TLP 349: Talking with Your Kids about Jesus | Natasha Crain interview

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Tidy people don't act like slobs all day, literally, this was the language, it said tidy people are constantly in this state of low -grade tidy.

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Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. Of all the people I've had on this show, my guest today, I think honestly she just gets the grand prize, because this is her fifth

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TLP interview. Honestly she's practically a staple, I think I owe it to her to just get her a parking spot with her name on it.

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I don't know if that will do her any good, a parking spot in North Carolina when she lives in California, but if nothing else,

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I should at least get her a gold sticker. In fact, I did that. I got her a gold sticker.

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You can go to truthloveparent .com, you can click on the special guest tab, and then if you click on Natasha Crane's name, you will see her amazing gold sticker in all of its glory.

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It is a sight to see. I hope you check that out. Not because the sticker is really that big a deal, but you will be able to see that aforementioned sticker, but you'll also, even more importantly, be able to learn a lot about our guest today.

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So Natasha, I welcome you back to the show. How does it feel to receive the prestigious, be the first one, by the way, to receive the prestigious five -star, five -interview award?

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Did you take the time to view it in all of its glory? I feel amazing.

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I got to tell you, it's a huge honor to get the gold sticker. And you know, it sounds so funny, but our kids, they get stickers all the time, right?

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For everything. They get stickers for their home or for all kinds of stuff. As adults, we don't get the sticker. So I am super excited about my sticker.

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I indeed went to the website to check out the sticker. I saw it in all its glory. It was fantastic.

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Totally appreciate it. And the parking spot thing, that sounds pretty awesome too. I've never had my own parking spot, so I would totally take it just in case

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I ever get to North Carolina. So thank you. In all seriousness, it is such a pleasure to talk with you.

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And I'm so glad that we have another chance to do that today. I am super excited too. And I'm relatively certain because you've been on the show so often that a lot of people already know who you are, but then again, our audience is always growing.

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So why don't you take a moment just to kind of introduce yourself, tell us about your work, tell us about your family, your ministries, just kind of your current phase of life.

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Yeah. So I'm a married mom of three kids. We've been married for a little over 20 years now, and I have 11 -year -old twins and a nine -year -old.

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And basically, I know we talked about this on a prior episode, so I won't go into too much detail, but just for those who might not have heard it before, very briefly,

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I started a Christian parenting blog back in 2011. It sounds like so long ago, but it doesn't feel like that.

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And when I started it, I really just started it to be a fun Christian parenting blog to talk about how we were raising our kids to know and love the

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Lord, even though they were very little at the time. And very quickly, I started getting attacked by skeptics, people who were coming to my website and leaving all kinds of comments about how

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Christianity wasn't true and how it's harmful and how the Bible is filled with errors and contradictions and science has disproved

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God, all these kinds of things. And I was a lifelong Christian, but had no idea how to answer those things.

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So basically, that led me to discover what's called apologetics, and that just means how do you make a case for and defend the truth of Christianity?

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And I went into a really intense reading journey where I learned as much as I could and was turning around and writing about these things on my blog, and that eventually led to me having the opportunity to write some books.

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And so now, I've written three apologetics books for parents, Keeping Your Kids on God's Side, Talking With Your Kids About God, and my newest one, which comes out this week,

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Talking With Your Kids About Jesus. So that's where I am right now, and this will be the first place I say it out loud to the world, but I'm actually going to make a big change this fall, and I'm going to start homeschooling my twins for middle school.

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So I'm really excited about that. My kids have all been in a private Christian school for elementary, but I'm going to homeschool my twins for middle school and let my younger one finish up at the elementary school.

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So I'm very excited about that. Oh, that's very cool. As a homeschooling dad, I'm excited for you.

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I really enjoy that process. So if you ever hit a roadblock or whatnot, just send me an email, give me a call, say, what do

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I do? I bet I will hit many of those roadblocks. Maybe I just need to drive across the country and get to that parking spot in North Carolina and walk right in with my questions.

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I know I will have many. That'd be awesome. Well, thank you for that introduction to who you are.

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I think your story is one that I think a lot of people resonate with, but oftentimes not because they have been confronted by people who have questions, but because their kids come home with questions, and that's a far more disconcerting place to be.

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So I praise God that you were able to kind of get into this and start preparing yourself to answer these questions before your kids are being targeted and before they came home looking for help.

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So a lot of parents out there looking for help, looking for answers. They're uncertain what to do. So I'm really excited about telling them about your resources.

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I want to talk about your new book, Talking With Your Kids About Jesus, but why don't you go ahead and just give us a flyover of your previous two books?

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Yeah, my first book was called Keeping Your Kids on God's Side, and it walks you through 40 of the biggest challenges to faith today for our kids.

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And I know 40 sounds like a huge, huge, giant book, but the chapters are only about four or five pages each, and that's how it is with all my books.

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It's a parent -to -parent kind of voice just to introduce you to what the world is saying and what your kids need to hear about.

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Because like you said, a lot of times parents, they understand, you know, I need to be able to answer my kids' questions, and they see that as important, but they don't necessarily realize the importance of knowing what the world will ask their kids and proactively bringing those questions to them.

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So I see my books as really tools for parents to get equipped with an understanding of what those questions are that the world will be putting toward their kids, and then giving them the understanding of how they can reply and how they can talk with their kids about them.

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So that first book, Keeping Your Kids on God's Side, my first one, is like an apologetics 101 for Christian parents.

