tells us right here you will not know how to be praying with all supplication at all times. If you are not alert, when you’re alert and you’re aware, like when I’m driving and I see a fire like burnt on the hill, I am moved to pray when a fire truck passes by me. I am moved to pray. When I see evil in a store, I am moved to pray for Jesus to protect little kids eyes and hearts so that they don’t have night terrors. So it’s not a foothold for the devil when like. But what about you? When you see evil, when you see destruction, when you see theft, when you see hurt, when you see pain, are you moved to pray like that is what we’re called to as Christians. But if we’re just hiding under a rock and we’re trying to, like, not be overwhelmed by things, we’re not actually being activated by the power of the Holy Spirit to be praying, which is our main job right now. I’m sorry, I just get really. That was.

So good. It’s so good. So we must hold fast to what is good. And the byproduct of that is we’re not going to like what is not good. And don’t you want your children to be raised that way? Don’t you want your children to adopt that versus slowly be desensitized to what the world calls is okay? Well, the Olympics just showed us what the world thinks is okay. And I’m thankful that there actually is a lot of pushback because not all of the world thinks it’s okay. There’s, you know, a lot of conservative minded Christian people out there in the world. And let’s be honest, other religions probably also upset. And I think that pushback is good on that. And I hope a lot of pushback happens.

I do I hope that they experience, um, the consequences of what they’ve done. I hope that people vote with their dollar. I like seeing things like different organizations pulling out ads and and things like that because they need to. The people need to stand up and say, this is just not okay. And I feel like there are a lot of people that are standing up and saying that, but we need more. You know, as Christians, we need to not be divided about like, oh, when did this happen? Oh, this happened, you know, back in Greek mythology, they also did a feast of this as well. And like, okay, it’s good to know history. True. But it’s okay if you’re offended as a Christian, if you’re offended because it looked like they were mocking the Lord’s Supper, that’s called spiritual discernment. And I’m just going to say it’s okay if you were offended, because that means that the spirit inside you is waging war in the heavenly places. And that’s what God calls us to as Christians, is to be activated and be praying against it. First Peter chapter five verse. I’m going to start just at the end of seven. It says, casting all your anxieties on him. So are you anxious? I mean, this is what we’ve been talking about, right? Like parents are anxious. They don’t want to be alert. They want to avoid what’s going on. Cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. That’s why he cares for you. And then it says in verse eight, be sober minded, be watchful. Here we are again. Be watchful. Why? Why be watchful? He says in verse that the last part of verse eight, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Verse nine, resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world and after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

I wish we used. I’m talking about a populist now. I wish we used words as strong as the Bible uses words like the word resist. When was the last time you used the word resist? It’s such a powerful word, right? Hold fast. Mhm. Hate. What is evil? Mhm. Do we use that vocabulary good anymore? I don’t hear it very often. But when you actually start, when you read scripture look at the word choice by God. Mhm. And the powerful words that he chose all throughout Scripture.

It’s interesting because verse ten I just want to point something out like God is saying after you have suffered a little while, right, like you’ve been burdened potentially that would just that would be the most minor type of suffering that I would think of as just that burden of like, whoa, this is heavy. This is what’s happening in the world. That would be like the most minor form of suffering in a sense. Right? But it says after you have suffered a little while, why? Why are you suffering? Because you kept alert in your aware. Listen, after you’ve suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. It’s not before you’ve suffered a little while. It’s after you’ve suffered a little while. He will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you. And so recognizing that God has called us to do this because why? It’s sanctifying, it’s hard. We have to rely on the Holy Spirit to grow us. Our capacity grows for more, and we equip our kids with that same strength that we’ve gotten from God.

How do you grow? How do you become strengthened? It’s very difficult without resistance. Resistance is often part of the process of anything being strengthened. Right? If you work out physically, what do you have? You have resistance so that you grow stronger. And we see that throughout. You see that in your own life, right? We experience resistance and we have a couple choices. We can trust God and and trust him and keep moving forward. Or we can recede in our weakness and fear. And I think that he wants us to be strengthened. And strengthening only happens when we bear through the challenges while trusting him. When we bear.

One another’s burdens.

And we come out and we come out the other side, and we’re strengthened by that experience.

And by God and His Spirit, because we’re relying on him to get through it. Right. And then we we look back and we see the marks of his footprints and his hands all over what we walked through. And you can’t deny the power of God in your life when you’ve walked to the end of yourself and you’re waiting for God to show up, and he does, there’s no denying him. There’s no way that you could possibly ever doubt when you’ve experienced God in that kind of a way. And that’s what Jesus wants for all of his kids. He wants us to know him in a powerful way, to obey him, to follow him, to love him that much, that we would be willing to stand firm and speak truth at time. And so I it’s interesting. I sometimes when we do podcasts, the episodes that are like this. Right, like the one at the beginning of the year in 2024, we talked about like predictions for the year. We always do this like fun podcast episode at the beginning of the year where we say these are some things that we think could happen this year and based on trends, based on trends and current events and different things. And, and it’s interesting to go back and listen to that, because a lot of those things have happened so far, and we’ve only done that two years in a row. And it’s just more of like, what are we preparing our families for? That’s why we do it is like to share with you guys what we’re seeing and how that is activating us to do things a little bit differently with our family, to equip them to prepare them so that they’re more prepared for the time that they’re going to be launched into, because that is unprecedented. Meaning every year after this is going to be even more unprecedented times.

I’ll tell you one, I just told our kids the other day. I said, children, you’re going to see an increasing number of Christians going against Israel. And so I just want you to be aware of that. And then we had this wonderful conversation about all that. And how do I know that? Because for a while now I’ve been seeing this.

It’s percolating. Yep. It’s the stirring. The percolating is a way better word. That’s a good word for that. It has been. But you know, I think that, you know, as Christians when we do episodes like this, people can go, oh, Isaac and Angie, are you fear mongering? Like you’re getting people all worked up about something by the choice of scriptures that you’re reading? Well, are you guys being challenged with those scriptures and church? What about in your Bible study? What about in your personal reading time? Are you being challenged and having your flames fanned to stand firm in the faith, and to actually be activated to equip your children so that they’re prepared to stand firm against the lies of the devil when they launch from your home. And if you’re not, that’s why we’re doing it. We have felt so called to stand up and go, hey, parents, let’s go. Let’s do this together. Let’s not run the race alone. And this isn’t fear mongering. Otherwise, what you’re saying is that Jesus was fear mongering because all we’re doing is reading words from his word. And if you’re arguing with us, you’re actually arguing with God because it’s just his words to tell people to stay awake, be alert, be aware because there is a devil. But guess what? You don’t have fear. I hope you hear this. You will not have fear if you truly believe God is who he say, he says he is.

If you have faith in the Triune God, in the God who is sovereign over all things, whose omniscient, who’s omnipotent, who is the God of all gods, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Savior of all. He’s the creator. Nothing passes by me or Isaac and our own lives unless it’s sifted through the hands of God. And the same is true for you. If you believe in that God and the God Almighty, Yahweh, then you don’t have anything to fear. And when you believe in that God and you know him on an intimate level, then you have this deep desire to live the purpose that he created you for, which is the Great Commission. It’s like what Isaac was saying if we were to live like Paul, then we’re going to have this urgency, understanding that we don’t know when the last day is going to be here. So we live with an urgency to share the gospel with whoever we can, and to love people well, and to hate evil and to equip our kids because we just don’t know. But at the same time, like, you want to equip your kids for seven generations, for 30 generations down the road, because that is the God that we also believe in, that he’s commanded us to be responsible and intentional as parents.

And just a warning there’s a scripture about itching ears. Be careful that you don’t have itching ears to getting off into all kinds of other things, even if they are true. These wormholes you can go in because of the internet and our devices and how easy it is, and people saying things to go off in directions. I’m not saying don’t learn, learn, learn, learn, but make sure you keep the main thing, the most important things front and center of your mind. Because when you are learning things, you are influencing your mind in a direction. And if you keep learning in a direction, pretty soon you’re influencing and your life starts prioritizing that thought process towards that thing. And our thought process needs to be stay that God is powerful and he has a mission for us to share the gospel and first and foremost, equip our children and be discipling them and sharing the gospel with them over and over and over again, and raising them in our marriage and keeping our home right and not getting caught off guard where we’re exhausted by every which direction. And we need to keep focused on the main thing, while at the same time being awake and aware of what’s happening so we can do this main thing even better. Mhm.

And understanding that part of that teaching your children and equipping them is to train them up in the way they should go, so that when they’re old they don’t depart from it. Well what is that, Angie? I mean there are so many scriptures. It’s teaching them all the commands of the Lord. But it’s not just that. It’s teaching them Christian living. How do you do that? You do it by reading the Bible with them and teaching them what the word says by living it out. And then when they say, why do you do that? That doesn’t make any sense. You go, but that’s because God prompted me to because his word says this. And then they’re like, mind blown. Whoa. Okay. And understanding that teaching your kids about scripture on loving your enemies. Let’s wrap this up. We’ve talked about being alert. We’ve talked about hating evil. Now we are called as Christians also to love our enemies. Matthew chapter five verse 43 says, you have heard it, heard that it is said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. I just want to encourage us that this is Jesus literally saying, don’t hate your enemy. Don’t hate people like I made them. They’re my creation. Love them. Pray for them, even the people that persecute you. But there are other scriptures as well that talk like even just the verse before. There’s the sermon on the Mount when it talks about blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God, which is in chapter five verse nine. And in recognizing that peace can’t exist without reconciliation into Christ, right. And reconciliation to Christ doesn’t happen apart from truth. And so what’s one of the best ways that we can love our neighbors? It’s actually to speak truth, not be silent. We’re not loving our enemies if we’re silent.

Yeah, passivity is often mistaken as being a peacemaker. Did you hear that? Peacemaker often goes. That title often goes with people that are very passive about their faith, because they don’t want to stir anything up. Well, I think we need to be loving in the way we say everything. We need to have a motivation of love and warmth, but we need to not be afraid of sharing what’s true. Persecution. Interesting word. Right? Well, the people that are persecuted are the people that are trying to influence people towards Christ. Mm.

So if you’re not being persecuted, maybe it’s because you’re not trying to do that.

And if you do try and do that, we’re starting to see in America it’s normal around the world. We’re starting to see America. You do get persecuted a little bit. Yeah, not comparatively to China and things like that. But persecution usually only happens to people who are proclaiming Christ publicly. Right, who are sharing individually with other people. And they might lose a customer. They might lose a friend standing firm for what biblical truth says with another Christian. Another Christian just isn’t holding to what’s true and letting anything go. And their kids are going in a tough direction that is having a bad influence on your kids. It is. It is not okay to sacrifice your kids for the sake of fake peace, which a lot of times in this world is called love.

I want to pause for a second and share something that’s been on my heart. This economy has changed and it takes more to equip your children to thrive financially. Today, we can’t just assume that sending them off to college or helping them get a job will make them successful. Youth Thrive Academy is filling in the gap left by educational efforts, and offers a personal finance online course that’s relevant to today’s economy. I’m excited my teenagers are taking this comprehensive course knowing any gaps will be filled in. Financial preparedness. They’re learning career readiness skills and how to manage their money through budgeting, saving, investing, borrowing, and protecting their assets. Make you thrive. Academy a part of your summer. Initiatives like We Are go to Youth Thrive Academy for parents, that’s the letter U and get 66% off retail, which is exclusive only for our listeners. Use the code courageous at checkout before it expires. And again, that’s Youth Thrive dot Academy forward slash parents I love this and the same chapter Matthew chapter 513. It says you’re the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

Pretty blunt, you know. We need to recognize that the God who regenerated us, who who gave us eternal life, the one that we live for, the one that we surrender our our anxieties to our overwhelm, to our issues, to our health, to whatever it is that you need to surrender. That same God is calling us to rise up and be a light and be a part of the team. Be a part of the team of God to partner with him, along with the disciples and everyone else in the Great Commission. And really, when we’re being silent, when we’re being passive, we’ve lost our saltiness. We’re worthless, meant to be thrown out just like the word says. And so being silent isn’t actually an option for Christians. Not anymore. It never was an option. Tolerating sin is also not an option. It’s not an option because when people are in sin, we know that sin leads to death.

A lot of it comes down to self-preservation. The actual reason is not so much that we don’t want to stir things up because we love somebody so much. No, it’s actually that we hurt our self-preservation and we want to keep unity and peace with somebody. But again, peace at the sacrifice of truth is fake peace. And then what happens? You build friendships around yourself where you don’t have real friendship. It’s just fake peace because there’s things on your mind you want to share, you want to help with, and so forth. But you don’t because you’ve built your relationship on shallow ground.

It’s all fake. Yeah, I mean, this is a big deal. So there’s the there’s two things right there that if I was to teach my kids and just do like a real basic teaching with them, like what are two things you don’t do when it comes to loving your enemy? You don’t be silent and you don’t tolerate sin because you know that their sin is a bondage that has got them completely entrapped and ensnared in the devil’s hands. And if you love them, then you want them to have eternal life. You want them to be free from that bondage. So there’s two things they cannot do. They cannot be silent and you cannot tolerate sin. But there’s a lot of things that we can do. We can pray for them and pray for God to tell us if we’re the person that’s supposed to speak truth or not. Because sometimes God says, no, I just want you to know about this so that you pray because I have somebody else in mind to speak that truth. But we don’t in any way just accept it. There needs to be an acknowledgement of, I don’t agree with this or I’m worried about you, I love you, I’m concerned for you. So you speak truth and love and you seek what is best for them.

And what’s best for them is to be freed from the bondage of sin. What’s best for them is to be walking upright, to be walking in the in the light, not in the darkness. God’s word says that he disciplines those whom he loves. Like sometimes parents. I see parents do this, especially when their kids get older and they they do something sinful that has maybe some really serious consequences, like maybe they steal something. And so they’re in jail and they bailed them out. Right. Let’s just use that as an example. That is enabling. That’s not showing grace and compassion. That’s enabling. If that’s the only thing that’s being done. And I’m not I mean, I’m I’m kind of being cookie cutter in this because I’m trying to drive home a point and I get that certain situations, you know, you can’t just blanket statement things like that. So there is grace and compassion for people. But the truth is, is as parents, we need to allow our kids to experience the consequences that God has for them in their life when they are in sin. If we try to cushion that fall, they’re not going to learn the lesson, they’re not going to experience it. And then when the next thing happens, it’s going to be even more intense and more painful.

That’s why you got to get the ten Steps to Discipline in the Parenting Mentor program. You got to get the whole program. I mean, it’s so important. So it’s just essential. You’ve got to do that. It is built to parenting in unprecedented times, where there’s new realities with technology and the enemy over showing his hand. But it’s unfortunately working against the youth of today.

