WWUTT 1270 Q&A Todd White Repents, 10 Years of Marriage, Loving Your Spouse, Teaching Your Children

What have Becky and I learned over 10 years of marriage? What are some basic ways that we can teach our kids the scriptures?

And how might we guide our children in homeschooling? The answers to these questions when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text. Celebrating five years of podcasting, bringing the word of God to you every day.

That through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. Tell your friends about our website at www .utt

.com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. And that our website is being hosted by the

Majesties Men now. Yes. So we've got all of our websites moved over there. Well, the two of them. When we understand the text in my blog.

So thank you to the Majesties Men for hosting them. I wrote a new blog this past week.

We'll talk about that here in just a moment. But first, I wanna revisit a subject we spent most of last week talking about.

And that was regarding Todd White. Okay. So that discussion started with an email from Chris who wrote to us from North Carolina.

He sends an email to us again. Good afternoon, Pastor Gabe and Becky. For us, it's evening as we're recording this.

For you, you're probably listening in the morning. Hopeful as I was, it is not looking good. Continue to pray for Todd's true repentance.

Not this egotistical look at my righteousness routine. So tragic.

Yeah, so on Sunday night, a friend of mine, Toby, a pastor up in Washington, had made some comments on Twitter regarding this sermon that Todd White was preaching this past Sunday night.

Not the one the week before where he said, I repent of preaching a false gospel and now I'm preaching the true gospel.

There were a lot of us that were very hopeful that Todd was actually turning something around.

But the message that he preached this past Sunday was an absolute train wreck.

And he was going right back to his new apostolic reformation ways.

Here's the thing that's changed about Todd White. And I'm still hoping something's happening there.

And maybe as time goes on, it will work its way through his heart. The Holy Spirit will do a work on his mind and he will realize the wickedness that he's been in.

But otherwise, as things stand right now, he hasn't repented of anything. Here's what's changed though.

In his preaching, he's now talking about sin. He's saying, you have sinned, you need a savior.

And that's huge. That is huge because before he was saying that he didn't sin at all. Right. That's a big difference.

Right, I've got the video of that. I was planning on putting a video together. It was contrasting. Here's what Todd is saying now.

Here's what he used to say. But then also going into, now everything else hasn't changed.

The only thing that's changed is his understanding of sin and repentance. Well, that he's talking about sin.

He's addressing that it might be there. Right, yeah. Or that it's there. There's a lot of understanding that he yet does not have, but he is hitting sin and repentance hard.

He really is hitting that hard. There were parts of even the message that he preached this past Sunday that were rocking on here's who you are.

Here's what you've done. The judgment of God will come upon you. So you must repent and follow Jesus. I haven't listened.

Oh, don't, don't bother. It's three hours. Whoa, what? It's a lot of waiting through.

I downloaded the entire video, the whole service, some of it's music. Okay. But it's still from beginning to end, from Todd preaching to Todd closing, it's three hours long.

Okay. But there's, so there's that part in the middle. It's about four minutes. He hits that's real solid.

But right at the very beginning, he goes hard on all of the people that have ever called him a heretic.

He's still promoting Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Bill Johnson. He is bringing

Dr. Michael Brown to his church in a week or two. And the only thing that's different though is he's reading

Ray Comfort. He'll cite Spurgeon and Whitfield. I don't even remember him actually quoting them though.

He just said he was reading them, but that he's reading Ray Comfort, but he's still like called out

American Gospel. He lied and said nobody involved in American Gospel ever tried to contact me.

Brandon Kimber, the creator of American Gospel demonstrated, yeah, we did. We tried to reach out to you.

So we're still praying that whatever is going on in Todd's heart would transform him, would change him.

But he's still the same Todd White with the same ways going on about miracles and leg pulling at the very end of this service that he did last week.

It was an altar call, but it was to come on up and get healing. And among the things that he said

God was going to heal was paralysis and lost limbs. Oh.

And that's something that Todd has said before. Like he's gone up to people in wheelchairs who are amputees and he'll pray over their legs and will want to see their legs grow back.