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It's just going to walk you through the basics on God, Jesus truth and worldviews, the Bible, and science questions.

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And then my second book, and this came about because after reading the first book, a lot of parents came and said, okay,

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I see this is super important. I need to learn more. What do I do next? And so that's what kind of spurred the books coming out of that.

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And the next one was Talking With Your Kids About God, and that one just focused specifically in on 30 questions about God. So how do we know

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God exists? What's the evidence for God's existence? What about all these questions about does, you know, God and science somehow conflict with each other?

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Those kinds of God level questions. And my newest one, Talking With Your Kids About Jesus, you guessed it, now focuses on 30 conversations specifically about Jesus in terms of who he was and what he taught.

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And I know we're going to get into that, but it's just a different level of focus for each of the books. Now, we have all of Natasha's books listed on our

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Best Apologetic Parenting Books page. You can go learn more about them there if you're interested in seeing what they're about.

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You can also click on any of the links and be sent directly to Amazon where you can then purchase the book.

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And if you buy any of them using TLP's Amazon links, then you'll not only purchase an amazing resource that will help you parent to the glory of God, but you've also been a blessing to Natasha, and Amazon will send a portion of the sale back to TLP.

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So it really is the best way to go if you're looking to pick up one of a copy of her books, go to TLP, look for the

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Best Apologetic Parenting Books page, and you can learn everything about them right there. In fact, you know, and while you're there shopping for her books, really anything that you purchase on Amazon using the affiliate links earns

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TLP a commission. So yeah, that's pretty cool. Now, when it comes to Natasha's newest book, you can preorder it now, okay?

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It will be officially released on March 31st. So you can preorder it. That's always a really helpful, encouraging thing to do.

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That way you're one of the first ones to get it, and it's a huge blessing to the author. Or you could also try to win the book.

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That's right. At the end of today's show, I will tell you how you might be able to win a copy of Natasha's newest book,

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Talking With Your Kids About Jesus. She has graciously offered to give us two copies of the book.

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So we're hoping that two of you will walk away with a brand new copy of Natasha's new book. All right, now,

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Natasha, let's jump in at the beginning of your most recent work, okay? I honestly, I love the introduction of the book.

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And I love the story that you shared with me about how the introduction came to be. So tell us about how you kind of came up with the idea for the intro, and then help us understand how this analogy of keeping a tidy house has anything to do with helping our kids understand who

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Jesus is. Sure. So with my first book, the Keeping Your Kids on God's Side book,

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I remember getting some advice from my editor since I was a first -time author about different parts of the writing process.

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And one of the things that stood out to me that really didn't seem intuitive was he told me, write the introduction after you finish writing the entire book.

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That sounds a little strange. That makes a lot of sense, yeah. Right. It seems weird, and I'm a very A to B linear kind of person.

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And so, you know, that seemed difficult to me. I wanted to start at the beginning and get to the end. But I took his advice, and I did it that way.

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And it's brilliant advice, really, because when you get to the end of the writing process, that's when you want to ask yourself, okay, given everything that I just did, what do

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I most need people to know when they're going to start reading this book now that I fully know what this content looks like?

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And so I did that with my second book. And now with this new book, I got to the end of the book, and I said, what do

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I really feel readers need to know at the beginning of this? And it occurred to me that I had just covered an enormous amount of ground.

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There are a lot of subjects covered in this book. And between all three books, I cover 100 different conversations that parents need to have with their kids.

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But I realized that for most parents, that sounds like an enormous burden. It sounds like something that really seems difficult to do.

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And so I wanted to write an introduction to the book that just spoke to that, to help parents understand that this is going to be, this is going to be a lot to read.

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But at the same time, it's really necessary. And how do you go about doing that? And so one day

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I was on Facebook, and I just found the perfect opportunity to incorporate one of the insights that I saw from an article linked there into this introduction.

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And here's what it was. It was an article that was about five things that tidy people don't do.

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And so I immediately clicked on this link because I am one of these people that has a lot of trouble keeping the house tidy.

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And I know it's not just, I know it's not just me, but yes, it's really hard. We always have homework papers all over the floor, pencils on seat cushions, all those kinds of things.

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And it is hard to keep a tidy house. So I immediately wanted to know what kind of insight it had. And basically the treasure that I found in this article was it pointed out that tidy people don't act like slobs all day.

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Literally, this was the language. You don't act like a slob all day and then clean everything up in one fell swoop because that's really overwhelming.

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It becomes a giant use of your time. It becomes the burden. Instead, tidy people are constantly in this state of low grade tidy.

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I love that term, low grade tidy. They're just constantly picking up things as they go about their day.

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And I just realized this is exactly the concept that I want parents to take away when we talk about these kinds of conversations with our kids.

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I'm not saying here are three books that I have written a hundred conversations. Now go on a giant retreat with your kids and buckle down and get through everything and make sure they understand everything in one fell swoop.

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That would be like a deep clean on your house, right? That would be something that would take hours upon hours and be extremely overwhelming.

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But instead, I realized I really want parents to see my books as their guide to the spiritual tidying in their house, that we're continually discipling our kids by identifying opportunities in the day when we can pick something up in their understanding, when we can identify something they've seen and say, oh, hey, that reminds me of something that I saw online the other day where a skeptic said this.

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And what do you think about that? And having those conversations. So it's not about discipleship and having these conversations.

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It's not about finding ways to set aside giant chunks of time. It's really about low grade tidying in our lives over time and helping our kids see these conversations.