But it’s the same thing that God’s Word has been teaching all along the ten steps of biblical discipline. It’s just foundation founded in God’s Word, and it’s so helpful to have clarity and to be able to have scriptures that go along with it, to give you that motivation for why you’re going to obey God as a parent. But sometimes seeking justice, I would say that’s the last thing seeking justice, right? God is a God of justice and mercy, but seeking justice sometimes. There are times as Christians where we are called to do hard things because God is using us to discipline someone, right? Like when they do something that is so evil and you are standing up for righteousness and you’re seeking justice, you’re calling the cops on them, or you’re not bailing them out and you’re letting them experience the consequences, whatever it is, like you’re allowing them to experience justice in a sense, and that sometimes is what a person needs to snap them out of their selfish way of being or the bondage that the enemy has them in. But either way, like this whole parenting gig thing, it is hard. It’s not for the faint of heart. Yeah, you’re going to have times where you’re going to go. I don’t know how to have this conversation with my kids. How do I talk to them about gender confusion? How do I talk to them about this in a way that is going to help them to love people who are living in sin, while also standing firm for truth? Because that’s really what we need to do. We need to do that, and we need to teach our kids to do that. Well, we hope this is helpful. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening. And being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement, go to Be Courageous Ministry. Org for more biblically based resources ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission and information about the incredible Be Courageous app community for believers.

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 session 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. We cover everything from tending to their hearts, handling obedience to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private group in the Be Courageous app, live webcast, and direct access to us.

If you’re interested in joining our next online Parenting Mentor program, secure your spot now at Be Courageous Ministry. Org that’s Be Courageous Ministry org.

• Private Group for Christian Moms with weekly lives with Angie Tolpin
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All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

Our Courses

• Parenting Mentor Program, self-paced online program that equips you to biblically parent during unprecedented times.
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• Cultivating Biblical Friendships  The course that helps women build lasting Godly friendships.

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

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

 

• Private Group for Christian Moms with weekly lives with Angie Tolpin
• Weekly podcast Q&A with episode behind the scenes content. Just type in your question!
• Exclusive biblical resources such as the Courageous Marriage and Redeeming Childbirth series.
• Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
• Monthly LIVE Q&A with the Tolpins; ask the anything.
• Powerful Biblically minded community.
• Topic-based discussion groups.
• You get your own profile and can connect with others.
• Growing libraries of LIVE replays

All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

Our Courses

• Parenting Mentor Program, self-paced online program that equips you to biblically parent during unprecedented times.
• The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.
• Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course.
• Cultivating Biblical Friendships  The course that helps women build lasting Godly friendships.

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

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

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 Isaac from Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children, as too many from Christian families are walking away from their faith by the age of 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

We’re praising the Lord. That ministry continues to expand and impact more legacies. We couldn’t do this without you. Whether you pray for us, give us five star reviews, or share on social.

Or even if you purchase courses and merch or join the Be Courageous app community, enjoy the coffee or support financially. We’re so thankful you are a big part of the 10 Million Legacies movement.

If you want access to all the episodes, show notes, and other biblically based resources, go to Be Courageous Ministry.

Org. Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Welcome back to the show, everyone. Hey guys. Oh, I’m so glad to be back with you.

And I know it’s been a couple weeks. We’ve had some awesome guest interviews on the podcast.

You guys say you have.

Well, it was amazing. When we went to the Texas Homeschool Conference, there were just so many like minded people that were also doing parachurch ministry. And so it was really neat to be able to connect with them, interview them and their expertise and share that knowledge and wisdom with you guys.

Absolutely. And gents, I got some of them really good guests on the Resolute Man Show, so check those out. But today we’re talking about what.

We’re talking about six reasons families should build something together.

It is so important. I’m so excited about this episode and no matter what size your family is, this is for you because a team is more than one person.

And can I also say, if you have little kids in the thought of like building something together, let’s just even use a garden, for example, it could be a little bit overwhelming. So this is a podcast episode for you in regards to thinking big and thinking visionary down the road, but also there are things you can do right now to create that same building together. When your kids are young and it can be really fun.

Absolutely. So hey, do you ever dream of your family having amazing sibling relationships.

Or have the ability to have good teamwork?

Unbreakable bonds into the future that never break.

If so, then make sure that you listen to today’s podcast. But before we jump into all of the topics, we have a really special announcement that we want to share with you guys. Yeah we.

Do. We, uh, have taken on some really amazing sponsors. They have been such a blessing. And our promise to you is we’re never going to have a sponsor we don’t implicitly believe in with deep conviction.

And so I want you guys to know that we actually kind of hand-picked these sponsors and reached out to them.

Well, you know, it’s kind of a phenomenal thing. We actually had a conversation with five organizations and all five said, yes, that’s right.

So we’ve been really enjoying this experience and working with other people, learning more about their organizations because they’re all Christian, all biblical based organizations, and many.

Of which you’ve either used their curriculum before with success or were currently using them. And or maybe.

They’re an organization that you’ve never heard of before. So you’re going to we just want to encourage you guys to listen to those little spotlights that we’re going to pop in and out through the podcast to share about, because they’re really neat organizations. In fact, as I’ve been learning more about some of them, my kids are actually this week doing some of the exciting things through summit. So anyway, we are really excited to be able to introduce you to some organizations that can help you with your parenting.

But hey, we’re going to give you six reasons that are really rock solid reasons to actually give you practical know how biblically based. And at the end of every show, starting today, we’re going to give some unprecedented times tips at least one right at the end that has to do with the content of the show. So stick to the end to get that super tip about parenting or marriage or whatever the topic of the episode is during unprecedented times.

You know.

I love that because if you guys have been around here for a while, you know that our mission is 10 million Legacies movement to help parents to equip and raise up confident, courageous kids for uncertain times or unprecedented times, as you like to call.

It.

Absolutely. Hey, I’m sure everybody wants to know how’s the garden going? I mean, off topic.

But I know.

Well, this is maybe like a little tidbit of personal Isaac and Angie time. It’s going really well now. Um, in the garden, we have a 1000 square foot garden that we put in. This is our what? Third summer? Yes, because we’ve been here for summer. So this is our third summer with that. And wow, such a huge difference when you already have the infrastructure and you’re not adding different things.

That gives hope to people that.

Are just building the infrastructure.

Yes, I’ve been thinking about this a lot because we did a lot of traveling in May in the beginning of June. It was.

A rough month and it.

Was good.

Though.

It was crazy. It was a crazy six weeks. I was literally gone a little bit of each just because of the passing of my father, also in the memorial and all the things. Yeah. And so I was a little worried that it wasn’t actually going to happen, even though I had the seeds planted. But the kids came together and helped keep them alive. That is teamwork. And that’s part of why we’re talking about this today, is that you can dream big and get big things done when you cultivate a family culture that where everybody’s chipping in and everybody is consistent and trustworthy to take care of things like growing plant.

Absolutely. Before we get any started, get any further. I think it’s so important that we talk about master books. I mean, you have so much good curriculum.

From.

Them, and they are one of our new sponsors and what an incredible company they have. The most curriculum in the sciences, isn’t that right?

They have over 30 biblical based, creation focused science curriculums, which I’m pretty sure they even told us. That’s like the largest amount compared to any other organization out there.

And what’s the great limiter of moms wanting to do science projects?

Oh my goodness, you guys. It’s the mess. The time, right? Let’s just say all the labs and labs can be expensive. I’ll just say, you know. So what’s neat is that they also have the Master Books Academy, so you can watch from a professor or teacher going through doing the lab with your kids or for your kids on the video, and then they get to see all the observations and fill in all the paperwork and everything. But there’s no mess. It’s pretty.

Awesome. What else is.

Good about it? What do you like?

Well, I was just actually looking through the their catalog today because there’s some extra things I want to go order. Of course. No they do. They have um, they have some really good books that are out by Israel Wayne, for parents that are considering homeschooling. Or maybe you just need a good kick in the pants on, like continuing to homeschool. There’s one called listen, this book. Does God have an opinion on schools? It was education. Does God have an opinion?

Oh wow.

That’s good. Another one was the conflict of the public school system and Christianity. And so there’s just some really good, like hard hitting books out there that I think are equipping for parents because we get, you know, we get the questions sometimes like, why do you homeschool? And so, um, anyway, I was just looking at those and then also they are one of, well, not one of they are Ken Ham’s publisher. And so answers in Genesis. If you guys are familiar with that ministry, the Creation Museum and the Know the Ark Encounter, he’s got so many resources for kids on Christian apologetics specifically like faith growing stuff. And so they have this like morning basket for elementary and kindergarten kids that’s like, got all the little kid age categorized books that are creation based.

I feel like we could talk about it forever. But the last thing I want to say, the buck stops here with it’s got to be biblical, right? Especially in this day and age. You got to know for a fact it’s biblical. And I love their oversight to make sure of that in every single thing they put out. Yeah. So go to.

Where.

Master Books.com forward slash courageous. Oh, and you guys, we have a giveaway that we are partnering with them in, which is really exciting too. So if you go to master books.com/courageous, you can find out.

About it there.

Some of your favorite stuff they’re giving away. That’s right. Okay. Let’s dive in. So it’s so important to do something meaningful together I’m going to list off some of the things or we will that we’ve done that are meaningful together. They don’t have to be the same as you. You’ll have your own list. They don’t have to be as weighty or as small as ours or whatever. Let’s not compare. But it was encouraging for us to think about it. Yeah, what.

We’ve done over the years.

Planting churches together, that was absolutely the whole family. And we’re about to embark. We are embarking on that right now again, and it’s been so fruitful. It’s not even going yet, but it’s been so fruitful for our family already. How about the vineyard?

The vineyard.

Was a huge.

Project. Gardens.

You know, I just got to say something briefly about the vineyard, because that was a huge project that was 1283 plants over, over a one and a half acre area. Um, and we were six weeks postpartum with our fifth, so we had six. We had five kids under seven. And so if any of you families that are listening, you’re like, I can’t imagine doing a garden. Like, guys, if we can do it, you can do it. Because Isaac was running a business, I was homeschooling Kelsey and Austin, and we made it happen during the summer.

My favorite moment was when we got all the small plants, 1283 of them, approximately. Yes. And we had them all in. They were all one year planted, every single one of them.

In a day.

One day. Yeah, as a family. And I remember the feeling we were exhausted afterwards. It was like 8 p.m. it was barely light out. It seemed like it was getting dark and we just looked at each other, youngest to oldest. We were, and of course locked eyes and it was like we went through something together.

We did. It was.

Memorable. Let’s let’s go to the restaurant and celebrate.

I mean, we were.

All like sweaty and dirty and all the things because we had the assembly line, you know, and I have pictures of the kids and the different things that they were doing. Right. Kelsey was the oldest, so she got to handle the plants and actually take them out of their, um, little pots and put them in the hole that dad had dug. Right. And then along would come Megan and she’d pick that up, that pot up, and she was in charge of collecting them. And then Austin would come along and he’d fill in the dirt, and then he’d get it with the hose, with the water.

And I think about 98% of those little plants made it. And it was unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

Very few not make it. And and that was and we had little drew.

I know, but we just drove past the vineyard when we were at my dad’s memorial.

Yeah.

And it was it was thriving. The vineyard looked amazing. And the family that bought the house still had the vision to keep that legacy going. And they even named it.

They even have a little name for the vineyard. It’s so it’s so cool. How about gardens? How about businesses? Even when I was working out of the house more and less with the family, they still felt included.

And we did hospitality together.

And you would even take the kids to work with you every once in a while.

It was all.

Teamwork. It was all.

Teamwork.

Give credit to your kids. Give credit to your wife and rally together. It’s so good. Ministry. Be courageous. Ministry are the DNA of our entire family is all over this and making it happen?

It’s true. I mean, from editing podcasts, we’ve had three, four kids actually with bee have their hands on editing the podcast.

Plus the kid.

Episodes, 75 episodes in the app.

Almost every single. I think Caroline’s even in that.

Yes to helping us watch the kids. So you can be out here to all kinds of other things behind the scenes, uh, traveling together. I would call it a three month RV trip and all the six week ones. And so.

And on.

The traveling side of things, I just even think about this last time when we were traveling, we had older kids coming home and staying like Kelsey came and stayed for a day and took care of the little kids so that we could be speaking at the homeschool conference. So there’s been a lot of just different examples of where, you know, we’re really thankful for our family. One, thankful for the kids, but also love that it’s something that we’ve been able to do where everybody’s had a touch on it, and so they can even think that they have had impact.

So teamwork is essential. How can you do something together that causes the gifts to come out in your family, causes everybody to feel needed, causes people to rise to a higher level of responsibility, to see that happening with amongst siblings, and to see growing respect happen amongst each other, to for the marriage relationship, to be working together to navigate and lead the team and and do things together and, you know, use each other’s gifts and understand where we’re weak and help each other. It’s so.

Important. Well, and.

I think that that’s like the first big benefit, right, is of the six reasons why we think that families should build something together is that you discover people’s strengths and weaknesses. You discover their gifts and talents. You just you learn more about your kids and your kids learn more about each other. And and while there can be some growing pains in that of course. Right. Because sometimes there’s friction, sometimes there’s oh, he’s doing this that way. And I think it should be done this way. Well, okay. You get to grow in, in this, um, ability of understanding. Not everybody’s wired like you. And that’s a good thing. Not everybody needs to be like you. And humility, having to be encouraged in kids and things like that. But also, isn’t that biblical? Like, we all want to be known, right? God wants us to know him. He knows us intimately. So we see that modeled in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. But for parents to have opportunities to really get to know their kids, you need to spend time with them. And working on a project will truly open your eyes to a lot of things good attitudes, whining and grumbling, bad attitudes, um, their skill level, what they know and don’t know. Um, their intuitiveness regarding like fixing things. You really learn a lot about your kids and it’s super important to know your kids.

Some people are.

Saying, I’m just trying to get through the day. I’m literally I can’t imagine trying to do something with all my littles, right? And go and get something done when I’m just trying to get the basic things done. Someone might be thinking, but I think something happens when you have a vision, you cast with a group and you go, hey, we’re going to do this. You get them excited about it and then they have roles to play. Even though that those challenges still come out, there’s a motivation that’s new. There’s like you’re stirring it’s energy amongst the team towards something which makes it. You still have those things, but now you’re more motivated even to handle them and move past them.

Now it’s.

True. And for those who might be feeling overwhelmed or thinking, oh, I can’t do a project, my kids are too little. You know, we did briefly mention that we planted a vineyard with five kids, seven and under and that. And I don’t say that to like, puff us up. I say that because we made a choice to do something that was going to be hard, but because we wanted to have a memory with our kids and we wanted to build something with them that was going to be legacy lasting, even if we weren’t living there in the future. And thank the Lord, we got to be there for nine more years. We were there for ten years, right? And having a tiny little homestead, if you will. And that was a really good experience, having four acres to get us ready for where we are now, where we have six and a half acres, you know, and who knows what that’s preparing us for in the future, or for kids for in the future. And, and I think that having that perspective and understanding, like, do you think I was ready to do something like that when we first had our first baby?

No, not at all.