He legitimately thinks that, or I mean, he's just conning everybody to think that he can actually make a limb grow back, which that's never happened.

But these are among the miracles that Todd White says God is going to do through him.

So I wanna play this portion here that comes from the end of the sermon that he preached this last

Sunday night. So you'll hear the stuff that he's saying is still very, very dangerous.

Even though I'm thankful that he's saying, hey, you've sinned and you need to repent and turn to Christ. But if he's closing his services by talking about these miracles, which he can't actually do, then people are going to become

Christians expecting a miracle, not get it. And then they're gonna believe everything else that Todd preached was a complete lie as well.

Right. That's what he's setting people up for is failure. So if - Christians as in quote unquote

Christians. Like, what do you mean? Like you said, they become Christians and then - Well, yeah, they start, you know, they come into faith.

Okay. They go from being, I wasn't a believer in Christ, now I am a believer in Christ. So just by words or actually -

Well, I know this - I'm just curious. Well, this gets real confusing because I know that when a person leaves the faith, they were never really saved to begin with.

Exactly. But as a person is a confessing Christian, we have to acknowledge - True. That there is a joining to a

Christian statement of faith. Right. And over time, it may be demonstrated that that person is not actually a believer.

But this, and this is what I mean. So they come into Christianity, they come into the faith under false pretenses.

I'm following. And then when they don't get the miracle that they're expecting, which is what Todd is setting them up for, then it's just gonna be, well, that was a lie.

So the rest of this is a lie too. Got it. If my leg isn't getting healed, then my sin isn't being forgiven.

That's where that goes. So let me play this portion here at the end of Todd's talk, at the end of this three -hour sermon, where he is telling people, hey, come on up and get healing.

I mean, supernatural. There's no way that that's not supernatural. There's no way that Todd White, a drug addict, an atheist, an alcoholic, a pornography addict, one that was addicted to selfishness and sin, gets saved and doesn't live that life anymore.

That's supernatural. No one does that in their own strength. Okay, that's true. And that much we agree upon.

Right. But then he's gonna take, hey, if God is gonna save you and forgive your sins, he's also gonna heal you of your sicknesses.

That's supernatural. The same way supernatural has to happen for a miracle. I don't care if it's a pinky, cancer, a blind eye, doesn't matter.

God wants to heal. Amen. He loves us and he paid a full price. Some people say, well, healing's from the devil.

Here's the deal. If I'm praying for somebody. Healing's from the devil? Yeah, see, that's a straw man, because no one says that.

That's never the argument regarding - I've never heard that from anyone. Right, well, see, that's what the

Pharisees said. When Jesus was healing and he was doing these miracles, when he was casting out demons, they were saying, well, see, he's of Beelzebub.

Oh, okay. And Jesus' response to them is, a house divided against itself will not stand.

If the devil's casting out the devil, then that's a house divided. So that's what

Todd White is using. He's taking what the Pharisees said, but that's never been our argument against what

Todd White is doing. No. Our argument is Todd White's not even healing anybody. Right.

He's never healed anybody. Right. This is all a con. And whatever happened to boast in your, like,

I will boast in my weakness because you are my strength. Right. Yeah, so this whole thing was definitely like a look at me.

The whole sermon was very much look at me, look at my righteousness, look at how good I am.

There's even like this real contradictory part where he's talking about like, how many people have actually prayed for me instead of condemn me and called me a heretic?

How many of you have actually gone into your prayer closet and prayed for me privately? And then he goes into,

I go into my prayer closet and my wife sees that. She knows how much I go into my prayer closet.

My kids know how much I go into my prayer closet and what I do in secret. It's like, well, you're parading all this secrecy out in front of us.

That was kind of face palming. It's like, oh, Todd, no. It was very self -absorbed.

The whole message was, whereas the week before when he was talking about repenting. That was all pointing to God.

It really, yeah. I mean, there was definitely some immaturity in the things that he was saying. I'll give you that, because I didn't listen to the whole thing.