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It's just a way of life really. And my books hopefully will be a guide to parents and helping them know what to tidy specifically.

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We can't tidy everything, but what most needs tidying in your kid's understanding of God, given the challenges that they will face today.

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And what you're suggesting really, I think, at least from the families with whom I interact, is a huge paradigm shift.

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I know that for myself, you know, coming out of the nineties in particular, there was this big idea, push for programs.

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You know, even now, you know, you have a small group and you've got youth group and you've got these different ideas that if we want to reach our kids, we have to have these programs.

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When in actuality, the programs are nice if they're reinforcing what's already happening at home, that low grade tidying that's happening at home.

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The children who benefit from the programs are the ones who are getting all of that throughout the day type of parenting and discipleship at home.

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And so what you're saying is massively huge. And I think there are some parents out there who, if they looked at their day, they might kind of just blanch a little bit because they are realizing that I don't do this.

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Okay. I have these lecture moments. I wait for things to boil and boil and boil until I just can't handle it anymore.

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Then I sit the kids down and unload on them. Or, you know, we go to church or we have our family time, but there's really no other time throughout the day.

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So maybe someone who, though they have those big program times, and I think that those are great. Go on a retreat with your kid, take them out on a date, you know, spend some time deliberately pouring

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God's truth into their lives. That's awesome. But at the same time, you know, somebody's saying, how do

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I start this low grade discipleship, this low grade teaching and apologetics and parenting throughout my whole life?

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What would you say to that person? What would be a good starting other than obviously getting the book and maybe trying to work one of those topics in maybe not so much the topics, but just the method.

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How do you change your mind? What do you do to get to the place where you're thinking about mentioning something here and peppering in something there?

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Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that honestly, it's a sense of urgency when parents have an appropriate sense of urgency about the way the world is today and how much it will challenge their kid's faith.

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Then they have the motivation to do it. When they get equipped with the knowledge itself, then they have the understanding with which to do it.

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So those are the two components. You could have all the knowledge in the world, but not have a sense of urgency and be unmotivated and have your life consumed with soccer practices.

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So having the knowledge alone is never going to be enough. But a lot of people don't have the knowledge.

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Maybe they have the motivation, so they're not really sure what they should be doing. And that can be overwhelming as well.

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Unfortunately, many parents have neither. They have neither the motivation with the sense of urgency, nor do they have the knowledge.

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And that's where I find actually most people are. So in terms of how to actually get into that mindset,

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I think that so much of it is really getting equipped yourself with this understanding so that when you have that and you start to see, oh, wow, this is where skeptics are coming from.

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This is everywhere my kid is going to see this. This is where they're going to see it in textbooks. This is where they're going to see it in media.

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This is where they're going to see it online. They're going to suddenly see it in all these places. And then the parent is in a position of saying, okay,

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I need to do something. I've got to do something. And when you have that understanding, and this is what

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I always like to emphasize to parents, it seems intimidating to find ways to work things into your daily life.

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But once you do take the time to get equipped and you do start reading some books, watching some podcasts and watching videos, whatever the media is for you, you suddenly start to have a radar and you suddenly notice these things all the time.

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And you will be surprised. You will surprise yourself at the things that you notice and the opportunities that you find.

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So it's not, it's not so much the how I think that it's a barrier for parents. It's really the knowledge first and the sense of urgency, because when you have that, you will see opportunities.

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Unfortunately, in a way given today's world, you will see opportunities constantly.

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Yeah. And that was fantastic advice. Thank you for that. Now, obviously the book is called

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Talking With Your Kids About Jesus. But I think sometimes we think about Jesus, our mind goes to these little flannel graph images, these stories, these events in his life, but you don't really focus too much on the typical, if I can call them quote unquote

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Bible stories about which most people think when we bring up the topic of Jesus. Your book isn't so much about talking about what he did, though,

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I have to admit, there's definitely really important things that he did that you do discuss in the book. It seems to me that your book is more about who he is, and then additionally, how we can know he is who he is.

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And the book is broken into five different parts. Tell us a little bit about each section of the book helps to understand your thinking and why you wrote these sections.

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Right. Well, I think you're absolutely correct that a lot of times we think of, you know, if you hear the title alone, it sounds a little generic, admittedly,

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Talking With Your Kids About Jesus, that could be anything, right? But we're not talking just about the average

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Bible story that in, you know, in no Bible story is average, but you know what I mean? The typical story that you hear in church, there are many, many, many resources, children's

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Bibles and other types of resources where your kids can hear things about Jesus. But to my previous point, this book is specifically about the topics that kids need to understand, given the challenges that they're going to hear today.

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So I've broken it into five different parts. The first one is the identity of Jesus. And the reason that this comes first is because nothing else matters in the book.

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If we don't get this question right, how do we know that Jesus was who he said he was?

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How do we know Jesus was God? And I think a lot of times parents skip right over this point because they're assuming

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Jesus is God and they say, well, the Bible says this and Jesus did this. But wait, hold on. The huge challenge of today's world is that people think that Jesus was either a myth, he didn't exist at all, which

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I cover in chapter one, or he was just a guy who lived 2000 years ago. Maybe you might think he's a good moral teacher.

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Maybe you don't, but people don't believe that Jesus was God. So we don't need to talk about anything else in Jesus's life at all if we have not first addressed his identity.

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So in that first section, in each section, section, excuse me, has six chapters in it.