Our capacity was not there. But you guys, when you choose in the moments of hardship or making hard choices to do the less traveled road and to dig in and ask God, what do you have to teach me? And you persevere through it. It works the muscle of perseverance, and it helps you to actually stretch your capacity so you’re able to handle more in the future.

So think right now what kind of project you might feel capable of doing with your children right now. And if you don’t do that, if you decide not to do that, that capability might stay around the same place. But when you go and do that with them and you conquer it together, guess what happens to what you believe? Your capability is with your kids and what your kids believe. Their capability is towards doing more things. It’s higher. So each time you do things, the capacity for handling projects grows amongst your family. So if you’re if you have a regular rhythm in each year of doing some projects together, what happens over time? Your family becomes more and more capable, a higher capacity, and your children feel capable of more things, which is preparing them for these unprecedented times.

You know, as.

Interesting, though, I think that there is a need for moms especially. I mean, maybe dads too. But in those times when we’ve done something that was kind of out of the ordinary, like planning a vineyard, planting a vineyard, for example, like that day, I had to plan ahead what meals were going to be prepared. I had to prep the kids to help with certain things. I had to be okay with a messy house so that I could focus on being outside that entire day.

And I had to take some time off work because there’s a lot of infrastructure that had to get put in place before you ever just.

I mean, it was a lot.

Of planning, a lot of dreaming, a lot of a lot of twine. I remember the twine.

Getting getting the soil right, getting it tested, getting it exactly right for the exact.

But that was all.

Such an amazing experience for the kids too, because we were doing soil testing with them and we were doing geometry. You were doing geometry out in the where it was going to be the vineyard with the kids and teaching them how to measure and how to make sure it was right so that it looked good from above because we knew there would be Google Maps.

By the way, I was guessing.

But you know it’s true when you look through Google Maps, it actually worked. I mean, I was kind of guessing kind of beautiful. It ended up working out. I can’t.

Believe it.

It’s incredible. But but can I just say though, like, you do have to be okay with letting some things go, temporarily suspending those commitments. Those those?

You mean you can’t.

Have a perfect house.

And know these products?

Are you kidding me? So I would have zero garden, zero produce, zero fruit from any kind of growing plants if I expected to not have any dirt on any floor. You guys. I literally had thousands of starts we planted from seed in my kitchen on shelves. When you water the plants, guess what happens? Sometimes dirt falls on the floor. So we go. You have to be okay with it for a short period of time, but it’s worth it for the fruit and the educational process and the family building that happens through that process.

All right. We got to.

Do a little more rapid fire here. I want to make sure you guys get that tip at the end. Okay. Uh, so reason number two is to respect grows for the differences amongst each other and also the things that are similar. Your children are wired very differently than you are and from each other, and that is helpful for having a great team. In Hebrews verse 1024 it says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Hey, isn’t that about, you know, meeting for church? Yeah, I think so. But I love that scripture for the family too, because aren’t we supposed to stir up good works in our family? Of course, in the body of Christ, we’re supposed to do that? Well, don’t you think we’re also supposed to do that? Maybe even more so in our own families?

That’s true. It’s interesting how when you read scripture, sometimes you just only think that it applies to church or your church life. And like on Sundays or it’s I think that humans compartmentalize their life too much. And instead, when you are willing to let the Holy Spirit, like, really open your eyes and go, okay, so this is definitely talking about the church meeting here. It’s definitely telling us as Christians, we need to be encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near for sure. But it’s also like, why wouldn’t we be doing this first in our families, right? If the if that’s like the image bearing of the family of God, right? Yeah. It’s kind of this there’s this purpose that we need to recognize that God designed families to be the image bearing light in this dark, fallen world of what the family of God, what the body of Christ is supposed to be.

Which is number.

Three, being on purpose together.

That’s right. And so there’s there’s this beautiful like biblical imagery that we see. But are we as families actually living that out? Are we as families truly like seeking God and going, okay, so Lord, what purpose do you have for my family in this season and our life as a family? Right now? We have kids that are these ages. Lord, what do you want us to do for your great commission or what have you put? What mission or vision have you put on my husband’s heart that we can work together as a team to make it come to fruition sooner, and be a light to other people? Because we’re working as a team. And honestly, that’s rare today. Hey guys, it’s that time of year when we’re figuring out curriculums and you might be looking for a Bible based apologetics curriculum. Have the confidence to teach your kids and students about a biblical worldview. Summit Ministries Homeschool curriculum helps kindergarten through 12th grade. Students understand more than individual verses or stories about the Bible. Your child will learn the overarching story of Scripture, and how the same truths about God that guided David, Daniel, and Paul shape their lives today. And as your children become older, they’ll learn how to defend their faith and respond to false ideas. Together, you’ll find answers to questions like why do we trust the Bible? What do other religions teach? How do I stand for truth when my friends are against it? Learn more at summit org forward slash courageous and use the code 15 at checkout for a discount on any summit curriculum that’s summit org forward slash courageous. I want to share a really amazing personal testimony with you guys.

The first 20 years Isaac and I were married, we primarily went the traditional health insurance route. Being entrepreneurs. In those first 20 years, we had nine pregnancies, one loss, and eight babies birthed Earthside. Each time we were pregnant, we felt limited by our insurance coverage. When making the decision on where we were going to have our babies. When looking into coverage for those births, home birth exclusions were a really big deal for us because of the risk of liability in case of an emergency. As we continued having babies later into life and being older, I was labeled geriatric. I was considered high risk, which made it even more difficult to find the care that I wanted with the assurance of support. Then, four years ago, we switched over to Samaritan Ministries, which is a health sharing organization. A few years into switching, we experienced another pregnancy loss and then we became pregnant for the 11th time, still desiring to have a home birth. We were so blessed and surprised to find out that all our needs were shareable within the organization, and that I could choose the provider I wanted. So we moved forward to have the home birth of our dreams. If you’re looking for an alternative option to being able to pay for medical expenses incurred in raising a family, and you desire the freedom to choose your own providers, including alternative providers like chiropractors and naturopaths, we want to encourage you to check out Samaritan Ministries at our link Samaritan Ministries forward slash. Be courageous. In the video, we share how it works and answer a bunch of frequently asked questions. So check out our link at Samaritan Ministries. Org slash be courageous.

You know I’ve always taught this in building organizations is someone either has will or skill or they have a combination of both. If you just give them skill but you don’t influence the will, the will to do something and the motivation to do something, it doesn’t mean they’re going to do it. You might experience that if you’re educating your kids, if there’s low will in a subject because you haven’t stirred them up in interest, then it doesn’t matter how smart they are, it doesn’t matter what the skill level is. They’re not going to use it, right. They’re not going to cooperate. But what happens when you do projects together? It ignites more will for everything because you’re working together. It gives that purpose, and I’d rather have will any day than skill, because people will develop skill when they’re energized to do something. And so that’s so important. Number four.

Is number.

Four is fruit. So obviously like when you’re working on a project, there’s going to be fruit that you see when a job is done right. When a project is completed, you look at it, you stand back, you look at it and you go, hey, we did this together. And that fruit is like, it makes it all worth it. That’s the thing about, like, even the vineyard. Going back to that again, I just remember sitting at a restaurant with the kids all around the table, and we were all exhausted, and the food never tasted so good. But we were also like, we did that. And then we drove really slowly.

Past the vineyard.

On the way home, going, look at that, kids! And that’s why all the kids wanted to go see it again when we were in this in Oregon for my dad’s memorial. And so it’s like people are attached to that. They want to share that. Like, I remember Austin was saying he wanted to show Caroline and Quincy, right, because that was part of his childhood. That’s a strong memory of family teamwork that we did that together. And it wasn’t just the parents going, oh, you guys go do this. Oh no, no, no, no. We were out there working so hard with the kids, leading the way, teaching them how to do things in a gentle way with plants. And and that was really awesome.

I think that brings a question people might have. How do you get your children to be into the project, into the.

Direction you got to do it with them? You got to do it with them.

But I think there’s some pre-framing that happens too, which is, you know, you have to think about who your kids are and what will excite them and think about how you’re going to use your words to create interest. We can’t just be boring, okay? Today we’re going to do the garden. You know, you got to be into it.

You got to lead the way.

Your energy’s got to be excited and for it.

Right. So like we have this quarter acre pasture area that’s a crop this year. And we did it last year as well. And it was really productive produce last year. Right. We got almost £900 of potatoes, almost £300 of onions, £500 of pumpkin. And we’ve got probably, I mean total between the garden and the back, another £530 of tomatoes also so hugely profitable for sure. But getting out there to weed was a thing. It was. It was rough and tough. And what I mean is when you’re in the middle of the heat, like right now, it’s like 100 degrees during the day. You got to get up early to get kids up early. You know what I do? I feed them really well, I, I do I’m like, I’m going to make you guys a great breakfast because you’re gonna help me in the past year today. And I smile and I, and I go out with them.

But you make it fun.

Sometimes you’re worshiping together. Sometimes.

Yeah.

You got to make it fun. You got to get them into it.

And I. And I’ve gotten better at this, which is something you taught me, which is to do a certain amount of time and set a timer and stick to it, and then let them be done and let them get.

They got to.

Have an end in sight if they don’t have an end in sight.

Because really with weeds, it you could be out there all.

The time, unless it’s.

Got its own juice about it and you’re trying.

To hit. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. Uh, the fifth thing is marriage. This is.

So this is a big deal for me. You know.

I want to I want to share Proverbs chapter 12, verse 24. It says the hand of the diligent will rule, but the slothful while the slothful will be put to forced labor. And I think that, you know, for us with the kids, I just want to touch on that, because that is the that’s like the spiritual fruit or the maturity fruit that you see in the kids after you’ve done a project. So there’s the two kinds of fruit, right? And we just talked briefly about the physical fruit that you see. Right. Lots of produce whatever it is. But there’s the spiritual fruit, the maturity that’s in them, the work ethic, work ethic, all of those.

Things are.

Are, are and know how and trustworthiness of being able to say, hey, can you go do this now? Because I’ve done this with you for two years and or one year or even a month, and I trust you to do it. Can you do this on your own? They’re like, yeah, sure, mom. And they go get it done. And you’re like, that was rad. And so there’s this element of like teaching hard work, get it done as fast as you can so that you can then have fun so that you can enjoy.

Well, I think.

Of what we did this last weekend. On Saturday we created this whole outdoor lighting system, uh, with, you know, 350ft of lighting, I think, or 300ft of lighting, close to three outdoor lighting, two posts. But it wasn’t just like put two posts in. It was no. Okay, Luke, can you stain these posts? The same stain that’s inside our house? Yes. Can you put these end caps on and make sure it’s awesome? Hey, Ethan. Ethan, can you dig the holes? Here’s where to dig them. You know.

Through the cement.

Here’s here’s the clips. Here’s how we get the wires up. Yeah. Boom. It was like, what do we do? Like seven hours and we got this whole thing up.

I mean, it was a lot of work, but we did. We nailed it. And now everyone gets to benefit because we do hospitality and we’re playing volleyball or spikeball in the front yard doing campfire. And there’ll be light out there longer for hospitality and for those fun things that the kids are the main ones that benefit from that.

Right? It’s like.

Solomon, can you go play with the two littles? So they’re having.

Fun? Oh yeah, I mean.

They were playing squirt guns all around us, right? But you know, Philippians chapter two one through four talks about marriage, which is the fifth reason why it’s good to build something together. Let’s just say it this way. Your marriage is either surviving, stagnate, or thriving. And it’s like a spectrum. So you’re somewhere on that spectrum. And honestly, thriving. Marriage is the one of the things, one of the things that I see in common with them. Well, obviously the most important is that they love the Lord and that they’re praying together and they’re on a biblical mission together. They’re walking in oneness. Right. But part of that, that oneness leads you to be on mission together and doing something together and seeing a bigger picture. And, and and I’ll say it, thriving marriages, they usually are building something together, whether it’s building your family. And that is there are seasons where that’s all we’ve done, right? Where it was like, okay, hunker down. Homeschool, working on biblical character, training, different things.

There’s seasons.

If you feel like every day is about the same and you’re just trying to get through the day and there’s no longer term, you know, thing in night vision that you’re both in alignment about. There is a much needed visionary date night. And if you need help with that, listen to episode number one.

That’s great.

The very first episode.

We just did.

A mic drop. Listen to episode number one. But Philippians chapter two, the first four verses here are really beautiful in regards to marriage and this idea of like when you’re working together on something and how it does sanctify you and make you better, but it also helps with the oneness it says. So if there’s any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection, is there affection in marriage? I sure would hope so. Sympathy? I sure would hope so. Um. Complete my joy by being of the same mind. There you go. You want your. You want same mind you and your spouse having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Right? Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. And so, like, I just want to encourage you for a second, because you, Isaac, like in our marriage, when we’ve done visioneering, you have been really balanced in making sure that you’re drawing out of me any vision or anything that God’s placed on my heart that I believe, like the kids need to know this for unprecedented times. We need to have a garden or whatever, you know, like you listen to that and you’re like, okay, we’re going to get it done. And you help that vision happen. You have that leadership ability, but that takes servant leadership to set aside your goals and your missions to care about mine sometimes and go, and what’s on your heart and what’s this. And and I.

Got to.

Incorporate aspects of both.

Yes. And so I just, I thought that this verse was really beautiful in that because it says let each of you look not only to your own interest, but also to the interests of others. And that’s what you have to do in marriage both ways. The husband has to be the servant leader that you talk about being willing to look at the interest of the wife and not always just be considering his own and making that like your one mind, you’re the same mind. So if the Holy Spirit is impressed, something on your wife, listen to that and vice versa. The same goes the other way. Hey gents.

What is the priority for spending money? Is it is it something that’s going to the most edifying thing for the well-being of the family? Or is it just something you’re really passionate about that mostly serves you?

And wives could say the same thing. I mean, how many? I mean, the honey do list is a joke, not a joke, because a lot of women really do push their agenda a lot of the time. Right? And so even if something’s a good idea or something really needs to happen, the truth is, is like a good leader in a family, in a marriage is going to hear that. And then the wife won’t need to push because they will listen and and they’ll make it a priority. But a good wife is also going to recognize that she is supposed to be the helper of her husband, and she’s going to take interest into the goals and vision that he has for the family and try to help with.

That, by the way.

So it’s a balance.

Yeah, it is. And if you want help with marriage, you got to get this six hour course. It’s really a series that’s completely free for app subscribers. Be courageous app in your app store.

That’s right. And so you’ll see us in there a lot. We’re in there weekly on our lives.

Yeah.

So, uh, and finally, number six is to glorify God. Does your family glorify God? Do the projects you do? Is the purpose ultimately to glorify God? Is it to point your children to God? Is it to thank the Lord for, uh, helping us persevere and these kinds of things? Is it that our family would become a better team and a better, um, like light to the other? The others would see something different. Wow, look at that family working together. It’s not perfect. There’s going to be arguments and things like that.

But look at how much they’ve done or look at that. That’s amazing.