But what I heard was very promising. We were all convinced that there were some legitimate tears going on there.

And I was curious to see, so where's this going next? Like, how much are we gonna see?

But I mean, when you aren't in the word and the same people being surrounded by the same people, you have to have a change.

I mean, there has to be a whole change. Right. In order to get out of that. He has to get out of that.

Right. Yeah. Because otherwise you get swamped by that and you get. Pulled right back into it again. Yeah, and brainwashed again.

It's a total brainwash. Yeah, I don't know what the follow -up was like in his circles after the week before.

I know that Kosti said that he had reached out to his camp and was attempting to speak with him. So I don't know how any of that follow -up went.

Because Todd, previously, just a few weeks before, it was when you and I were, we were actually out of state together.

And that was when the video clip surfaced of Todd saying somebody handed him a copy of American Gospel, but he threw it in the trash.

Right. And he was saying Kosti Hinn, who was Benny Hinn's nephew, gave up the anointing to go after John MacArthur and all this kind of stuff.

So totally trashed Kosti. And yet Kosti, in his grace, is reaching out to Todd and going, hey,

I wanna talk to you more about this conviction that you're feeling, these professions you're making about, I repent of having not preached the gospel before, but now

I'm preaching the gospel. But based on the message he preached this past Sunday, it's still the same

Todd White. Yeah, still. So yeah, let's continue on with the next part here. Okay. In the name of Jesus, and the devil heals them, we're all in trouble.

It sounds funny, but that's what people say. Okay, yeah. So again, the claim that he's making is that people say, well, if you're healing, then the devil is the one that's healing.

And that's never been what we've said. We've never said that the devil is healing people through Todd.

What his critics have said. I'm not in every camp, but not us.

Yeah, that didn't come from us. Yeah. Because Todd's not healing anybody. Right.

He's never healed anybody. Right. Ever, that's never happened. So that's, yeah, like I said, he's setting up a straw man.

He's kicking something over to make himself again, look like the hero here in this message, that he's the righteous one.

That miracles are from the devil. Why? Because scripture, like in Matthew seven, where it says not everybody that says to me,

Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom. But he that does the will of my father, what is the will of God?

The life of Jesus. Everything Jesus did was exactly God's will. Everything he said was

God's will. So if you want to find out what God's will is, look at Jesus. He was the visible image of the invisible

God. That's not hard to figure out. He only came to do God's will. Did he heal? Yes.

Why? Because it's God's will. If Jesus healed people that God made sick, he'd be going against his father.

Oh, Todd. Wait, say that again. Oh, Todd. If Jesus healed people.

That God made sick, he would be going against his father. Oh, okay.

So the point that Todd is making, he goes on into this. Yeah, I think. Is that Satan is the one who makes people sick.

God never makes anybody sick. And that's a huge new apostolic reformation teaching. Todd's taught on that before.

And he's still saying the same things now. No one is ever sick because God had made a person ill.

A person is sick because Satan afflicted that person and made them ill. Okay, so that's why they can't have bad vision or anything.

Yeah, right. None of the stuff, none of the physical ailments that plague you are ever something that God would allow you to go through as a test that you would rely more upon God.

Right. More upon he who raises the dead. You may have a physical ailment for the rest of your life.

That doesn't mean that you've lacked the faith to heal it. Right. It means that God is using this, the thorn in Paul's side in 2

Corinthians 12. To that you would rely more upon Christ. That you would know my grace is sufficient for you.

For my power is made perfect in your weakness. Just like what you said earlier. He has to keep us humble. Yeah, exactly.

Oh my goodness. Right. And there's no humility here. So there's one other thing I wanna get. I don't wanna spend another like half an episode talking about Todd White.

There's one more portion I wanna play here. I wanna get to this. It's at the end of this thing. And then we'll move on from here.

Okay. I'm a sinner in need of a savior, in need of a Lord. The Lord.

Now he becomes my Lord and my savior. Now that's the last thing I wanna do. Now I've stepped into this life with Christ where he doesn't want me to remember where I came from in that it's a reminder stain in my body.

