TLP 312: Crazy Awesome Announcement!

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Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He's like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes.

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For its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.

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

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. Hey everyone, welcome back. And if you're new to the show, thank you for joining us today.

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Today's show is going to be very different from most. It won't be very long, but it is super important, so let me just jump right in.

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Before I make my big announcement, I want to draw your attention to something that I forgot to mention last time.

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If you listen to the Parenting Angry Children series, the Parenting Fearful Children series, and the most recent

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Parenting Complaining Children series, then you should have observed an interesting similarity. What is the core problem when our children are sinfully angry, sinfully afraid, or discontent?

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The seminal issue in all of those situations boils down to a lack of trust in God and, by extension, us, their parents.

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This is so important. I want to invite you, once again, to listen to the Mirrors to Christianity series that starts in episode 95.

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That series addresses why your children do, say, and feel what they do, say, and feel.

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That series teaches us parents how to connect the dots to discover the underlying motivation, the root, of whatever problems our children may have.

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I can't express how important it is. This is the very core of our parenting.

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If we don't know why our kids do what they do, we will never be able to help them change in beneficial and lifelong ways.

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Now, if you're new to the show, anytime I cite a resource, I just want you to know I always try to include the links in the description of the episode that we're currently in.

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So, all of the episodes I mentioned above, the Parenting Fearful and Angry and Complaining Children, you should be able to find links to that in the description.

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We also generally have free episode notes and transcripts for each of our episodes as well. We won't have any episode notes today, not for this kind of show, because this one is special.

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We haven't had very many shows like this one in the history of TLP. Back in March of 2017, we recorded a

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TLP snippet number 4, which detailed the amazing and super awesome blessing the Lord bestowed on us when he gifted us a lifetime of free podcasting.

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If you've never heard the story, just check it out, it is so cool. Then we had another special announcement when we showcased

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TruthLoveParent .com. Since then, our site has grown and grown as we try to become your go -to place for all things biblical parenting.

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But also since then, we haven't really had any super amazing, gigantic, and awesome announcements.

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Now that's not to say that the last three years, God hasn't just filled the time with abundant grace and daily empowering.

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Our statistics continue to grow, our ability to counsel parents and families continues to expand.

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My certification through ACBC is entering phase 2 of 3. And when you Google Best Christian Parenting Podcast, TLP often shows up at the top of the list.

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And all of that's just the icing on the cake to the fact that God has given us a book, His Word, the

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Bible, that has everything that we need for life and godliness, and that includes our parenting. And we just praise the

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Lord for all of that. But today we have something really different. If you've been with the show for any amount of time, you probably know that for the past five and a half years,

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I've worked for Victory Academy for Boys. The first four years, I was the house dad and lead residential counselor for the ministry.

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It was that experience that planted the seeds that would become TLP. In addition to parenting my own two children, every year

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I would invite up to eight at -risk teen boys to live with me, my wife, my son, and my daughter, and our college -age resident assistants.

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Every fall, our family would grow from four to fourteen and then return back to four in the summer.

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Those four years were a fiery crucible of spiritual growth for my family. The story

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God wrote in me, my wife, and my kids would just take months and months just to share the highlights.

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But during those first few years as a quote -unquote professional parent, God allowed a series of events to occur so that I started writing weekly emails to the parents we were serving.

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Those emails grew from year to year until they included weekly teaching concerning the Bible and God's will for our parenting.

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The Lord just kept showing me new things as I was parenting eight terrorist boys. I kept going to His Word to find truth and understanding and to help me be a better parent to them.

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And as I learned that, I just wanted to share it with the parents whose boys we were serving. And that was the seed of Truth Love Parent.

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At the beginning of the third year, I decided to package those parent emails into podcast form.

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It all happened because I kept receiving phone calls from people who were outside of the ministry asking for parenting advice.

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And oftentimes those calls came from families who Victory Academy for Boys wouldn't be serving. They either had very young children or they had girls.

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And so I would want to give them advice and that advice came from the emails that I was already sending to the parents of the

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Victory Academy students. And I realized that, you know, this is more valuable than I thought it was.

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This is bigger than just Victory Academy. There are lots of people out there who are going to benefit from this information because this is

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God's Word simply applied to parenting and we all have our parenting struggles. So I started using those podcasts that I created instead of the emails, but I also then started sharing the content with the world.

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Victory Academy for Boys is the vehicle God used to create TLP and I will forever be thankful for that.

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Before I moved to Victory, I never would have imagined God would lead me where He has. But before I go into that, let me talk about last year.

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At the beginning of our fifth year, I had the opportunity to become the director of Victory Academy. In addition to my houseparent responsibilities,

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I had the supreme privilege of ministering to the staff and I loved it immensely. So now five and a half years after my family and I arrived on campus,

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Victory is going through another transition. My wife and I are excited to announce that the Lord is moving us into a new phase of life and ministry.

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As I record this, it's November 11th. Lord willing, we hope to be packed up and moved out by the end of November and headed down to Brevard, North Carolina.