Or they’re all like doing it all together. Like they’re all in. Yeah, that alone is a big deal, especially when you have like teenagers and older kids. But that only exists when you’ve done it well. Building relationships when they’re younger. And if you have this like real strategy or structure of like having built things together with your kids, then they get excited to do it again later in life. Right? And so I just think there’s something really powerful centered around this concept of building together, building together.

I want to just say one thing that it’s really important. You might have already decided as a married couple to do something, but it doesn’t mean you just put it on your family. And what I mean by that is, even though you’ve decided to do something before we pull the trigger, I like to get feedback and hear from the family. Not in a way. And they know this, not in a way that they’re making the decision. Like if they decide I don’t want to do it, the family’s not going to do it. They don’t think that because of the way we’ve set up the culture, they know at the end, mom and dad are going to make a decision. It may have already made a decision, but they feel respected that we go, hey, we’re thinking about doing this thing, and we wanted to know what you think about it and really hearing their feedback. In fact, tonight we were asked, I’m going to tell you what it is, but we asked Megan a really important question about the new church plant, uh, that our family and the community really is going to be doing together. Um, excited to meet all the people in the community that want to be part of it. But it’s it’s so exciting. And but getting her feedback from a different generation, it’s.

Really important.

Was important and it was helpful.

It was helpful.

And she’s so excited. And it’s so exciting to see the family rallying again to do.

A new.

Closeness, to do.

A big project again.

Together.

Well, and I think that’s kind of what’s been even though we have projects around the homestead, we do all the time. But doing something like this that’s going to impact other people for Christ, that really has been something that our kids have been missing for the last year since we haven’t been doing home church. Right. And so it’s been a really it’s exciting because like, everyone sees the bigger picture, you can tell. And there’s a different kind of excitement about that. Um, but, you know, there’s this prayer that Paul writes to the Philippians, and I just want to ask you this question. When I read this, like two verses in Philippians chapter one, can would Paul be able to say this about you and your marriage? Would Paul be able to say this about your family? I thank my God in all my remembrance of you. So if he was able to have known you and like as God knows you, so God sees all things. God knows all things. When he thinks of you. Is he thinking? He’s thinking. He’s thankful because of what he’s seen, right? It says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you always, in every prayer of mine, for all making my prayer with joy. Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, there is this significance of having a partnership in the Lord throughout the whole time that you are married. There is an importance of having that be like a signature, um, foundational cornerstone of your family culture, where it’s like we’re going to serve the Lord.

It’s that Joshua verse. As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord. I see that verse in so many people’s families. But if if I was to ask like, so how do you do that? Like I wonder what people would say, like, how do you serve? How do my family and I serve the Lord? That’s a really good introspective, exhorting question that we have that verse up on our wall. And that was just something I was thinking about the other day when I was looking at him like, this is how we serve the Lord. Like it’s not a question in my mind. And I and I just hope that if anybody’s listening, that they would read Scripture from that perspective of Can God say this about me? Or how am I doing that If I have that plastered on my wall, how is my family doing that? Because you don’t want to. As your kids grow up and they start reading, they’re going to know if you’re serving the Lord as a family or not and hear you. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. But maybe you’re not. Are your kids going to go then? Oh, we’re a hypocrite. Family. Like it’s important that what we read, what we speak, what we have.

Written.

On our.

Walls is actually.

The way we live. And if it’s not, then there’s gonna be a rubber meets the road kind of moment.

Yeah, it’s a it’s a break. Breakage of integrity somewhere. Right. And, you know, isn’t that what a lot of teenagers say in their teenage years that. Oh, either my parents don’t understand me or they’re hypocrites. Those are the two biggest accusations, even in well intentioned families. And how do you avoid that? You’re fighting hard to be congruent. You’re fighting hard to follow through. You’re fighting hard to build teamwork, to work together and to appreciate them, to respect them and help them rise up to new levels of responsibility and see the fruit like we talked about, and see a marriage that’s working together to alongside them to do something. There’s so many positive things about it. Okay, here we go. Here is the unprecedented times tip. And we’re going to do this at the end of every episode. Today we’re talking about, you know, building together. So what is the big tip okay.

Well first we have to start with what the problem is. And unprecedented times and the times that we are in even now, what is the biggest thing that you see is like a roadblock or the enemy is just really attacking families on is family loyalty. Family commitment to one another or like deep flourishing relationships, right? Like family loyalty is harder than ever because there’s so much indoctrination creating division. I mean, can I just say masks from Covid or vaccinations for a second? Because we saw in the last four years families, just churches going foop divided division. So then there wasn’t there was loyalty to a political agenda or a mask over family loyalty. It’s like, whoa, that’s very revealing. So how’s your family loyalty? I want to pause for a second and share something that’s been on my heart. This economy has changed, and it takes more to equip your children to thrive financially. Today, we can’t just assume that sending them off to college or helping them get a job will make them successful. Youth Thrive Academy is filling in the gap left by educational efforts, and offers a personal finance online course that’s relevant to today’s economy. I’m excited my teenagers are taking this comprehensive course knowing any gaps will be filled in. Financial preparedness. They’re learning career readiness skills and how to manage their money through budgeting, saving, investing, borrowing, and protecting their assets. Make you thrive. Academy a part of your summer. Initiatives like We Are go to Youth Thrive Academy for parents. That’s the letter U and get 66% off retail, which is exclusive only for our listeners. Use the code courageous at checkout before it expires. And again, that’s u thrive dot Academy forward slash parents.

Yeah, I mean it’s harder to for families to be loyal. There’s more distractions too. There’s more things coming at different pieces. There’s kids going all kinds of different directions. Of course, we could speak at how to make sure that doesn’t happen in different episodes, but it’s it is harder than ever in this environment. Doing projects together is essential for building family loyalty. I don’t I literally don’t know how we could have done it had the culture we had without our projects. Our projects are kind of the teaching is happening and the discipleship is happening, but then the projects is where it’s lived out.

Well, and can.

I also just bring something in for a second? I actually think that the projects also help prepare our family as a team for the trials. Yes, big time. And the Bible is really clear that everyone is going to experience trials at some point in their life. Count it joy, my brethren, when you meet trials, not if you meet them when you meet them.

There’s an actual.

In the New Testament. There’s an expectation that if you’re a Christian, you’re going to experience trials. Why? Because you’re a Christian. Because you’re glorifying.

God in unprecedented times.

You’re persecuted. Yeah. And so in America, at least, I know people listen from 194 countries that speak English. But in America at least, there has been a level of freedom and a lack of persecution for a really long time against Christians. But some of that is even bubbling up here. Nothing compared to many other countries, but some of it’s starting to bubble up. And you know what? It’s time that we purposely get uncomfortable and we do harder things with our families. And we we hit roadblocks and we hit challenges, and we don’t maybe know how it’s financially it’s going to work out. And these kinds of things we watch God provide as we pray together as a family. And we literally just witnessed this and something in our family. And so it’s just so important that you’re building that loyalty and you’re doing it in some unconventional ways. See, the normal Christian rhythms aren’t working where you just kind of go through the rhythms week in and week out, go on the normal vacation, go through the rhythms, rhythms, rhythms. Hey, you know what? You got to be different. If you want a different outcome, you got to do different things.

Well, the.

Reality is, is everyone is going to experience a trial at some point. If that’s the only challenge or hard thing that a family has to walk through to create some kind of loyalty, that’s a really negative version of that, right? And so doing a project together not only equips you and prepares you to be able to be a better team when you walk through a hard trial, right, creating that loyalty, that camaraderie, that help, I’ll help you. You will help me kind of culture, right? But when you’re doing a project, it’s a positive thing that you’re building and working on that helps you to do all the six things that we talked about before seeing the bigger picture. It’s about God, not me. Um, watching a biblical marriage do a project together and lead a family that’s incredibly invaluable for your kids to watch that and witness that so that they know how to do marriage in the future and lead their kids the fruit, the fun fruit, the fun. Like looking at it and having a pride of we planted that vineyard or the fun of I’m so glad we have these lights now we can play volleyball till 11 p.m., you know, like it’s just there’s there’s this fruit, there’s this purpose because you remember.

Why.

You were doing it together. Your respect grows for one another. So if you’re doing something that’s positive, where you’re building a project, you’re learning all of that together intentionally. And then when a trial does come, you’ve already got all of this foundational work in your family to help you walk through this stronger together. I think that truly like the things that we’ve walked through, whether it’s miscarriage or business failure or whatever it was like, it would have been a totally different experience if we hadn’t been building businesses and doing projects.

Together, because.

God often shows up at the end of our own strength. And when you do things that are hard, then children get to witness that and they get a witness, you at the end of your own strength, relying on God with joy in your heart and persevering in watching God show up. And that is real Christianity. That is walking the talk that is living what you’re trying to teach. Totally. And that is what congruency is. And that’s what your family needs to see and experience with you.

That’s right. So in these unprecedented times, we want to give you a courageous parenting challenge. What family project can you do with your family? It doesn’t matter what time of year it is. Think about the season you’re in. Dream together. That’s half the fun just getting out as a married couple and dreaming about doing something for the Lord, whether it’s something small or something really big. The the thing that you’re going to benefit from the most is just the communication and hearing each other’s hearts. But then when you do something, you’re leading your kids. That’s when you’re really going to see the fruit.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed this. Please share it if you loved it.

Take care. See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening and being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement, go to Be Courageous Ministry. Org for more biblically based resources, ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission and information about the incredible Be Courageous app community for believers.

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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 Isaac from Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children, as too many from Christian families are walking away from their faith by the age of 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

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Or even if you purchase courses in merch or join the Be Courageous app community, enjoy the coffee or support financially. We’re so thankful you are a big part of the 10 Million Legacies movement.

If you want access to all the episodes, show notes, and other biblically based resources, go to Be Courageous Ministry.

Org. Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world.

Hello and welcome to the Courageous Parenting Podcast. I am so excited to be joining you guys from the Texas Homeschool Conference. And I have a special guest interview today with my new friend Whitney Newby from Brighter Day Press, and we are going to be talking about some really, I think, important topics that are relevant to what parents are dealing with today. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so.

Much. I am so excited to be here and to meet you today. I know, so that’s kind of special.

We literally met this morning at breakfast. Yes. And then just getting to know each other, um, we realized, wow, there’s a synergy here and there’s some things that you’ve been doing research on. Yes, that I believe are going to be really relevant, encouraging, but yet a call to action for parents who are willing to rise up and be courageous and make a difference in their kids generation. Yes. So we’re going to be talking about navigating the library with wisdom. That was your talk here at the Texas Homeschool Conference. One of the two, right? Yeah. And then I was speaking on raising resilient children for an Uncertain World, which this is. We’re living in this right now. Who would have guessed that ten years ago, 15 years ago, we would be dealing with the issues in the library, for example. Right. That’s just one example. Yes, that we’re dealing with today regarding the attack on our children and trying to indoctrinate them and influence their thinking when it comes to gender.

So true. I start my talk navigating the library with wisdom by saying, this is not a topic that would have been at a homeschool conference even ten years ago, because the issues that we’re seeing with drag queen story times and the agendas that are being pushed really hard in our libraries are a recent thing that we’re having to navigate as parents. Yeah, I.

Think in the last four years especially, we’ve all been really shocked by the things that we’ve seen that were accepted in society today, invited even, which is we’ve seen this even more. So I’d say the library is probably one of the front lines. Right. Because you do see these drag queens story times and they’re they’re dressed completely inappropriately. And in fact, you even see hundreds of kids sitting at their feet applauding them with celebrating? Yes, yes. It just makes me. It’s obviously sad, right? But I also feel sick. Yes. It turns my stomach.

It’s sickening what’s happening.

And so as parents, there’s a few different reactions that that different types of people depending on, on their beliefs, depending on where they’re at in their spiritual walk with the Lord and just the reality of this life. It can be triggering for people who have also experienced sexual trauma themselves. Okay. And I could understand the temptation to for that to trigger all of those fearful memories and just the struggles with that. Right? Right. Um, but there’s there’s one group of people that might get scared, overwhelmed. Fear fear based. Sure. And they’re going to react in a way of like, I just want to pull out completely. I’m not going to go to the library anymore. Um, I’m not my kids are not going to be participating in any field trips to the library. Sure. Um, isolation, in a sense, from that part of society.

Yeah. And that’s a temptation. That’s a real temptation. And for some, um, it makes sense, depending on where they live. Some rural libraries have not really felt this agenda. Like more urban ones, because it really depends on the librarian who’s really the gatekeeper of what’s coming in and out. And so for some, it’s still it makes sense to just reserve things online and not set foot in a library based on whatever is happening specifically right now. Um, in June, when we’re recording this, uh, which a lot of people celebrate as pride month, it they go all in for pride month. So just like you.

Would see it in target, right? You’d see it in certain stores. You see it in the malls where the woke agenda is prevalent and overt in its unapologetic stance. Right. And but this is the thing is that they’re they’re trying to do it in a way that is attractive to children, enticing them in totally. And as parents we see this. But our kids, they just see pretty colors. They see they see God’s rainbow. And God’s rainbow is beautiful, right? And it’s his. And so this counterfeit attack on what God created and only God can have. Yes it can. It can also stir up a different type of person. Right. That righteous anger of like, no, this is not happening. We’re going to reclaim this. We’re going to redeem this. We’re going to protest. We’re going to do all that we can. And so what do you what do you see out there as from those people.

Of what they can do.

What they have been doing, what.

They have been.

Doing? So the person that’s really got that righteous anger of like, I can’t believe that a drag queen storytime is happening in my town, in my library, since now’s the time to plan and we’re offering a special giveaway at Master Books.com forward slash courageous, I wanted to share with you. Each curriculum is easy to use with flexible lesson plans. It’s biblically grounded in meeting every subject need. As you can see, I love that they’ve made my job as a multi-level teacher even easier by offering their online academy for certain classes like science, because I’ll just be honest, it’s one of those subjects that’s intimidating, mainly because of the time and mess that goes along with the labs required for subjects like biology, chemistry and physics. But with Masterbox Academy, your kids can have a teacher take them through the labs from the comfort of your home without the mess. Um, sign me up. Speaking of science, Master Books is the largest publisher of creation based science curriculums with over 30 options while providing a full range of other subjects for every grade level. They also allow you to cater your child’s unique level, and I love that because sometimes you’ll have an eight year old thriving at fifth grade reading level, or a seventh grader struggling to grasp logic. Overall, we want to encourage parents to make sure that what their kids are learning is pro Bible Master Books puts every resource through a rigorous process to ensure that it is more info and a chance to win a curriculum giveaway. Check out Master Books.com forward slash courageous.