He wants me to never forget where I came from. But he wants those things to be removed because they're stains of a life that it wasn't me that lived.

That makes no sense. I was so confused. That does not make any sense at all.

And for him to say that the sin that I lived in before is not me,

I didn't do that. What? Then who did? What are you talking about?

So you're not guilty and you're not responsible for the sins that you committed before you became a

Christian? Maybe that's why he thinks that he doesn't sin. I don't know. I still would like to know where that doctrine is in this new thinking of his now.

Yeah, kinda kooky. So you're bringing in concepts. Everything is just way muddier than it used to be.

And it was already really bad. And now it's just even muddier. So he's hitting points where you're like, well, that's true.

Well, that's not. It's so everywhere. Just pray for him.

Right. I'm still really hoping that there is some genuine conviction that's going on there, but it's just so confusing in this messed up mind of his that's been made kooky because of just how wacky all of that new apostolic reformation stuff is.

And all of the NAR stuff is everywhere. It's everywhere. It is. You really can't just pin it down to the doctrine is always this.

They don't have a statement of faith. No. You're just going off of the patterns of what different teachers have taught in this particular movement.

So now we're adding a new dynamic to this because NAR guys are driven by visions and feelings and voices and all of this stuff.

Now this is Todd's new feeling. And so now we're just adding this onto the pile of every other feeling that he was preaching from prior to this.

But there's no repentance that's happened. And I don't even know that he understands what that means as far as like,

I repent of preaching a false gospel and now I'm preaching the true gospel. Well, you have to be acknowledging that you've been lying all this time.

And the gospel has never been in what you taught until now. Right. Just based on the sermon that he taught two weeks ago.

So like you were saying, he's got to give, he's got to get out of those circles. Yes. He would have to completely give up his ministry because he knows the whole thing up to now has been a fraud.

If he's genuinely repented, that's what we should expect to see. We said that last week, but I unfortunately was way more hopeful than the truth turned out to be.

Yeah. It's hard to be hopeful. Jump the gun a little bit on there. I know out of grace, I just, I really want to see the guy saved and genuinely know the truth because he influences so many people and what a testimony that would be.

But yeah, he's still, he's throwing genuine brothers under the bus and exalting himself.

Yeah. I just hope he has ties to whomever it was that actually helped him understand that sermon from whenever that was.

Yeah, the sermon he did two weeks ago. What led up to that? Yes. I wonder whom he was talking to.

Yeah. And some of the things that he said in that sermon were in American gospel. Yeah.

But he claims he didn't watch it. Yeah, somebody, he's got to sit down and watch that and see that Ray Comfort is in it, whom he claims he's been reading and constantly quoting from.

Yeah. So if he sees, this is Comfort telling you, Comfort who has convicted you.

I'm a little uncomfortable. On that note, let's move on.

Yes, let's. Becky has the final word there. So this, oh, just,

I was gonna talk about the blog. I was mentioning the blog. First blog that I wrote when it got moved over to the

Majesty's Men. Becky and I celebrated 10 years of marriage on Saturday, August the 1st, 2010 was when we were married.

And we haven't talked about how many years we've been married until now, because we've hit double digits.

Right. So now it feels like we can say, 10 years. Now we've got some credibility because we've got some double digits behind us.

There's always those guys that'll, they've been married two years and suddenly they're writing a marriage book.

Right. Here's how to do marriage. That was Jeff Bethke. Oh, really? Yeah, he and his wife,

I think, I don't even think it was two years. I think they'd been married for a year and then they wrote a book on marriage. That became kind of a, there were some pastors who kind of behind the scenes were going, oh, come on, dude, really?

Well, maybe they had some good pointers for starting out. Yeah, for some newlyweds.

On their right foot. That's right. You know, like before you get married and when you're first married. The honeymoon phase is over, now what?

Yeah. And let me just tell you, that's easy. Get over yourself. There you go.

There's the marriage advice after the honeymoon. I mean, you should be practicing that during the honeymoon too.