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So I have six chapters on the identity of Jesus to help you set those questions up with your kids. And then that goes into a section on the teaching of Jesus, which again, we can have many, many topics in this, but I've focused these on the topics that Christians and non -believers alike tend to get wrong today in popular discussions.

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Like what did Jesus teach about loving others? What does love even mean today? What did Jesus teach about judging others?

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What did he teach about organized religion? The kinds of things that you hear often discussed, but a lot of times people have some unbiblical understandings of.

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And then that leads to a section on the death of Jesus and helping kids really get beyond Jesus died for my sins.

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It's great that they know that they probably hear it all the time in church, but it becomes like a slogan after a while. So my hope with this section is that it really takes you a little deeper into the theology or actually quite a bit deeper to understand things like how did the

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Old Testament sacrifices point forward to Jesus and what did Jesus's death on the cross accomplish?

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And that leads into a section on the resurrection of Jesus, which gets into the apologetics of it. How would we even know that Jesus was raised from the dead?

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It's not just a matter of blind faith as skeptics would like to suggest, but rather there's a lot of historical evidence for the resurrection.

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And then I end it with a section on the difference Jesus makes, because sometimes we can have all this knowledge about the right theology and what the

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Bible says and why we should believe it. But then we get to the end of day and we say, well, now what? Our kids need to have a big, really solid answer to that.

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Now what? What does the difference? What is the difference that Jesus makes in our lives? Now, these five topics, they are important.

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I think everyone listening would understand that and would say, yeah, okay, there's definitely importance to each of those concepts.

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I need to understand it. My kids need to understand it. But I guess maybe the question I want to ask next is not unique to each specific part or to each specific chapter, but really to the whole of the book.

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Why are these 30 conversations every parent needs to have? I mean, you're, you're saying right there on the subtitle of the book, every parent has to have these conversations.

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Why do you believe that this topic is so important that you went ahead and wrote a whole book on the subject?

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Yeah, it's true. It's a, it's a big claim to say, these are must have conversations. You have to have these conversations with your kids.

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Right. But this is, this is based on my experience and, and engaging with skeptics and with parents and kids who are walking away.

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It's based on research about why kids are walking away over the last 10 years or so.

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And there are so many questions that parents don't even get close to answering because like I talked about earlier, they don't even realize that this is a thing.

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So, you know, one chapter in the book, for example, I'll ask the question about, you know, did ancient people believe in miracles just because they were more gullible?

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That's not your standard Sunday school question. That's not the kind of question that most parents are really thinking about answering.

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And there are a lot of questions like that. So as I encountered more and more of these questions and saw, wait a second, there's this huge gap here between what the world is asking and what the world is challenging our kids on and what most kids are hearing at church and at home.

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That's a giant gap and parents need to start paying attention. They need to start understanding.

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These aren't just statistics. I think most people listening have probably heard that at least 60 % of kids are walking away from their faith by their early 20s today.

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It's easy for that to go in one ear and out the other, but really think about that. The majority, the majority, most kids who grew up in a

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Christian home are walking away by their early 20s. We should all be asking why, not just, oh, wow, that's crazy.

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The world's really challenging. Oh my goodness. What am I going to do? No, we should actually be looking at, well, what, what's doing this?

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What are the questions that are being asked? And ultimately, if you summed them all up into one ball, the challenges come down to Christianity is not true.

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And not only is Christianity not true, it's also bad. It's bad for you. It's bad for the world. It's not true and it's harmful.

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Those are the two things. And really this book breaks down those questions into showing why we have such good reason to believe that Christianity is true and helping set up our kids to understand these key points that they're going to be confronted with.

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This is a huge topic that we don't really even have time to dig into too much, but not only are skeptics and atheists claiming that these things aren't true,

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Christianity is bad for you. But in addition, there's a whole swath of quote unquote Christians, people who call themselves

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Christians, who also think that there are things in the Bible that aren't true and that certain elements of quote unquote

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Christianity are bad for you. I mean, so it's like the proclaimed non -religious people, but also even the religious people are saying that this is bad.

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And really, I think I love that the motivation for this grows in part because you are aware of the attack that our children are going to face and you want to do something about that.

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And Christ is the place to turn for sure. You're so right about that in terms of it being about Christians as well.

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And I address that several times throughout the book, actually, that progressive Christians, usually people who would term themselves as progressive

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Christians, are taking things and they're moving an understanding of the

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Bible and of what historically has been Christian theology. They're moving very much away.

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And yet it sounds good to a lot of people. And our kids sometimes can be more compelled by that kind of Christianity, this false version of Christianity.

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And maybe that sounds good to them. They don't want to completely abandon faith like the skeptic over here is saying. But hey, this

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Christian over here, they seem really loving and accepting and they don't think that, you know, I need to do exactly everything that's in the

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Bible. The Bible is kind of an old book. So yeah, it can sound good. It can sound compelling, but it can also be totally and completely wrong.

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So I do delve into that quite a few times in the book. Yeah, that's very powerful. Because I think sometimes if we're not familiar with, like you said, the quote unquote, progressive

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Christianity movement, that our kids are coming home saying that they heard something by a Christian or they have a friend that's a

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Christian and their friends go to this church and we let their kids go. But we don't know what they're saying. We don't know what they're believing.

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Our kids are coming home with these Christian authors and these Christian groups and these Christian ideas, quote unquote. And we're accepting it because, hey, better they talk about Christian stuff than they talk about secular stuff.