I mean, I felt that righteous indignation a few years ago when we first walked into a library that had a gay pride display in the children’s section, and I walked in and thought, okay, I’ve heard of this happening in other areas of the country, but I live in Fort Worth, Texas. I was kind of surprised for a more conservative area to have such a large display at my child’s eye level, and I was met with a choice at that moment because my my four year old at the time was asking me questions that I did not feel prepared to answer, like, why is that boy wearing a skirt? Why are there two men on a cake? There were the gay b C’s. I mean, it was. They had pulled out every LGBT book possible and put them on display display. Um, you know, to lure really is what it felt like. And so I was tempted to just pull out altogether, you know, I’ll build my own library. Home library. I will not be involved in this. But what I’ve since learned and we’ll talk about, is how important it is to not do that and for Christians to take action. Um, and yet there’s a, there’s a kind, winsome way to, to go about it that’s still effective without just destroying our relationships with our librarians and saying, let’s defund all the libraries. It’s important that Christians stay in libraries to make those changes. Um, even just checking out good books. Right.

So, so being the light of the world being the salt. Right? Yes. Um, but understanding. So, so on this topic, though, understanding that our children aren’t born salty. Yes. There there’s folly bound up in the heart of the child. Right. And it’s up to the parents to be pouring the salt in and to be equipping and training our children. And one of the analogies that Isaac and I often use in describing children that I think is appropriate for this is when they’re little. It’s kind of like when you’re planting seeds, right? And you’re certain kinds of seeds are okay to put in the soil right away. But most of them you want to plant before the frost and you have them in a protected environment, and then you pardon them off slowly. Right. And that’s kind of how it is with kids. It’s true in the perspective of what you allow them to be exposed to, what you allow them to learn about, as far as other worldviews and the other beliefs that other people have. And when they’re younger, you’re filling them with the salt. Yes, of the Word of God. And you are equipping them. You’re protecting them. You’re providing for them. Yes, you’re sheltering them. That’s not a word that we should be afraid of anymore today, right? Yes. And claim that boldly. But also part of that is starting to equip them the older and the older that they get. And developing a relationship where your kids do come to you and ask those questions about the boy and the skirt, absolutely.

You want them to come to you and not to someone else, or not even to another book to explain those things, but immediately. Because our kids have a foundation in God’s Word and the truth of Scripture, red flags are going off in their head when they see these things. And so keeping those open lines of communication is so important. To say. No question is a bad question like raise, come to me because I want to navigate this with you and use those as a teaching moment to say, you know what? God’s word is the only ultimate truth. And so anything that goes against it, we have to be so discerning. But we want to do that while you’re still under our roof. Yeah.

There’s an element to when you’re talking about preparing your children, right where sometimes parents today. And I feel like our generation, those of us who are parenting kids that are alpha generation, right, born 2015 and beyond, right. They’re the ones that really are experiencing more of this overt indoctrination or agenda coming at them from every angle, whether it’s the grocery store or the library or TV shows, cartoons, books, all the things. Right? Um, and I even know from raising my oldest kids who are in their 20s, those were not things that I had to worry about with them. Right. And so for the parents who are raising their kids, they might feel overwhelmed by like, I don’t even know what to say. I didn’t think I was going to ever have to have this conversation with a four year old or a five year old, right? Exactly. So a lot of them can feel lost, like there isn’t a lot of guidance as far as how to have those conversations. And so if you’re one of those parents, I would just encourage you guys to start reading the Bible more, because really, that’s really where the answers are going to come from. And be humble. Be willing to say, that’s a really good question. I know that this is not biblical. Let’s find out what God’s Word says together. If you don’t have that, like.

Ready made answer, yes.

Exactly. But don’t shy away from it. Don’t be scared. Don’t shut your kid down out of your embarrassment that they’re coming to you with a question about something that might seem really like wild. Mhm. Instead, go. That’s a really good question and I want to talk to you about it more. And you, you know you can always come to me. Yes. Like cultivating that kind of relationship because you want your kids to be able to talk to you throughout their life and be coming to you versus shutting them down. Yes. Um, so let’s see. So we’ve got the parents who are going to struggle with being overwhelmed. Yes, we’re going to have the parents and those ones might just go, I can’t deal with this. I’m I don’t know. I’ve got so much on my plate. Like I could even fall into this category myself. Yes. The the person on the Career Parenting podcast can fall into the category. I can go, I’ve got homesteading, I’ve got homeschooling. I don’t have time to be like trying to get activated and helping in the library. I have nine kids. I, you know, but there are some things that we can actually do that are going to be massively impactful. Yes. And so while we have this problem, right, we’ve got the gay pride displays. We’ve got funding of drag queen story time. Yes. Um, there are some practical things that anybody can do. What are those?

So what I learned the hard way, honestly, because my daughter had uncovered a book not even uncovered, it was on the shelf at her eye level and was wildly inappropriate for her age. She brought it to me. And that was when I really knew. I have got to do something. I’m not a confrontational person, but when the mama bear rises up, I’ll be confrontational, you know? And in the kindest way possible. I went to our librarian and I had actually seen on our library’s website, and maybe other libraries have this as well. It’s said that our library system as a whole neither promotes nor censors particular viewpoints. And so when I’m seeing a gay pride display in the children’s section, you know, promoting that’s promoting and I had seen other things like that, and there are plenty of books, especially children’s books like board books about trucks and puppies and whatever you want that don’t promote or censor a particular viewpoint. So I know it’s not for lack of choices, right? There is an agenda at work here. And so when I approached the librarian, I said, this is what our library says. And I’m I’m concerned about what was on the end cap that my daughter uncovered.

And the librarian just looked at me and said, um, I think you’re seeing what you want to see. So I knew that that wasn’t the right avenue, like there’s nothing going to happen from that. So I said, okay, what is the best way to be heard? And so she pointed me to our library’s website, where on most library websites, there’s a place that’s called Request to Reconsider. And it takes down your information, the information about the book, and then what you thought was troublesome in the book, and whether you would like it moved to a different section of the library, a different shelf, or removed from the library altogether. So when I requested to reconsider, that form goes straight to the top of the library system. So it’s not just to your local branch. And they got right back to me with an email, a very detailed email. And the problem was, and this goes into another thing that we can do, the problem was that this particular book had been checked out 93 times in six months.

So they’re keeping record of how many times a certain book is being checked out.

Every book has a tally because of, you know, they’re all online at this point. We’re not doing a card system anymore. And so, you know exactly how many times this book has been checked out. And every time you check one out, you are casting a vote because it’s a supply and demand situation. So the more it’s checked out, the more copies they’re going to get. And if something isn’t checked out for six months, then they sell it or get rid of it. So as believers, we can keep checking out wholesome books because we are casting a vote every time we do, and that truly makes a difference.

So on the flip side, you also mentioned something to me about people who they get. They get excited, they to make a change or, um, they, they have good heart intentions and they’ll go and they’ll pick out all of the bad books. Yes. And they’ll check them out and hang on to them so other people can’t check them out. Right. Tell me why this is a bad idea.

Well, it it’s great intentions, but you are, you know, and a lot of these people will keep checking them out, keep renewing. And every time you do, you are casting it out, checking it out again. And so they are probably purchasing more copies of that book because it’s getting so many votes.

Wow. So if a book is unavailable to someone that really does want the book. Yes. And you’ve got it checked out, then they’re going to go, oh, this is such a popular book, we need to buy more. Exactly. And then they do buy more. Exactly. So that’s actually doing the opposite.

Counterproductive, yes. So good to keep in mind. It’s a great intention but you don’t want to do that.

So most of these books from the American Library Association, most of these libraries have a website. And they just seem to look for the specific thing that says request a reconsideration regarding the books they don’t like. Exactly. And then there’s also a place on the website to be able to recommend books, a book to purchase.

So your library wants to know the books that you want them to carry, you know, as a public service. And for our library in particular, I’m able to request up to five books every month for them to purchase if they’re not already in the library system. And I have never been turned down. So I have requested, I mean, over 50 books and as soon as they come in. So these are not all Christian books, but they’re all fulsome. And some libraries do have a limit. They say it has to be published in the last two years. But still, if you’re seeing books that you want to see in your library, request that your library purchase it. And when they do, they will let you know that when it’s in stock. And then you go and you check it out, you tell your friends to check it out. You keep that, you start that tally. It makes such a difference.

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To those people? So, you know, there are Christian librarians, public libraries who have reached out to me and said the whole movement of some Christians wanting to defund public libraries is really a disservice to the whole community, because a flourishing library can help a community flourish. And these, these people that send their kids to the library even while they’re working, and it’s a safe place for them. Um, we want great material to still be available. And if all Christians just pull out, um, I mean, that salt and light is not there. And so, um, you know, I learned in some research that even though, you know, we’re seeing in the news these librarians that are pushing agendas and are hosting drag queen story times and are, you know, going against our worldviews, there are a lot of librarians that don’t get any credit for the good that they’re doing. There are librarians. That’s true. Yes, that are trained to recognize signs of domestic abuse so that people that walk through their doors, they may be able to see, you know, things that no one else is reporting. There are, you know, libraries, host job training and provide internet, provide safe places for people who are, um, you know, kids after school. There’s so much good that libraries do that doesn’t make it on the news.

Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s interesting, though, because when you’re thinking about your child’s future and the generation that they’re in this, this is like the bottom line for me as far as the why, um, the truth is, is that we as parents have a jurisdiction and raising our own children, but we’re not raising the rest of their generation. Right? We can make impact in ways by getting involved with libraries and trying to get good, wholesome books on topics that will be wanting to be checked out by other kids that are going to the library. And if they’re kids, then they’re the same age as your children. Part of their generation. Yes. So this is really a call for Christians to recognize that we can actually make a difference. Yes. It’s, um, a charge really to empower people to say, okay, there is a problem here and I’m going to be part of the change. Um, and it doesn’t take a whole lot. It’s literally, you can be sitting in your home and get on the website and request a book and request a reconsideration of a book. Exactly. You can do that from the website.

Oh, in five minutes.

Right. And so if you have little children, even you don’t need to go in the library and have your kids exposed to to the pride display. Yes, you can actually check out good quality books online. Yes. Request reconsideration. Go and drive up and pick up books. Exactly. And take them home with you. Yes. Now, this is the thing I always have to put a disclaimer on things, because if you’re picking out a book that you haven’t read before, our recommendation is that the parents would read it first because you never know you came across a situation. Yes. Would you mind sharing that with parents?

Sure. Yeah. So the situation with my daughter, who, um, found this book on an end cap and was perusing it for a while before I realized and it was called sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg. Um, and it’s actually quite popular, as I learned, this was the one that I requested to reconsider. Thankfully, they took my request serious enough to move it to a different section in the library. So it’s no longer, you know, on an end cap or in the children’s section at all, but still in the library because of all the votes. And, um, when I, I’m trying to think what I it’s okay.

We’ll edit this part out.

I’m trying to remember where the question was going.

Um, coming across a funny book in the library. And then how did you respond to that? To her? Yeah. And go ahead and share what it was showing. But yes. Yes. Inappropriate. Yes.

So when she came across this book and she brought it to me, she was a little bit disturbed by some of the illustrations that showed graphic sexual, um, information that was in cartoon form. So it looked animated. It was. Yeah. It was very enticing for a child and yet not appropriate for a child. And the thing she was very confused by and just, um, kind of shocked about, she said, this book says that sometimes babies are born and the doctor says they’re a boy, but they’re not actually a boy. And so I was praying that the Lord would just give me, okay, she’s already seen this, you know. Where do we go from here? Um, and I was remembering that, you know, the foundation were laying at home through reading the Bible together and talking about these things openly. I was so thankful that she came straight to me for one thing, and so thankful that there were clearly red flags going off in her head when she saw this thing that was not true. And we had actually been, We love this resource called the New City Catechism, which I think is, uh, originally based on the Heidelberg Catechism, but it’s a simplified version for kids. There’s actually a free app that you can download and get these questions and answers that form a framework for your faith, for our faith. And, um, and so one of the questions we had been doing over breakfast was how and why did God create us? And the answer is God created us, male and female, in his own image to glorify him. And so we had a conversation about that right there in the library to say, okay, this book clearly goes right against what we know to be true in God’s Word. And so instead of fearing it, you know, um, I mean, I do put limits now on what my children, you know, I don’t just let them peruse.

Be wise and have them with you in the library and see where they’re headed. And do buddy system. If you have older kids and you’ve talked to them and trained them, if you’re going to go in, you have to have a game plan. Yes. Really. Exactly.

But also seeing it as something that’s strengthening her faith. This isn’t a threat, you know, like God is using this moment in time to strengthen what she believes. And so I was thankful for that. You know, it redemptive in in a way. Yeah.

So it can be hard though, because that that specific encounter is probably what every parent fears. Absolutely. Right then and there. Yes. We don’t want our kids to because when they see something they can’t unsee it. It’s like pornography. Yes. Right. Exactly. Which is incredibly dangerous and addictive. And you know, as parents, we need to do our best. Yes. Right. But there is an element of recognizing that isolation from everything and hiding under a rock is also not a biblical perspective as well. Instead, we need to be teaching our kids to come to us, right? We need to be teaching our kids the truth about what God’s Word says regarding men and women and all of these topics. And the truth is, is you need to talk to your kids a lot younger than you think you do. Yes. It’s so I think that when it came to like the sex talk, people used to think, oh, I’m not going to have that conversation with my kids till they’re in high school, right. But now, oh.

They’re being confronted.

To be much, much younger and and not in the sense of like having to get into graphic detail. And this is why in the Parenting Mentor program, we talk about how warm up conversations. Yes. It’s not a one time event talk. Yes. Like they used to say, it was right. Instead, it’s that you’re building your relationship with your kids. You’re building trust where there’s communication on things, where you’re driving down the road and you see a billboard and you use that as an example to teach your kids that that’s not godly, right? That that goes against what God’s Word says. Yes. And that it’s an abomination to him. Right. And and being bold enough to like, say, I know that they’re seeing this. I’m not going to hide from it. I’m not going to pretend that it doesn’t exist as a parent, but instead, I’m on this journey with you, and I’m here to guide you. Yes. And you. There isn’t a bad question. Come to me. Let’s discuss.

This. You’re equipping them for their life outside your home. And what a gift you know to be the one to guide them. Yeah, yeah.

So you on your website, you have a bunch of resources you love to share, what good books there are out for moms and dads. Yes, to utilize with their kids when they’re homeschooling. Yes. And you have a free resource. Why don’t you tell people about that free resource?

Yeah. So on Brighter Day Press.com, you can go up to the top and there’s a book list tab. And there are two things in there. There’s one that just has a bunch of book lists that they’re all books that are, um, developmentally appropriate, uh, appropriate, and that my family has vetted and loved in all different genres, ages, things like that. We also have monthly picture book lists, and these have been so popular that actually there are waiting lists on libraries all over, because every day of the year, I’ve recommended a seasonal picture book that aligns with that day. So and most of them can be found in your local library. So you have no excuse to not be getting great books from your library that are wholesome. You’re casting your vote, and you can find all of those lists on our website. Okay.

And so there are a few books that you were sharing with me. Also, if for those of you who are watching the Courageous Parenting podcast on YouTube, um, you’re going to get a special treat because he’s going to just show you these books.