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Now, some of you may be familiar with the Wilds Christian Camp and Conference Center located in Brevard, and you may be wondering if that's where the

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Lord is taking us. No, that's not the plan, but we are excited to be much closer to my sister and her family who live and work at the

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Wilds, as well as being excited about being closer to the Wilds. It's an amazing ministry and I hope to talk a lot more about them later.

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The Brewster family is going to be moving in with my parents. Now you can imagine that will spark tons of new material for the podcast, and I really am looking forward to it.

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I want this to be a huge blessing to not just parents, but also grandparents. Grandparents play a key role in the development of their grandchildren, and I can't wait for my parents to play that role in the life of my kids, and hopefully they can help speak into this in such a way that can help other grandparents do the same thing with their grandkids.

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So anyway, we'll be moving in with them as we, the Brewster family, regroup and prepare for this new season in our lives.

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So here's what all this means. Number one, even though I had all of season 12 already scheduled out,

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I'm going to need to dedicate some significant time to moving out, moving in, getting my family settled, and the holidays.

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So even though I'm going to do my best to get back behind the mic as soon as humanly possible, starting this

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Friday, I'm going to rebroadcast some of our favorite episodes. We want to make sure we continue equipping parents all over the world, even during this transition.

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And since we have so many new listeners now, it's a really good possibility that you haven't all heard all 311 of the previous episodes.

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In addition to that, I don't know about you, but when there's a really helpful episode from someone else's podcast,

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I love going back and re -listening to it. It helps me to really digest it and make it my own. So even if you've heard the episode,

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I believe it'd be really helpful for you to re -listen to it. Perhaps maybe the Lord has designed all of this simply because maybe you need to re -listen to that truth.

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So worst -case scenario, and I say it that way on purpose, plan for that through the end of December.

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And number two, after the first of the year, Team TLP and I are going to make another gigantic announcement.

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By then, my family and I should have a more clear understanding of the Lord's will for our life and ministry moving forward.

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Wait a second, Aaron, we have to wait a month and a half to find out more about this amazing announcement?

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Yeah, well, so do we. You can be patient. We can be patient. It'll all be good. We're going to spend this next month and a half, okay, praying, celebrating, getting counsel, meeting, discussing, planning, concocting, and Lord willing, when

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January rolls around, we will have a full -out decision and trajectory. And we cannot wait to share that with you.

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So in addition to reposting some of our favorite and most impactful episodes over the next few weeks, you should follow us on Facebook and Instagram as we chronicle our move.

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We'd love to have you join us for that process. Team TLP and I are honored and blessed to have you join us twice weekly to learn how the

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Lord has called and created us to parent. We learn so much every week, and we love hearing from you what the

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Lord is doing in your life, so keep the emails coming. Now when you send an email, you will likely receive an automatic reply telling you about the move, but we are receiving and reading your emails, and we will reply if we can carve out the chance.

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Please pray along with us. We are bathing this move in prayer, and we've already received so many quick and direct answers to those prayers.

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One of the things we have to do is downsize quite considerably. We moved from Illinois to Wisconsin with a home full of stuff.

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Most of it went into storage, even though the boys' home into which we moved was bigger than any house in which I'd ever lived because it was already fully furnished.

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But now that we're moving in with my parents, we're in the midst of a significant downsize because, honestly, putting a whole house full of stuff into storage is not really very cost -conscious.

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Deciding what to keep and what to get rid of is slowing down our packing quite a bit. It's not as easy as throwing everything into a box.

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We have to be discerning, and, you know, sometimes it's just really hard to let things go. So we need a lot of wisdom, but we are excited to see the

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Lord provide. I was recently listening to the Marriage After God podcast, and the

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Lord used their last episode to really bless me. The episode was entitled, Encouragement for Chasing Boldly After God Together.

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Their very first encouragement was Jeremiah 17, 7 -8. "...blessed is the man who trusts in the

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Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and it is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit."

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That's what we want for our family and yours. We all need to trust in the

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Lord. Through the painful times and the comfortable, we must rely completely on God.

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Isaiah 26, 3 -4 tells us, "...you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

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Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock." Now, just one more thing, one really important thing, actually, before I end today.

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For the past two months, my family and I had the privilege of being members of Central Baptist Church in Stevenson, Michigan, in the

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Upper Peninsula. It has been one of the most blessed experiences we have ever had with God's people.

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Pastor Luke and his wife, Tricia, have become some of our best friends, and the congregation has just wrapped its arms around us and made us one of their own, even for such a short period of time.

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We praise God for that church. We encourage anyone who lives in that area to visit, or if you're ever just vacationing in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan and you happen to be near the church, you really should stop by and tell them that Aaron sent you.

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The Lord has greatly used Luke and Tricia and this body of believers in Stevenson to equip us to take these steps to his honor and glory.

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Thank you, Central. And thank you to everyone listening who has been used by the Lord to build up Team TLP and Me in the

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Faith. We love our TLP community. We love all of you. So stay with us through this transition.

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Share the show with your friends, write and review the show, shop Amazon using our affiliate links, buy some

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TLP swag from TruthLoveParent .com, and pray, pray, pray as I pack up my family and move them nearly 20 hours south to North Carolina.

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I love you guys. Bye. Truth, Love, Parents is part of the

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Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional, premeditated parent.

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