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But really, the Christian stuff is just skepticism and doubt wrapped up in this kind of professing fake faith in a way.

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So yeah, that's really powerful. Again, huge topic, but we parents need to be aware and Natasha's book is going to help make you aware.

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Which is where I need to stop here for a second because I just need to diatribe for a moment. I need to get on my soapbox before we dive into any specific part of the book.

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And I do want to do that. I just want to jump in here and I want to share with you, the listener, my initial impression of talking with your kids about Jesus.

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Now, for those of you who don't know, I graduated from seminary in 05 with my master's of science in biblical counseling.

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Those years in seminary were filled with more Bible study than I had ever done any year of my life up until that point, all put together.

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In addition to the reading we had to do as part of our classes and all the class work and the teaching and everything that was poured into it, all the papers that we had to write and all the reading we had to do to write the papers, we had these monthly reading assignments.

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And the point of these reading assignments was simply to read. We were never tested on the information.

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We never had to write a paper based off of our reading. And this extra reading, this bonus reading in a way, and it wasn't bonus points, it was required, but this extra reading was close to a thousand pages a month, strictly from Bible commentaries, which generally tend to be a little dry.

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So I'm sure you can imagine the quantity of information that we students were ingesting. Now this is not some ridiculous humble brag or a terrible attempt at it.

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Okay. Notice that I'm not saying anything about my grades. All right. That's nothing to do about me. I'm really just simply trying to give you an idea of the sheer amount and weight of biblical knowledge that was being injected into our brains on a daily basis.

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And this is why back in episode 17, way long time ago, it was entitled the most important thing

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I can say to parents. I stress that the key to good parenting is to get as much biblical training as you possibly can.

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Now, Natasha has already alluded to this, the importance of getting the information and then developing that sense of urgency to share that information.

27:37

And that's what I'm saying here. I shared on that particular episode that it wasn't uncommon before the turn of the 20th century for women to prepare for motherhood by enrolling in seminary.

27:49

Many of them understood that the single most important information they would need to be a victorious mother was the truth of God's word.

27:56

However, though nowadays, in order to operate a vehicle or fire a gun, or even to work at McDonald's, you need extensive training and certification.

28:05

And by the way, we happily sign up for those opportunities. Yet every day people have children without a single clue about what they're doing.

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And so often they even balk at the idea that they should get some training on the subject. Really, how crazy is that?

28:18

Of course, that's obviously not describing you, okay? Otherwise you wouldn't be listening to this podcast or be interested in Natasha's book.

28:25

Anyway, but on episode 17, I listed out what I believed were the most important steps a parent could take to prepare for parenting.

28:32

So in addition to being a follower of Christ, I included that it would be good to get a degree in biblical counseling.

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I said that if you can't go back to school, the answer is just to read, and read some more, and then read a whole bunch more.

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I mentioned too that if you've had kids for a while and you still feel ill -equipped, don't give in to hopelessness.

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And then I said that even if your kids are grown and gone, you need to pass on your knowledge of God's word to the next generation.

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Now I say all this for one main reason. Natasha's books are filled with all four of these points.

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This particular one, it's just an ultra -valuable read that will both fill you with hope and the desperately important information you need to pass on to the next generation.

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And I truly believe that reading these books are really, honestly, just the next best thing to getting a degree, okay?

29:20

Because I say this for, I know what I'm talking about here. You gotta listen to me. In my systematic theology class, we studied every single point that Natasha's book covers in Talking With Your Kids About Jesus.

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Talking With Your Kids About Jesus is a Christology class for full -time parents who enjoy reading intelligent, practical parenting books.

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So, if knowing who God is and introducing your kids to him is the single most important thing you can do, and it is, then books like this are exactly what we need to be reading because they take the deep concepts of the

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Bible, they make it accessible to dads and moms, who then can make it accessible to their children.

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Now, that is my very impassioned, completely shameless plug for the book because that's really what wowed me about it.

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So many of the books being written today for parents are so, in many ways, they're subpar. Some of the better ones are superficial at best.

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They're covering all the same things. They're talking about the basics of Christianity, which are super important, but they're not taking people beyond that.

30:19

They're not digging down deeper, which is why we're having families that are not able to address the questions and the criticisms that are coming from the world.

30:28

Now, I know I've been talking for a while. You really want to hear Natasha talk, okay? We want to get to the book, but Natasha, I'm just curious.

30:35

Did you expect someone to read your book and walk away with that response? Well, you never know what someone is going to take away from the book, good or bad.

30:45

So, you never know in terms of excitations, but I'm so, so honored and encouraged to hear all that you just said.

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I can't tell you how much it means to me. You pour your heart and soul into and so much time and energy, emotional, physical, everything into writing a book.

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It does take a lot of time to write a book like this because I am indeed trying to do exactly what you just said.

31:09

It takes so much information that could be said and distill it down to four or five pages of just the meat in something that parents can take and learn from these core points.

31:21

And so, it is a labor of love. And so, to hear all of your kind words, I appreciate it so much.

31:27

Thank you so much for that. It means a lot to me. And I think you really hit the nail on the head in terms of what

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I would love for this to accomplish with parents that maybe you don't have time to go to seminary. Maybe you don't have time to take classes.

31:42

You're probably really in the midst of your parenting. You're probably overwhelmed and you're even wondering how

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I could read one book. But even if you can't do all those other great things like you were suggesting, you can take the time to read four or five pages in a night.