Yes. So I’ll show you these briefly. Um, give Your Child the World by Jamie C Martin. Uh, this is if you’re doing, like, geography studies or cultural studies, you can go through the world, their picture book and chapter book recommendations. Um, two more books Children Love by Elizabeth Wilson and the Read-aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. Basically, these are books of books. They have all kinds of recommendations, age, recommendations, descriptions, so that you can go on your library’s website and go ahead and request however many books, and they’ll have them ready for you.

These have little reviews in them. They do.

Age.

Appropriate. So this is really like a guide. Yes. For the mom who hasn’t read a ton of books. Yes. Like I didn’t grow up reading a lot of books. Yeah, to be honest, I think there were maybe three books I read in public high school that I had to write papers on. Sure. And interestingly, there they were indoctrinating. Right. Like Fahrenheit 451.

Yes. Okay.

Yes. The typical nice. Yeah. Yeah. But these ones have better books.

They do, they They do. And actually, my favorite of all of them is honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt. I recommend the updated version because she has passed away, but her son has continued her ministry. So these you really only need one of them, but they are gold for parents. Um, to see. The research has already been done and these are a lot of places that you can trust.

Yeah, that makes it a lot easier. Um, you know, another thing that I think is important that we point out was we just did a recording with Trent Talbert, the the CEO of Brave Books, and we were talking about the, the, the issue that they had with Kirk Cameron wanting to read his book at one of the local libraries, and they denied them at first, and then they invited a drag queen in during for first story time. And and so obviously were they promoting. Yes. Were they discriminating? Yes, yes. And so Trent shares and we did this podcast recording with him, which, you know, you guys can go listen to that as well on the Courageous Parenting podcast. But in that conversation, he shared how they decided to open a lawsuit. And they they didn’t end up having to move forward with that because the library backed down, realizing that what they had done was an injustice and that they they weren’t being lawful. Mhm. Um, and in that there have been thousands of people showing up for these readings at libraries. Um, but they’re doing something interesting on August 24th, I think, is the date that they’re trying to do it for. Um, and this is something that can be be all hands on deck. Christian moms and dads, this is a this is an easy thing that you can do if you want to get activated and maybe a more special way than just being in your home on your computer saying, I want to request this book and I want to reconsider this one. I don’t want it in my library. But if you want to get more involved in a really God breathed, life giving kind of way, you can actually go to your librarian and ask them if you can host a story hour, okay? And you can bring a wholesome book.

It doesn’t have to be a brave book. That’s what you know. They’re just saying, hey, let’s get as many parents activated on August 24th to go to a library and host a story hour and read a good book. So I just envision imagine that happening with Christian parents rising up and inviting people to the library and having a Christian influence, having that like presence there. Right? Absolutely. Um, I just think that there could be something really special that happens with that. And if you guys want to find out more, keep your eyes peeled at Brave Books also, because they’re going to be doing something. Um, but, you know, I think that we talked about a book that your daughter saw and that probably touched some people in some ways. Like, you know, the fear. I don’t want my kids to be exposed to that. I think we’re just going to opt out and not do a library. I’ll confess. That’s that’s what my perspective has been. Um, we live in the mountains, so we’re like an hour, 45 minutes to an hour away. So it’s easy for us to be like, yeah, there’s lots of reasons why we don’t use the library. Sure. Um, but many years ago, Isaac and I really believed that we needed to be building our family library, a legacy library, as we like to call it, because we believe that good, wholesome books are eventually going to be harder to find at some point. Yes.

And so holding on to them and having them be a legacy that can be passed down to the next generations is good. And so we do want to encourage you guys in that it’s not about just checking out all of the books, right? When you find something recognizing the that we’re raising resilient kids for an uncertain world. We don’t know what’s going to happen in their lifetime, obviously, right? I’m 43 years older than my youngest child, so obviously I’m not going to be here as long as he is. So when I’m thinking about raising him for the world he’s going to live in, I don’t know what that’s going to fully look like. I do want to raise a godly man who’s willing to stand firm in the truth and be loving and be the light of Christ and a disciple maker, right? But I also know that there are going to be nuances like what we’re experiencing right now that he’s going to have to figure out from a biblical perspective. But what can I do? I can offer up books, yeah, that are going to be good for my kids. And so there is there is an element there of like, if you can afford it, like books are never a bad investment. Absolutely. They’re never a bad investment. And it’s something that you can pass on from generation to generation. Um, but when people were listening to your story with your daughter, I’m sure that that does scare some people. So you guys, we have some resources that we want to share with you that actually have a good biblical teaching. Yes. Do you want to share those with us?

I do so there are two picture books that, um, are really appropriate for any age. And like you said, it is important that we start this conversation early before they encounter these things. I was not prepared when we walked in to the gay pride display because we hadn’t had those conversations with our youngest, and now we have. So there are two books that I recommend. One is very straightforward. It’s God Made Boys and Girls, and it’s just it’s by Marty Makowski. It’s just a biblical, you know, exposition on gender. And then I love this one as well. This is by Janae Ortlund. It’s called a child’s first book about marriage, and it talks about God’s design for marriage, and even it touches on same sex marriage and also, um, on divorce, but in a child friendly way. That is from a biblical yes. It’s I love the tagline. Yes, God’s way is always best, I love it, and there’s scripture throughout. So you could make this a little study if you wanted to, if you want to dive deeper. But I love these two resources because gender identity and marriage are what are so under attack. And so, you know.

What’s interesting about these books? So the reason why I really wanted you to share these is because it’s part of, like you said, it’s part of equipping our kids so that if they are ever at a neighbor’s house for a playdate or something, and they pull out a board book like the one that you described your daughter saw on the end cap at the library. They can go, oh, no, that’s not a good book. This is a good book. Yes. Right. Totally. And for your kids to be prepared, we we can utilize tools, the best tools, the word of God. Yes, but it is helpful when you have books that are well done that are from a biblical worldview, that are safe, totally, that are going to maybe invite a conversation and questions to start cultivating that openness with your kids. Yes, this is just a hard thing. This is a hard topic. It is you guys, um, and there’s no like, clear path of like how to navigate it perfectly. Right? Because we’re all parenting through this confusion that is being, um, overtly pushed on our children for the first time ever, ever in America.

So mention as well. I actually did order both of these through our library. So our local library carries both of these. They said yes and they’re on our shelves. So do that. You know, if you don’t want to purchase them yourselves, recommend that your library purchase them.

Taxpayer dollars are going to fund the library. And so as a taxpayer, you have a say in what gets to be put in the library. You do. And what gets to be taken out right of the library. So I think this is interesting because it feels like, because there’s so many books that are against Christianity or God’s way, if you will. Yes. Seems almost like the enemy has equipped his people with the knowledge of how to get their books in. But Christians haven’t been equipped in how to get good, solid, wholesome Christian books in. Right. And so now you guys know those of you who are listening, you know, and we need to get busy.

Yes, we do, and we do.

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And from what I understand, it’s working because I’m hearing from people, even through the book lists on our website, which are all wholesome books that they have wait lists at their library that are ten, 15, 20 people long. And so casting those votes is making a difference in their ordering more copies. And so there’s only so much room on library shelves. Those are going to to crowd out the trash.

They are. So there’s there’s a few more things I want to make sure that we get as far as resources for people listening. So yes, you told me something powerful. There are committees that you can join. Tell us about that.

So I am on the waitlist for my committee. But there are local library at your local library. They have a public library committee that’s made up of citizens. You don’t have to be a teacher, a librarian, even a parent. But these people have a say on what goes in and out of the library and the programming. And so we need believers that are on these panels, on these committees.

And then you also mentioned something about public schools and how the two most influential people in the school are the principal. And then the second.

One is the librarian, because they are the gatekeeper that’s allowing these books in or keeping them out.

I’m just curious, as a taxpayer, and our taxes go to fund public schools, even if we’re homeschooling, right? That’s just the truth. We’re still paying taxes. Yes. Do we have a say on what books are in the school library?

That I don’t know? That’s a great question.

That’s just something that, I mean, that might be school to school.

It may be.

And I would even say if you’re a part of like a private school, Christian school or there are schools in your area, even if you’re homeschooling, this would be another thing to look into because it’s all about us recognizing, yes, we’re going to do our job with our children, yes, but how do we influence their generation, their culture? Because the Alpha generation is incredibly pivotal for where we are sitting right now in this world. Right. And if they are all indoctrinated with this, these lies and this counterfeit and this deceit, yes, it’s going to be reflected in how our grandkids are being raised. I mean, it’s literally a game changer. It’s true. So how can we be activated? So look into your schools, ask, look on the website, see if there’s a way that you can recommend a book for the school library. Even if your kids don’t go to that school, you’re paying taxes. If you have a right to be able to say something, we should be saying something. Definitely. You have three resources that you have recommended to parents in regards to reviews on books that they may not know about. Yes.

So that’s tricky. It’s really important because as much as you can flip through a picture book and get a pretty good idea, there’s no way you can flip through a chapter book and know what’s inside, know what worldview it’s coming from. And so for those I go to a few different websites and I plug in that title. So one of them is plugged in. Com another one is Common Sense Media and then the other one is redeemed reader. Com that’s one of my favorites from a Christian worldview. And it gives, you know, more insight about what the worldview is, what you should look out for in these books. And then you, as the parent, can decide if this is one that you’re willing for your child to have to read.

So what if the book that your child wants to check out is not on those three websites?

So another thing that I do, because I don’t have time to pre-read all these things. I mean.

As your kids get older and they’re reading longer books faster, it’s like.

Yeah, right. There’s no way. So one thing I do is I go to Amazon and to Goodreads and look at the one and two star reviews. A lot of times a mom has come and chimed in on something that they found and want other parents to know about, so that’s really helpful. Um, there are times when I just can’t find enough information, and I say there are plenty other books. We’re going to send this one back, I love that. So also, I think looking at the publishing date is really important because it seems like there was a shift somewhere after 2010 where publishers started weaving in this agenda way more than it ever has been. And so.

The older books are truly the safer books they.

Are.

They are our kids reading books.

Yes.

That’s something that’s been really obvious over the years, but it’s really good for you to label the actual dates. The years 2010 to 2015 is when it started being more introduced, and then it became more widely accepted. Totally. And now it seems like it’s everywhere. Right?

So I think another thing to keep an eye on graphic novels, I would just caution, um, Um, we actually, on our website, have a list of graphic novels that we recommend. So they’re not all off limits, but a lot of times, like the book that my daughter found, they are illustrated. They’re, you know, colorful, they look like cartoons. But the the subject matter can be very heavy and dark. Dark and meant for, for adults. I mean, there’s some that I wouldn’t even want to read.

I don’t know, I think that when it comes to what we’re looking at, understanding if there’s evil in something. Yeah, we shouldn’t be having that in our home.

Right? It’s inviting.

A foothold.

It is. It really is. Shape us.

God’s a jealous God.

Absolutely.

And so we we want to teach our kids that and have a standard for sure. I know that as a mom to one of the things that was I’ll just share transparently one of the things that was a friendship breaker, if you will, for me, was women who were sucked into their romance novels, because that’s a form of escapism, right? And it was just something I wasn’t willing to read that kind of a book at the book club. Yes. You know what I mean? So then it was like, oh, well, I’m not really interested in that. And then it was, oh, I’m not coming to book club anymore, you know what I mean? Right. And, you know, I think that there’s just so much more, better, more fruitful things we could be doing with our time. It’s a point. A foothold for the enemy. Yes. Um, and to create a discontentment in your marriage or whatever it is. And so I think that we as parents have to model responsible reading choices for our children if we want them to have responsible reading habits when they’re older. Amen. And even right now. Right. So it’s like, no, you’re not going to read that kind of a book. Mommy and daddy don’t read those kinds of books, do we? We need to be able to say, follow me. Yes. And if we can’t say follow me, then things. Some things need to change. Definitely. So I think that when it comes to, um, just the standards, we need to be real careful about that. But definitely been so fun.

So fun.

Thank you. Thank you for coming on the podcast. So where can people find you?

You can find me at Brighter Day Press.com. We have all kinds of curriculum and resources, but also our book lists, which are one of my favorite parts of what I do. Getting to recommend wholesome books and on Instagram at Brighter Day Press. Awesome.

Thank you so much and we’ll see you guys next time. Hey, thanks for listening and being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement, go to be Courageous Ministry. Org for more biblically based resources, ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission, and information about the incredible Be Courageous app community for believers.

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 session 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. We cover everything from tending to their hearts, handling obedience to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private group in the Be Courageous app, live webcast, and direct access to us.

If you’re interested in joining our next online Parenting Mentor program, secure your spot now at Be Courageous Ministry. Org that’s Be Courageous Ministry org.

 

 

• Private Group for Christian Moms with weekly lives with Angie Tolpin
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• Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
• Monthly LIVE Q&A with the Tolpins; ask the anything.
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All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

Our Courses

• Parenting Mentor Program, self-paced online program that equips you to biblically parent during unprecedented times.
• The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.
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• Cultivating Biblical Friendships  The course that helps women build lasting Godly friendships.

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

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

Full Transcript:

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

• Private Group for Christian Moms with weekly lives with Angie Tolpin
• Weekly podcast Q&A with episode behind the scenes content. Just type in your question!
• Exclusive biblical resources such as the Courageous Marriage and Redeeming Childbirth series.
• Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
• Monthly LIVE Q&A with the Tolpins; ask the anything.
• Powerful Biblically minded community.
• Topic-based discussion groups.
• You get your own profile and can connect with others.
• Growing libraries of LIVE replays

All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

Our Courses

• Parenting Mentor Program, self-paced online program that equips you to biblically parent during unprecedented times.
• The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.
• Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course.
• Cultivating Biblical Friendships  The course that helps women build lasting Godly friendships.

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

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

Full Transcript:

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

• Private Group for Christian Moms with weekly lives with Angie Tolpin
• Weekly podcast Q&A with episode behind the scenes content. Just type in your question!
• Exclusive biblical resources such as the Courageous Marriage and Redeeming Childbirth series.
• Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
• Monthly LIVE Q&A with the Tolpins; ask the anything.
• Powerful Biblically minded community.
• Topic-based discussion groups.
• You get your own profile and can connect with others.
• Growing libraries of LIVE replays

All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

Our Courses

• Parenting Mentor Program, self-paced online program that equips you to biblically parent during unprecedented times.
• The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.
• Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course.
• Cultivating Biblical Friendships  The course that helps women build lasting Godly friendships.

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

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

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 Isaac from Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children, as too many from Christian families are walking away from their faith by the age of 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

We’re praising the Lord. That ministry continues to expand and impact more legacies. We couldn’t do this without you. Whether you pray for us, give us five star reviews, or share on social.

Or even if you purchase courses and merch or join the Be Courageous app community, enjoy the coffee or support financially. We’re so thankful you are a big part of the 10 Million Legacies movement.

If you want access to all the episodes, show notes, and other biblically based resources, go to Be Courageous Ministry.