Oh, yes. Yeah, get over yourself. It's okay. So when I shared this blog talking about Becky and I being married for 10 years, here's how

I pitched it. Here's the way that I presented it on Twitter when I first posted it. I said, Becky and I celebrated 10 years of marriage on Saturday.

I'm grateful to say that's also 10 years of loving kindness and not one disparaging word between us.

The secret, putting in quotes, because it's not really a secret, to our success in my first blog for the

Majesty's Men. Some people, and we had wonderful encouraging comments from the blog.

People saying congratulations. I think that the tweet that you made declaring your love for me got more likes than my blog did.

Oops. Sorry. She tries not to draw a lot of attention to herself, but that tweet got a lot of attention.

So I loved it though. I thought it was great. So anyway, in this, the comments were great.

So we got great compliments. That's what I was saying. But there were a few people that thought that I was like declaring we're marriage experts now because we've been married for 10 years and here's the secret to our success.

That's not what I meant. No. What I was drawing attention to was that in 10 years, we have never fought.

We have never yelled at each other. We have never called one another a name.

We've not said one disparaging word to each other. We know how rare that is.

We know that. And Becky and I, and I said this in the blog, Becky and I both came from relationships before we met each other, where that was not the case in those previous relationships.

They were rocky. They were hard. They were sinful. They were selfish. And we know what we did.

And we know that God's grace and love was poured out on us. And we're forgiven those sins.

And now when we were looking at getting married to one another, we did everything that we thought that we needed to do to make sure we were doing this right this time.

Because we did not do it right other times. Right. So we're gonna do it right this time.

And it was focusing on Christ. We had multiple pastors that were counseling us before we got married.

We really were overkill. So I'm not telling everybody else they have to do what we did.

But we just wanted to found a marriage on Christ. We knew that we by ourselves would not be able to do this, that it had to be a marriage on Christ.

And so we committed to each other very, very early. We were not ever gonna raise our voices to one another.

We were gonna be compassionate and considerate of each other. If there's something we didn't understand, we're gonna sit down and we're gonna talk about it.

And we're human beings. We're capable of moodiness, but we were not going to let those attitudes dominate our thinking.

Right. And think that the way that I get my way over you is by yelling at you or calling you a name.

That's never gonna accomplish anything. Or demeaning. Demeaning, right. Belittling one another.

Yes. Sassing each other. Right. It's just not there. We speak kindly to each other. Now that doesn't mean we always agree on everything.

Right. But just simply the point being that we've never - Or understand each other. Right. There's multiple times.

Yes, exactly that too. We don't always understand each other either. Yeah. And sometimes we just resolve the disagreement with,

I don't get it and neither do you. And that's okay. That's fine. Let's find something else. We'll move on.

That's right. We'll come back to this later. Yeah, precise. And we can laugh about it just like this.

Yep. So the thing that we wanna help people do, we wanna help married couples do, is have a marriage that's like that.

You're not gonna agree on everything, but don't let your disagreements become tearing the other person down.

Right. And what I said in the blog, this was kind of what started the idea for writing the blog in the first place.

The compliment that Becky and I get the most on this podcast is regarding the way we talk to each other.

And that was something neither one of us really were attuned to. No. Before we started doing this.

No, we weren't expecting that at all. No, and we just thought it was gonna be, hey, love the questions you guys answer.

Thanks for the Bible teaching. We just expect that was what it was gonna be. Of course, you know, this is the internet.

You can go listen to John MacArthur. I don't know why you're listening to me. So I'm glad that we can offer something like that, can be an encouragement to people.

So I was just kind of reflecting on that in that blog and trying to help people understand you can have a marriage like that.

Now I understand it takes both people. Yes. But you still need, it needs to start with you because your default position is that your significant other needs to fix themselves.

That's your default position. Yes. So for me to have a happy marriage, he needs to fix himself or she needs to fix herself.

And you gotta get over that. It doesn't matter if your spouse really is a legitimate problem.