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And my hope, my prayer in that is that you would come away with a much deeper understanding of your own faith so that you benefit as the parent and have some of those light bulb moments to say, oh, okay,

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I'm connecting the dots here. And then be able to pass that on to your kids and not feel like you have to be this graduate school person or have a

32:20

PhD in any of these things. Those are wonderful things. Don't get me wrong. But the whole heart of this book is that every parent is a theologian.

32:28

And you just want to make sure you're a good theologian. That's right. Yeah. And Natasha's books, they're accessible, but they're intelligent.

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And I really like her voice. I like the way she writes. Super awesome. And it'd be very helpful to everyone who really does want to be an intentional premeditated parent.

32:46

Okay. Now with the time we have left, I do want to give the listeners a little peek into the book. And specifically,

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I want to talk about why it's important for Christian families to understand the failure philosophies of the world.

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A lot of people say, focus on what's right and don't bother wasting all your time on all the ridiculousness that's out there.

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And yet, in many ways, you address that ridiculousness. For example, and you've already mentioned some of this, your opening chapter is called,

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Is Jesus a Myth? You have another chapter entitled, Did Ancient People Believe in Miracles Because They Were More Gullible?

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And then later in the book, you ask, did Jesus's disciples lie about the resurrection? Each of these are just a couple examples of very real questions that people ask.

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They're real beliefs that people have. But why is it so important to acknowledge those questions and be familiar with their arguments?

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How is that going to help my kids? Yeah, that's a really, really great question because I do hear from parents a lot of times that they say, well,

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I don't want to teach my kids about all this other stuff. I just want to teach them truth. I hear that quite a bit from parents.

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We have to remember, we're not raising kids in a silo. They are eventually going to hear these other arguments and they're going to be surrounded by them.

33:57

And I think this is why some statistics are actually helpful for parents to understand. According to all the latest research and when they study population trends and religious trends in society and what people are believing about the

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Bible, if you look for the percentage of people who still hold to a biblical worldview, not just identifying as a

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Christian, but specifically who are identifying as a Christian and answer a series of questions that would lead one to categorize a person as someone who holds to a biblical worldview, we are now in the minority.

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We are now in the minority. We don't go around the world with a lot of people who simply by default have the same beliefs anymore.

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And I think people kind of depended on, parents depended on that in the past. It's not that way anymore. You can't refer to us as a

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Christian nation anymore. That's exactly right. We're not a Christian nation anymore. And so we have to understand as parents that kids are constantly going to rub up against these questions.

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It's not just, you know, once in a great while they might encounter someone who says they don't believe in God. Now, a lot of people, almost everyone around them in some cases, depending on your context and where you live can be people who are asking these questions.

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And I heard, I had this conversation with this young man and he was a college student and he just summed this up so brilliantly for me.

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And I always come back to this thought, but he grew up studying apologetics. He had parents who really focused on this and encouraged him to study these kinds of questions.

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And that's actually pretty rare. So given what I do, I asked him, I say, how do you think that affected you?

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When you started hearing in high school, more of these arguments and you encountered people who were saying these kinds of things.

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And he thought for a minute and he said, you know, it just didn't cause me to doubt. It caused me to investigate.

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And I love that. I just love that. Instead of hearing things for the first time from the world, he knew that there are all these arguments out there and whether or not he had encountered the specific one that he heard at a given time, it didn't matter because he knew that lots of people believe differently than he did.

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He had heard a lot of these objections before. Instead of making it seem like something that was the end of the world to him, he just said, okay,

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I need to look into this. So that is why I would say it's so important to understand because otherwise we hear all the time about kids who are getting rocked when they suddenly hear about these challenges where you have these high profile deconversion stories that are in the news all the time now.

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And for the very first time they're hearing somebody say, yeah, evolution's a big challenge to Christian faith, for example.

36:31

And they say, oh my goodness, I guess I'm not a Christian anymore. That's not an exaggeration. This is the kind of stuff that is happening today.

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So if your kids hear this stuff for the first time from skeptics, they're going to be on shaky ground.

36:44

Just like anything else, we want them to hear it from us first. Yeah. And this really is the heart of apologetics.

36:50

We want our kids to be able to answer. Well, we want to be able to answer our children's questions, but we also want to equip them to be able to answer the questions the world is going to pose them.

37:01

People are going to tell your kids that Jesus was a myth. They're going to tell your daughter that Jesus' disciples lied about the resurrection and made the whole thing up.

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I've had people tell me ridiculous things, make claims about the Bible that have been refuted over and over and over again by the most academic scholars you can imagine.

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And yet people still believe them and people still say them. And when you're living in a vacuum and you just hear someone walk up to you and go, well, according to all of the scientific studies, the

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Bible can't possibly be true. Then your child's going to be sitting there going, oh, and they won't know what to do.

37:33

And people are going to tell your kids that they're gullible and they're stupid and they're delusional if they actually believe in God.

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And again, like I said, they'll throw evidence quote -unquote and quote -unquote reason and quote -unquote science at your kids. Really, evidence and reason and science all belong to God and support his truth, but they'll claim that they have that on their side.

37:50

And what are your children supposed to do with all of that information? How are they supposed to respond? Natasha and I, and most importantly,

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God, they really, really want your kids to do what Peter commands in 1 Peter 3, 14 through 15.

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Peter says, do not fear their intimidation. We don't want to be afraid of what people are going to say to your kids.

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They're going to intimidate your kids. And do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.

38:27

That's the point of all of this. And I believe that that's exactly what Natasha's book helps us to accomplish.