Org. Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Welcome back to the Courageous Parenting Show. We are doing it from Brave Books headquarters with the CEO and founder, Trent Talbert. Great to have you on the show. Thank you.

Thank you all for being here.

Yeah, we got to kind of see the secret offices and all the creative work that’s happening.

Behind the scenes.

Yes, it’s pretty cool.

It’s a lot of work that goes into it.

Okay, so I was actually surprised by the amount of people on your team. Why don’t you share a little bit about how that built?

Yeah. 42 people, um, started just with me and a couple others, uh, in February of 2021. So whenever I made the decision to leave my practice as an ophthalmologist and, and dive into, uh, into children’s books and, uh, somehow it worked out. By the grace of God.

That’s an industry shift.

Well, it’s it reminds me of something when God was telling me, Isaac, you’re going to go teach parenting and support your family of nine. And I’m like, okay, good thing you’re God, because I couldn’t do that. Yeah. And that kind of reminds me of what you’re talking about here. You’re going to leave your very successful thing and go, you know, do a children’s books business, right? I bet there was some feelings inside of how is this going to support my family.

There’s some feelings inside me, some feelings inside my wife because I. So the story is, you know, practicing ophthalmologist. I was saved, right? Like New Year’s right around New Year’s of 2019. And then, um, met my wife and we quickly got engaged, got married in the summer of 2019, got pregnant, had our first kid in the summer of 2020. And so this is like peak Covid. Oh yeah, everything’s crazy. And it’s sort of like whenever you get a new car, you see that new car, you know, you get a new car because you’re like, oh, that’s cool. Nobody has that. But then you get it and you start seeing it everywhere. And so Charlotte was born and I started to see this whole war on our kids everywhere I went. You’re walking into Barnes and Noble. There’s the indoctrination table. Yes. Uh, the when? When she was born, like the first a week of her life, the trailer for the film cuties came out, uh, anti-racist baby was number one book on Amazon. My best friend was his nine year old daughter was gifted the latest Nancy Drew book, which had a trans character in it. And just like it was like every day there’s something new. And and then for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get this whole issue out of my head. And the idea for brave started to crystallize and then decided, um, about February 2021, to to go for it. And and yeah, the Lois just had his hand on, on brave like, throughout the whole whole company. It’s crazy because, you know, you have an idea and you think, oh, it’s so needed. Everything will work out was so difficult and challenging because because we decided to do everything, like, completely different than every other publishing company. Yeah, it’s like a publishing company. They typically just make a book and they put it on Amazon or Ingram and then they distribute it. But we decided to do a subscription model. So that means your own website and your own marketing and your own PR and your own fulfillment center and all that.

Customer service.

Because. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I was going to bring that up because you’re the first person I’ve seen to really create a creative business model that sustainable to support not only staff in this headquarters and the warehouse and everything, but to support the large scale impact that’s happening. And that’s really I think I’d love to hear that’s what’s intriguing to us, because on a subscription model, it’s not just someone buying a book, it’s they’re getting a book with a different story, with a different lesson every single month. And their children are being raised in a different way because of the influence of that. And so I think that’s really a genius model. And it’s it’s kind of part of the parallel economy, I would say of like, hey, this is happening. We’re going to do something better, we’re going to create something better. And there’s so many good companies doing that now, which is really encouraging. But, you know, I think a lot of times when that happens to people, it’s like, yeah, but how can I get it done? How can I do it? So what really made you like, we’re going to do this? It was.

A combination. Once I get something in my head, it’s like I just. Itch. I got scratch and and I think that’s part of it. But then two, I was an ophthalmologist doing cataract surgery and enjoying my life. And, um, so to leave that was a big decision. And I was recently married and have a new kid. So I didn’t want to be a fool and just, like, go off of motion. So there was some rationale behind it. Primarily, it was in 2020, the American Christian family lost trust in most institutions and in mainstream media education, children’s entertainment and the children’s entertainment is what stuck out to me because I was like, I need to trust the content I put in front of my kid because I can’t vet every movie or show. I can’t read every book. That doesn’t make sense. So trust has to be crucial. And in 2020, it just like evaporated. I saw that as an opportunity to to go and capture that trust for the American Christian family. And I didn’t see anybody doing it.

And. And you were a new believer.

Yeah.

Relatively. Yeah. Within a couple years. Yeah. And a new dad. Yeah.

Right on. Yeah. A lot going on. Um, saw that opportunity and I thought I could do it. I didn’t realize how hard it was. And then. And I’ve come to learn that it, like, very little had to do with me. It was just like, just the hand of God just selected all these, like, perfect people at the perfect time to make it all happen. And I’ve just been, like, having fun rolling with it.

Hey guys, we’d like to take a few seconds from the episode to just remind you that we have the free Biblical Parenting in a Changed World workshop.

Join us! You’ll get a 13 page Biblical Parenting free download PDF, and there’s so much good information in there.

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Be disappointed. Check it out at.

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Well, it’s really neat too, because you’re partnering with people like Kirk Cameron and Dan Crenshaw and people from different spectrums of the Christian world that have notability. And here they are telling these stories, and there’s always, uh, you know what I love about it? Angie was talking about this with me, too, is there’s always a villain. There’s a.

Villain in every single.

Book, and there’s always.

A. But there is a villain that we’re fighting in real life. Right? But the Bible even says in Ephesians six that we battle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities of the darkness of this age. Right. And so that’s actually visually made clear to kids through the illustrations and the books where they’re using their imagination to see this villain, whether it’s the culture, the vulture. Right. It’s like it’s a classic, which is I mean, that’s classic because he is in the culture, right? Like for sure in the culture. And so to bring these things to light, not only is it like allowing kids to use their imagination and see the darkness that they’re fighting in the spiritual realm, because that is a biblical truth, and we want our kids to grow up being able to discern that, pray against it, be willing to stand strong against it. Be willing to say no to things, say yes to the right things, and stand firm and be an example. Make change in the world. That’s what most parents want, right? But when you’re going through these different books and there’s these missions that they’re on, one of my favorite parts I was telling Isaac is at the very end, it’s like they’re recruited. The heroes are recruited to be a part of the team, which that’s what the body of Christ is like. We’re all members of the body of Christ, and we’re supposed to be a team collaborating together, making him all for making him known and for the glory of God. Right. But you’re tackling the current event issues that are most relevant to today through these books with different people. How do you find the people that you’re collaborating with, or how are you getting connected with them?

Uh, well, early on we just we sent out cold emails and things like that. Now, you know, we’ve got people coming to us because people want to be a part of, of, of the saga because they’re like, oh, my kids love these books. I want to be I want to be a part. Yeah. So that’s a big part of it. Or, you know, if there’s a particular person that we have in mind and we want to partner with, we’ll reach out. Yeah, we’ll reach out through other authors. You know, we try to try to make sure every author has a great experience working with us. Um, yeah. That’s how we’ve partnered with all these all these different people. And then we’ve got a really cool collaborative process because obviously they can’t just write a story in our universe.

No, because your universe is right here.

Right? Right.

So for those of you watching the YouTube of Courageous Parenting, we’ve got this amazing mural behind us here on the wall of Freedom Island. Tell us about this.

So this is this is our universe that every story takes place in and every book. You know, we’re a subscription. The Freedom Island Book club, every book that comes out takes place in this universe. And we’re telling an overarching narrative with the same protagonist and antagonist. So Team Brave are the good guys, and the legends of Freedom Island legends sort of represent our founding Fathers team brave represents. The hopefully the young generation that’s standing up to protect Freedom Island. Freedom Island represents America, um, or the West or whatever. Right? Then, you know, we we have the villains, Blackheart culture, the vulture, Lester, you know, all these fun, fun, fun characters. And but what makes our books unique is that they’re not staying alone. The what ends up happening is the kids fall in love with the world. The characters, you know, the four by six poster they get hang in their room. That’s my kids.

Favorite. Yes.

And so, you know, I just had this intuition early on that the books cannot be preachy. They have to. You have to start with capturing the imagination. And you do that through fun things like a four by six poster with stickers that they unlocking characters and Freedom Island flags.

There’s something for every kind of kid in that book because of all the activities.

Yeah, yeah. And then so if you capture their imagination and their attention, that’s the challenge. That’s the real challenge. And then you give them a story that that parents can use as a framework to really get into the lesson. Then you’re just making the parents job 100 times easier because because you’ve captured their attention, you’ve given the parents a story which which, you know, you can say, hey, you know how Kevin was feeling a little, um, you know, like he didn’t belong. Well, well, well, you know, that’s normal feelings. But listen, just like Kevin was, was created to be an elephant. You’re. God doesn’t make mistakes. You were created exactly how you were supposed to be made. And God doesn’t make mistakes. You know, some of these topics, they’re hard to talk about, you know, if you’re just speaking in conceptual language. But we we try to make the parents job easy by giving them a story and characters to talk about, and then the games in the back of the book to really dive into these topics deeper.

Well, I think it’s proactive parenting when you’re reading books regularly that have lessons like that, because a lot of times in this world it’s like instant gratification. So a lot of people like once there’s a problem, I’m going to go work on that problem. Once I have a behavior issue, it’s like reactive parenting. I go and I want to get help with it. But instead, what needs to be is proactive parenting. And that’s what the books do. Because maybe the kid isn’t feeling lonely right now or left out, but because they read that book before that happened, they’re being prepared and really, truly equipped before it happens to respond correctly. And now that experience becomes a signature experience of responding well, just like what happened in the book. And they’re identifying with that, and their identity is becoming stronger and their confidence is becoming stronger.

Yeah, yeah. You’re not waiting until there’s a mind virus that’s in there and you’re trying to get it out.

Detox it out.

Or do surgery.

Like you were. Right? Exactly.

You’re instilling truth, a solid foundation that helps them discern what’s truth versus lies whenever they write, whenever they get out. Because sheltering our kids is a failing strategy. Totally. We can’t. We can’t just win by sheltering.

Fear based parenting.

Yes. Yeah. So, you know, one of the great things about it is you’re creating a movement. I’m curious how many books have been sold so far. Do you know?

I don’t know, I would assume we’re at probably close to a million or over a million.

Amazing, amazing. So how many books.

Have come out?

36 or 37. Yeah. Right around there. Yeah.

So, so it’s it’s really a movement because you’re enlisting people and you’re addressing these cultural issues that are hot button topics that the culture says are, you know, either bad to talk about or definitely bad to talk against taboo. And you’re giving you’re not only arming the next generation, equipping kids, but you’re while parents are reading those stories, you’re equipping them too well.

And it’s actually bringing an alignment within their own family cultures, because the parents are talking with the kids and helping lead them and how they should think about that specific issue. So one of the things, one of the missions that we have with Courageous parenting is that parents would be raising and equipping confident Christian kids for an uncertain world, but that like when they grow up, there’s not obligatory family Thanksgivings, but people really like walking and living in community with each other because they actually like each other. Not just love each other because they’re family, but they like who their kids are and their kids like who their parents are. Which means there needs to be alignment in politics, in faith, in all of these things. Right. And so but when you have outside influences and peer pressure influences guiding your kids, influencing them away, you need tools to help you. Like relationship is really the best, right? That’s one of the best things we need to have in our toolbox, as well as the Bible and the Lord, obviously. But we also need to be talking about these things that are happening in the world, not just pretending like they aren’t existing.

Mhm, mhm. And you’re a father of three kids. You’re, you’re taking care of your family, you’re leading your family and so forth. Uh, which is amazing. But you know, as you’re running this and God is using you to get this out there, what have you learned as maybe some of the challenges of parenting today? Like what are you seeing the bird’s eye view. Because, yeah, you’re an intentional survive. Yeah. It was like.

Three. Wait a minute. You just said you had your first a couple of years ago.

Three, two and one. When will this podcast air? I have before.

What, uh, what are you seeing, though, through the brave books? What are you seeing? Some of the the biggest challenges parents are dealing with as you get feedback and you see what’s going on out there. Um.

I mean, you know, just the the family is so under attack with, um, in so many different ways. It’s it’s hard. We’re isolated. You know, we throughout all of history, we’ve grown up, you know, close to our extended family in community. You know, now we’re we’re isolated from our extended family. It’s community so, so lacking. So, so parents just on their own. That’s true. And when you when you’re on your own, you get in just like survival mode to where, you know, I just want to get through the day. How can I get through the day? All right, I know I can just turn the TV on, you know, and escapism.

Yeah.

And it just creates week. It puts you in a vulnerable, weak position as a parent. I think it lowers like your level of thinking from, man, I really want to teach my kid, you know, like have all these big ideas for your kids because you’re coming from a position of strength to know it’s just me. I don’t have any grandparents. I don’t have any uncles, aunts, you know, and don’t have a strong community. I just want to survive. I want to get home through the day until my until my husband gets home. And then we’ll tackle, we’ll clean up, we’ll tackle things together, and then we’ll just get the kids down. And who victory. You know, it’s like. It’s like, I think.

You’re speaking to a lot of people right now.

They’re like, yes, finally somebody who understands.

Yeah, I think that’s a big one. Books won’t fix really that they can help with instilling good values and stuff.

But, um, I want to share a really amazing personal testimony with you guys. The first 20 years Isaac and I were married, we primarily went the traditional health insurance route. Being entrepreneurs in those first 20 years, we had nine pregnancies, one loss, and eight babies birthed Earthside. Each time we were pregnant, we felt limited by our insurance coverage when making the decision on where we were going to have our babies. When looking into coverage for those births, home birth exclusions were a really big deal for us because of the risk of liability in case of an emergency. As we continued having babies later into life and being older, I was labeled geriatric. I was considered high risk, which made it even more difficult to find the care that I wanted with the assurance of support. Then, four years ago, we switched over to Samaritan Ministries, which is a health sharing organization. A few years into switching, we experienced another pregnancy loss and then we became pregnant for the 11th time. Still desiring to have a home birth. We were so blessed and surprised to find out that all our needs were sharable within the organization and that I could choose the provider I wanted. So we move forward to have the home birth of our dreams. If you’re looking for an alternative option to being able to pay for medical expenses incurred in raising a family, and you desire the freedom to choose your own providers, including alternative providers like chiropractors and naturopaths, we want to encourage you to check out Samaritan Ministries at our link. Samaritan ministries forward slash. Be courageous. In the video, we share how it works and answer a bunch of frequently asked questions. So check out our link at Samaritan Ministries. Org slash. Be courageous.

I think there’s a lot of just core issues with just the way we live that that puts parents in a in a vulnerable, weak position. I’m a parent and trying to navigate what the next 20 years of parenthood look like. For me, those are things I’m thinking about. I was just trying to how do you.

Have biblical community, real fellowship, a team? So you’re not doing it alone? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it does take more than one person. You can’t tackle all of the different things all by yourself.

Yeah, yeah. Isn’t that interesting? Because I would say there’s like the the best church buildings that have ever existed, there’s filled with people, people going to church, committed to church. Uh, they might even be in a small group. Yet parents are feeling, to your point, more alone and isolated than ever.