38:34

Yeah, that really does come down to the heart of it, that we should always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that we have.

38:40

We don't want our kids to think that Christian hope is just based on a leap into the dark. We want them to know that that hope is well -founded.

38:47

Now, as I was thinking through what, you know, if there's a particular chapter or idea or concept

38:53

I wanted to talk about, I really just found myself wanting to avoid that conversation and looking at the book as the big picture that it is.

39:02

Okay, this is a big, this book is talking about a big concept, who Jesus Christ is.

39:07

It's talking about it in a big way. We're not just going through Bible stories, which are awesome and have their place, but we're digging down deeper.

39:13

What do those stories reveal about God? Who is Christ? And how can we answer the skeptics?

39:20

How can we answer the questions and the doubts that may come from a YouTube video your child sees or from someone at school or college professor?

39:27

These are the big ideas, and I think Natasha does it all so well, but there's another big concept that goes all the way throughout the book from the very beginning to the very end.

39:37

I want Natasha to talk about here just a little bit because it's not just a bunch of great information.

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She teaches us how to use the information. In fact, she equips us to take this information that we just learned and actually do some low -grade tidying in our home.

39:54

So, Natasha, before we finish up, why don't you tell us about all the fantastic tools you have jam -packed at the end of each of your chapters?

40:01

Sure. So, every chapter in the book has a step -by -step conversation guide, and I know that that's really important to parents because even when we have the knowledge in our head, sometimes it all just comes out like gobbledygook when we try to talk to our kids, and sometimes even though we know it, it's hard to get it out and to think about, okay, how do

40:19

I actually break this down? So, I have a conversation guide with every chapter, and the questions go from the easiest kind of an opener type of question into a more difficult question at the end, and the reason that I have it that way is that if you're going to sit down and really have a whole conversation about a chapter in one sitting, it really gives you that whole progression, but at the same time, if you have maybe young kids in first, second grade, kindergarten even, you could use the open the conversation question that I have for every chapter, and it just gets kids to start thinking about it.

40:50

Most of them are fun in some way, and it just gets them to start thinking about that chapter subject, and it gives you the opportunity to hit on some basic points with them, and as they get older, and you can come back, and you can revisit these, so it's definitely intended to be a book that you come back to again and again over time as you're doing your low -grade tidying.

41:09

One of the things that I love about that conversation guide is the very last question in each of those is apply the conversation, and it's an actual quote from a skeptic that challenges what you just learned in the chapter, and so I go to a lot of effort to find really good quotes for those so that it makes a perfect opportunity for older kids, especially maybe middle school and high school to learn the information as you've walked through the conversation, but then apply it by hearing an actual quote from a skeptic about that topic, and it's a really good opportunity if you're homeschooling, for example, it could be a really good opportunity to have a homework assignment around that and make sure your kids are understanding, so yeah, the conversation guides,

41:49

I know I've heard from parents in my last book, they also had them, and they've been really helpful tools for just kind of breaking it down.

41:55

Just to give everyone an example, we are coming into the Easter season here, and so on the chapter about the resurrection,

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I'd like to, right before the conversation starters, she has her key points, so she's had five pages worth of information, then she boils it down again into key points so that it's all right there if we need it, and then she has her conversation guide, and she talks about opening the conversation, oftentimes those are, you know, the questions obviously for the beginning of the conversation or for the younger kids, and then she has advanced the conversation, which is, it takes it a little bit deeper, so helpful, and then the apply the conversation, as she was just saying, this is an example of what she wrote, she said, a person asked online, quote, is

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Jesus's empty tomb evidence for his resurrection? If not, why? Unquote, and then she said that a man replied, quote, we do not know where the body of Jesus was laid.

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Conclusion, we do not know whether the, quote unquote, tomb is empty. The Jews had accustomed to bury their deceased outside the walls of the town.

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Unfortunately, we do not have the coordinates of all the locations where the deceased were buried. Unquote, so this is the quote that she found, some real person says this, now your kid, you know, sees this online, sees this interaction, and they see this person who's claiming to know, to state that, you know, we don't know where he was laid, we have no clue, how can we know if the tomb was empty if no one knows where he was buried, and then she finishes off the section with, use what you learned in this chapter to explain why there is evidence that Jesus's tomb was empty, even if we're not certain today exactly where Jesus's tomb was, and based off of the information in the book, you should be able to answer that, you should be able to have that conversation, to interact with that very real skeptical response that somebody out there really did have, and likely a bunch of other people have too.

43:46

Natasha, thank you so much for taking this time with us today, thank you for working so hard in creating this book, thank you for training in the off -season, you know, it's, you know, the book goes out, we all sit down with it, and we read it, and sometimes some people read it really quickly out of an author friend who says, please read it slowly, it took me so long to write that, do me a favor and read it slowly, so all of that work you did as we were all going about our daily lives, thank you so much, thank you for pouring your passion and your knowledge and your insight and your study into this book,

44:20

I really, the coveted TLP gold sticker just isn't enough to say thank you, but thank you again for your passion to equip dads and moms to introduce their children to their creator in such a way that they are ready to give this defense to everyone who asks, thank you so much.

44:36

Well, thank you so much, I really appreciate those kind words, and my gold sticker, I'm not lying,

44:41

I love the gold sticker, but thank you so much for everything that you're doing too with your ministry, I mean, you put out an amazing amount of content, and it takes a lot of time to put together all these podcasts, and every single one is just packed with valuable information for parents, and whenever people ask me for podcast recommendations for a parenting podcast, you're always the first one that comes to mind, so I appreciate all that you do, and just thank you so much for everything that you're doing to equip parents as well.