That’s because, well, we know biblical community isn’t really fully happening. There’s a lot of spectating happening and not participating. But but what’s interesting is your book, this whole organization, Brave Books, is actually set up in that model of like, bringing collaborators together to work together in this effort to bring a huge narrative right to kids. Yeah. Versus an author writing a book about one issue or maybe five issues, which is what you see a lot out there, right? You see a lot of people trying to bring one message or 2 or 3 messages, and they’re trying to do it, and they’re all alone and they’re not collaborating. But you’re doing something different here with Brave Books.

Yeah. Um, we’ve got a large collaboration of authors. We have 42 employees. Our we have a very tight, um, gritty culture here. Gritty.

Courageous and resolute is somebody actually, by definition, I just learned that the other day.

Somebody called her gritty.

Yeah. So I had to look it up and I went gritty. I was like, what? And then the second definition was courageous and resolute. I’m like, oh. Funny. I’ll take it. Okay. Anyways, yeah.

So, you know, half of our staff are probably more than half goes to the same church. And so that creates just like a wow. It’s more than just colleagues. You know, we have deep relationships and that comes trust. And you know when you’re doing creative work trust is essential because for a lot of reasons. But but you know, if you want to get people to come up with ideas and you know, there has to be trust there, you know that you’re not going to judge.

Believing in one another, too, and giving each other space.

Yeah, it’s been really cool. It’s been a fun three years.

But it seems like it’s more of a mission than it is a job. That’s what I’ve kind of gathered in meeting some of your employees. It’s true.

That was a fun tour.

We heard that a lot of you went to church together, that this mural here was actually painted by someone at your church.

Yeah.

Yes. So you guys do have a massive support?

Yeah, we do, we do.

So coming up, there’s something happening where you’re trying to mobilize people all over the country. I think it’s called Library Day, and I think it’s so cool. I want to hear more about it. But the idea of just, can you imagine everybody, if every library in every town was reading brave books to an audience of children, like, how magnificent would that be for shifting culture, but maybe just being an impact to the people in those libraries?

Yeah, yeah.

How are you doing this?

Okay, so so the story started with Kirk Cameron, that whole whole deal. You heard about that? Yeah. Yeah. His book was canceled. A bunch of libraries that had that had sponsor drag queen stories. So we asked, hey, can can we just host a story hour? You don’t have to sponsor us. You don’t have to pay us money like they did. The drag queens just let us come. And and they all said no. And and so that became a big thing. We started going. We threatened to sue them, you know, because they weren’t respecting our freedom of speech. They backed down because they were in the wrong, started doing these story hours. And it sort of caught on. We did like 25. And then eventually we said, all right, hey, we’ve been doing this for a while. It’s been fun. But, you know, let’s put the power to the people. And and we had our first inaugural C with the Library Day. It’s sort of a take on see what the whole that whole thing, um, where, where kids would show up at flagpoles and pray. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. And so we call it see you at the Library Day last year on August 5th, we had over 10,000 people show up across the country at libraries, and they hosted their own story hours. And a lot of them were reading brave books. Some of them were reading just wholesome kids books that they that they liked. And so this year we’re trying to do ten that and do a hundred thousand people across the country.

So are you kind of, um, calling all authors to deck in a sense and saying, hey, would you pick a library in your town or wherever you’re going to be at on this day and read the book that you wrote?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah. Authors? Yes. Our authors for sure. We’re going to be pushing them to, to do host hours. But but just anybody, anybody who wants to step up and host a story hour.

So a mom can say, hey, I love these brave boys. I can say that one.

Yeah, I can.

Go down to Eagle.

Idaho and.

And do a library reading of a brave book.

What’s the day? Which one.

Should I pick.

And what’s.

The date? So everybody knows we’re.

Gonna, um.

The date, I don’t know. Okay.

Zach, it’ll be in the show notes. It’s gonna be in the show notes, because Trent’s gonna get it to us. Yeah.

That’s exciting. Someday in August, I think it’s around the 20th. Or like, the. Yeah, right around that.

Um, so what can what can people do?

The 24th of August? Everybody. I got some hand signals around here.

Yes. Okay.

So August 24th, what can people do besides being willing to volunteer and host this? Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So you can either host a story hour, which means, just like, you know, reserving the space, promoting it locally, getting getting the word out. Okay. Um, and then also but if you, if you want to support but you can’t host a story hour, then you can support by sponsoring a library, sponsoring a story hour, or sponsoring a host, whatever you want to call it.

What would that be?

Um, basically you go to, um, brave story. Com and you, you buy this, um, box that has like 50 American flags, some books and all these fun things for the library to make the host job super easy and to give kids all these little gifts we’ve got, like, um, the Bill of rights on a bookmark. Are you.

Kidding? Yeah. I want one of these boxes. Yeah, they’re really cool.

It’s like. Yeah, it’s a it’s a lot of liberty in a box or. Yeah, I.

Love that in a box. Okay.

So can also. All right. I was thinking about this because when I launched my book 12 years ago, my first book, um, I donated a bunch of books to the libraries in the area because I had so many women that wanted it and were there was just it was a ministry. Okay? So if people wanted to, they could even buy Brave Books, right? And donate them to their local library.

Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a lot because.

That would help with it. I mean.

Fill the.

Libraries. Fill the libraries. Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.

Yeah, I love that.

Imagine if grandparents hello grandparents got mobilized and they decided because this is the thing is like if you think about it like the older generations too, they remember what America was like in a different sense than even us. And they are literally lit on fire about what is happening in this country right now. And so if they want something, they so many people come to us saying, I just don’t know how I can help. How can I help? Well, really, the biggest difference is going to be this next generation. They are the future leaders and a lot there’s a lot riding on this next generation, even though I don’t want to put the pressure on them. Yeah, but it’s a pivotal generation, um, generation Alpha um, born in 2015 and till like, even now. Right. Yeah. And these kids are it’s going to make a difference. And so if parents start rising up, if grandparents start rising up and teaching biblical values to their kids, that can make a massive difference. But it’s not just our kids. We have to influence the culture. There is already an attack where there’s indoctrinating books that are opposing Christian values in the libraries everywhere. I remember I used to take my kids to the library, even like 12 years ago, I banned the library because walking in there, I was like, no way. I don’t want my kids seeing these book covers. This is either nasty or scary and going to create night terrors or just ideologies that were completely not acceptable. Yeah, and so walking in it was difficult. But how are we going to change that? We have to be able to donate some things that we know are going to actually go.

To Story Hour with a positive book and lead it in your community. And so brave Books.com get those books. Get ready. August 24th is coming not too far away. Get on the subscription, feed your family some good nutrients of the mind and pointing them to God and pointing them to being heroes themselves and cultivating teamwork. I think it’s, uh, it’s so important. And, you know, really your you’re about evangelism, actually, because you’re equipping parents to with tools to basically disciple their children. And that’s the same thing we do. We equip parents to disciple their children with the greatest parenting podcast and the resources. So when people ask recently I’ve been like, well, we’re actually discipling the next generation. We may never actually speak to them, but the best people that possibly could speak to them are it’s a children’s program. The parents authorized it, you know, leaders of the family, which is the parents. And that’s the same thing you’re doing. You’re evangelizing the next generation, and you’re not ever. Well, sometimes, but rarely talking to them. The parents are right, and that is the best youth program that could possibly exist.

I just have.

To say something about the brave books, because I know that we have some grandparents that listen, and people who are who will ask, like, what do you do when it comes to birthdays? And grandparents always want to get books for the kids. Have them get a brave book subscription. Because the reality is, is a lot of grandparents have kids who’ve fallen away, chosen a wayward path. They’re frustrated by how their grandkids are being raised. But these books are not overtly preachy, but they have conservative values. They have things that I know that these grandparents would totally agree with, and it’s a great way to be able to start introducing some of the thoughts that stir the future conversations, because the discipleship happens in the later conversations. Yeah, it’s just stirring up the ideas in a creative way, right?

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a that’s a great idea. We, we get a lot of grandparents who, who are sneaky.

Yep. Who Christmas.

Presents.

Birthday presents.

Oh, I got you a subscription.

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, we used to get a subscription to the zoo. Now it’s like, I like these kinds of things.

So, Trent, what do you see ahead for the organization and the vision of impact?

We’re gonna finish out the picture book saga. So it’s going to be a total of 50 books. It’s like a 50 month journey, and we’re going to take kids on, and then it’s going to transition to graphic novels. Then eventually we’ll have middle grade novels, chapter books for for kids, because there’s a there’s so much need.

There really is for.

Good, wholesome books that are chapter books. Yep. That’s a big problem.

Yeah. As a homeschool.

Mom, I know that firsthand.

Yes. No, we hear it all the time. So that’s a huge priority for us. Um, the big thing coming up is we’re coming up with our first TV show, Adventure Adventures with Iggy and Mister Kirk. Oh. So good. Yeah. I’m like, so loopy because I’ve been on set for three weeks straight and. And, uh, it’s been crazy, but it’s gonna be such a good show. I heard it’s.

Like a modern version of Mister Rogers, but it’s Mister Kirk.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, but it’s so different than Mister Rogers. I mean, like, it’s got it’s got no red. It’s got some of the know. He’s got a he’s got a cool explorer.

Okay, good. Hey, you.

Have a cool grandpa.

Sweater I do, I rock it, I.

Rock the grandpa.

Sweater. Nice. Um, so it’s. Yeah, it’s a live action where you’ve got Mister Kirk and Iggy, a puppet iguana as the two main characters got some guest stars. Leigh-allyn Baker from Good Luck Disney’s Good Luck Charlie. Um, some other great guest stars. Um, and you will have like, 15 minutes of live action where Iggy’s dealing with an important topic. So maybe it’s honesty, hard work, respecting authority, um, forgiveness. And then so they go on this little, you know, adventure where where Kirk’s coaching Iggy through this, this topic. Um, and then he’ll read a, a book in the middle of it and the, the, the pages will come to life through animation. And so it will have an animated story in the middle of it. Um, and then, uh, we’ll have a segment where, where kids come and ask Mister Kirk questions and they’re often that’s an opportunity for, for Mister Kirk to get into the practical application of whatever topic it is. So whether it’s honesty, teamwork, all that. Yeah. Um, and man, just it’s going to be so special.

I saw a little clip on, uh, a phone while.

Yeah, Zach was showing.

Us, and it looks really good.

It’s going to be so good.

It’s so cool.

Yeah, yeah. Laura. I mean, do you know.

Where these videos are going to be?

Um, we are in talks with different streaming platforms, um, to, to to, to to host it. And then also we’re planning on putting season one up on YouTube and then we’ll, we’ll see what happens with season two. But we’re we’re trying to get season one as far as far out and wide as possible. So we’d love to see it on Pure Flix Minnow. Yippee. Binky Fox Nation, Amazon, Netflix we want it everywhere. Yeah. Wherever. Wherever kids are. You know, really, that show needs to be because it is special. And yeah, man, the performance that Kirk Cameron is putting on is just it’s crazy. Like he was born to play this role. Leonardo DiCaprio Leonardo DiCaprio could say, hey, I want to do this role. I would take Kirk over him any day of the week just because he he it’s just natural.

He’s well, he’s a dad.

He’s had a lot of these life application conversations with his kids, I’m sure.

Yeah. For sure. Being a homeschool dad, he’s been.

You know, he’s been such a solid believer for so long and has raised six kids. But he’s also cool. Yeah, he he’s cool and he’s such a good teacher. It’s incredible. People are going to be blown away, you know, by Kirk. Oh I.

Can’t wait. Yeah I can’t wait. So so good. Well, we’re so glad to be able to be here. We so appreciate the mission behind what you’re doing. And the product is really high quality. Not just, you know, it’s good when the story’s really good, but it’s so much better when the animation is good, when the whole package is there, you feel like when you hold it you’re like, this is it’s quality. Yeah. This is something that I want out in my room and in my house. And then when I open it, it’s edifying and it’s uplifting. My family and it’s helping them be on a journey that’s wholesome and good and in a direction. But the journey never seems to end.

It will. Once you get to book 50, right? Book 50, that’ll take a while.

It’s not gonna end there. We’re just getting started.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah. All right, well, any.

Last thoughts for, uh, everybody listening?

Yeah. What they’re referring to is, you know, when you, when you read a book that we’ve done, you can feel our heart behind it. And our heart is to just bless kids and bless families. And so we put a lot of just attention, just attention detail. You know, our books go through. You wouldn’t believe the process books go through before they get published. We’re very thoughtful and and test them out like crazy. And so we believe that there needs to be a brand out there that that Christian parents can just absolutely trust with their kids imaginations. And we plan on being that brand. And so trust is the most valuable asset that we have. And we don’t play around with that. Yeah.

Because once it’s broken. Yeah. You know it’s not coming back. No not in today’s day and age.

Yeah exactly. And we aren’t going to break it. That’s what this company is and that’s what we’re going to be about.

So everybody go to Brave Books.com. Make sure you get on the subscription. Not only is it good, but it also helps them to continue to be creative. Yeah. See we it’s so important. It’s easy to go buy something cheap, uh, in a store somewhere that’s less edifying. But when you can get something higher quality. Yeah, sometimes it it might cost a little bit more or you’re paying a subscription. But remember, when you start spending money in a wiser way, in a direction of things you endorse, it enables companies like Brave Books to expand and scale, to have the vision realized and the impact that, you know, really needs to happen in our society. So this is about the next generation. So you’re not just buying a book for yourself, but think about it when you’re buying it, that you’re contributing to something that has a purpose, that is going to edify families all across the globe.

It’s going to help.

Fund these Kirk Carnegie shows, right?

That’s right. Um hum. Yeah.

They’re not cheap.

That’s right. Tv’s not cheap. I figured out.

Yeah, people help with the show. Like funding.

It. Yeah. If you want to support the TV show, um, go to watch Brave Comm. We’ve got these cool tiers and packages and and rewards that you can get by by supporting. Um, yeah. And that will be a good investment, I promise you. It’s going to be very special. Okay.

Hey, thanks for being here. Or I guess we’re in your place. Yeah.

Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for being.

Here. But thanks for being on the show in your place. Yes. And it was so fun. And thanks for.

Listening, everybody. See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening. And being a part of the 10 Million Legacies movement, go to Be Courageous Ministry. Org for more biblically based resources, ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission, and information about the incredible Be Courageous app community for believers.

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 session 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. We cover everything from tending to their hearts, handling obedience to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private group in the Courageous App, live webcast, and direct access to us.

If you’re interested in joining our next online Parenting Mentor program, secure your spot now at Be Courageous Ministry. Org that’s Be Courageous Ministry org.

Whew. Okay. That’s good. Awesome, brother.

That was great.

Yeah.

Yeah. So good.

Thank you. Yeah. That’s great.

I just want you.

Guys to know that, uh, I just got married. April. Oh, really? And I feel ready to parent after you guys, so I’m ready to go. Let’s go.