45:09

Well, thank you, I really appreciate that, I am honored to say this, I don't know, well actually, this podcast should post the week before Natasha's book comes out, we are recording this a little bit in advance, so we're the first episode, the first interview to record, which was a huge honor, who knows, maybe even be the first interview to be published before the book comes out,

45:31

I'm hoping so, kind of get the first one in here, I love this relationship that TLP has built with Christian Mom Thoughts and Natasha Crane, this is really a fantastic partnership,

45:41

I think, in a way where we're producing content, we're making people aware of what's out there, and I'm just excited that God is choosing to use us in this way.

45:49

Now, obviously, if people are interested in your books, they can go to Amazon, using our affiliate links, or they could, of course, stick around just a couple more minutes, so I can tell them how they can win one, but if they want to connect with you, and follow you online, and see what else you're doing, where should they go?

46:05

Well, my website, just to make it easy, is just like my name, so you can go natashacrane .com, and it's

46:10

C -R -A -I -N, and I have everything there, I have my blog there, and I have all the links to my books, and resources of extra recommendations for reading, all those kinds of things, and you can find links there to find me on social media also, so my website's the best place to go.

46:25

Yep, and you should definitely follow her on social media, I do that, and I'd love to redeem my news feeds,

46:30

I'd love to be able to scroll through social media, and actually see valuable things that are going to help me glorify God, versus all the contentious stuff that's out there, and we will have these links for all of you guys available today in the description of today's episode, also at truthloveparent .com.

46:45

Thank you, Natasha, thank you for taking this time. Thank you. Now, I know all that information was super valuable for you, but I also know you're curious how you can win a copy of Natasha's book,

46:56

Talking With Your Kids About Jesus, so here goes. The first of many parenting book giveaways of 2020.

47:01

In fact, we have a page dedicated all to that on our website, truthloveparent .com. It's under the resource tab, and it's called

47:08

Book Giveaways of 2020. We are going to have a drawing, and there are three ways you can get your name into the drawing.

47:15

If you do one of them, you get your name entered once, or you can do two or three of them and get your name entered two or three times.

47:21

Here are your instructions. Your first opportunity to get your name in the drawing is this. Go to TLP's Facebook page and find the post entitled,

47:30

TLP 349, Talking With Your Kids About Jesus, Natasha Crane Interview, with the hashtag,

47:36

Book Giveaway. It's very important that you find the post with the hashtag, Book Giveaway. Once you've done that, there are four more easy things you have to do.

47:44

Number one, like the TLP Facebook page. Well, since many of you have already done that, this step is already done for you.

47:51

Two, like or love the post. Three, comment by telling us that what you loved about Natasha and this particular episode.

47:58

It's important that you comment in order to qualify for this step. And finally, share the post publicly with the hashtag,

48:05

Talking With Your Kids About Jesus. That's one way to get your name into the drawing. Make sure, though, you complete all of the steps.

48:12

Now, to double your chances of being picked, head over to Instagram. We will have an image that features the cover art for this episode and the hashtag,

48:18

Book Giveaway. All you have to do is make sure you're following TLP on Instagram, click the heart under the image, comment, only this time telling us one fact about Jesus that you absolutely love.

48:30

Now, don't worry, we won't rate your responses. This is just a fun way to share how important Jesus is to you. Now, please note, again, that the content of your comment for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are all going to be different.

48:41

We're going to post the instructions for the giveaway on our blog, so if you forget, just go to TakingBackTheFamily .com and get the instructions there.

48:48

You can also go to our Book Giveaway page and you'll have all the instructions there. But once you've left your comment on Instagram, click on what looks like a paper airplane icon and share the image to your story.

48:58

Just make sure you use the hashtag, Talking With Your Kids About Jesus. After doing that, your name will be submitted a second time into the drawing as long as you also participated on Facebook and or Twitter.

49:09

And there's one more way to add your name to our free book competition. If you have a Twitter account, make sure you're a follower of At Truth Love Parent.

49:16

I think you're seeing the trend here. To find the image with the hashtag, Book Giveaway, and then make sure you click the heart.

49:23

That's like liking on Twitter. Then select Retweet with Comment. For your Twitter comment, tell

49:29

Twitter your favorite way TLP is equipping you to be a biblical parent. And of course, make sure you add the hashtag,

49:35

Talking With Your Kids About Jesus. And that's it. Now, if you're unsure about what everything I just said, and you're only listening while you're driving in the car, doing the dishes, and you didn't have a chance to write it all down, it's all going to be there for you on the website, on our special page, all about our 2020

49:48

Book Giveaways. Also on this particular post for this episode. It's there. Don't you worry.

49:54

You'll find it. It'll be awesome. And of course, if you need any specialized help for your family or you're interested in having a biblical counselor coach you through your parenting journey, please send an email to counselor at truthloveparent .com.

50:07

Remember, if we want our children to grow up into Christ, we must parent them in truth of Christ and the love of Christ.

50:13

To that end, join us next time as we start a two -part discussion with Hilary Morgan Ferrer from Mama Bear Apologetics.

50:20

We'll be talking about her book, discussing linguistic theft, and having another parenting book giveaway. Don't miss it.

50:27

Truth. Love. Parent. Is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

50:38

Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.