You have to submit yourself humbly unto the Lord. Daily, you have to submit your words unto

Christ. You have to take your thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. You have to think highly of this other person you are married to as though they are your own flesh.

That's your discipline, your job. You have to do that. And it's a focus on Christ.

You can concentrate on it in your flesh all you want and you'll continue to fail at it. But as you focus on Christ, he's the one who heals, restores, lifts up, emboldens, gives courage, gives strength.

This all comes from Christ. Yes. So focus on Jesus and pray that your spouse focuses on Jesus.

Yes. Because I know that there are people that are listening and we hear from them that don't have a Christian spouse.

You're a believer, but your spouse is not. Yes. But we still have instructions in scripture. Paul in 1

Corinthians 7, Peter in 1 Peter 3. There are instructions in scripture regarding how you are to be with an unbelieving spouse and you are to continue to submit yourself unto

Christ. And we do hear from those that their spouses come around and become

Christians. That's right. This has not been a perfect marriage. And that was not the way that I meant to portray that in the blog at all.

I made an error at the start of our marriage that I thought, that's it,

I've totally messed this up. I really thought it was like, what am I gonna do? How will my marriage ever recover from this?

And yet my wife, because of the grace that God has poured into her heart was way more gracious to me than I deserved after that sin that I had committed.

Even when I'm the one that has made the mistake, she's shown me grace, did not yell, did not call me names, has never held that against me, doesn't hold it over my head.

Things that Becky has done that have disappointed me, I don't bring those things up again, they're gone.

There is no keeping a record of wrongs in our marriage. It is day by day showing grace because God has shown us grace.

That's right. He's forgiven our sins, so we're forgiving each other's sins. Now, and Becky shared this with someone on Twitter, I think in a private message.

So I'm gonna jump into like DMs a little bit here. Okay. But Becky shared with somebody, now, while we have not ever yelled at each other.

Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, we have yelled at the kids. So - We're still working on that sanctification area.

Yes, that was, we forgot to commit ourselves to that before we got married. Oh, let's not yell at our children either.

That would be, yeah. Now, we don't make fun of our kids, we don't call them names. We don't tear them down, but sometimes the disappointment or the disobedience, the frustration just comes out.

Yes. And - Gets the better of you. Yes, and I've had to apologize to my kids.

I have too. Yes, we've both had to get down on our knees with our children and look them in the eye and say, what

I did was wrong, I overreacted and I'm sorry. Will you forgive me? That's a humbling thing to have to ask your kids, will you forgive me?

Yeah. We've been there. But they've been so gracious to forgive us. Yeah. Right away. We have grace -filled children.

Yes. Amazingly enough. So, still working on that discipline and raising them up in the training and the instruction of the

Lord. But I'm grateful that the grace that Becky and I have shown each other is a grace that we see in our children the way they interact with each other and the way they also are gracious toward us.

So, that's still a God thing. Definitely. It is a blessing to experience this in our marriage.

We believe that you can as well and that no matter what's happened before in your marriage, you resolve today,

I'm putting my focus on Christ and in obedience to Christ, I'm gonna love my husband or my wife and treat my spouse as God has treated me with the graciousness and kindness that I know that I have received in Christ.

That is what I'm gonna show to my spouse. So, when we read in Ephesians 4, 31 and 32, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

Now, of course, Paul is talking to a church there, but he's talking to believers in how we love and interact with other believers.

Well, the first believer next to you is your spouse. Right. So, the first place you practice this is in your own home.

When Jesus says, love your neighbor, your first immediate neighbor is your spouse. Yes. And you show love and kindness and exercise it there and then it just blossoms out and goes out from there to everybody else you're supposed to love as well.

Right. But if you, like as a pastor, if my ministry is not first my family, then whatever

I'm doing in the church doesn't matter. It's a complete fraud and a hypocrite. I'm a hypocrite because even as the qualifications of a pastor are given in 1

Timothy 3, he must manage his own household well, for if he can't manage his own household, how will he manage

God's church? So, my ministry is first here. And the same is with you. See, a pastor is really just setting an example for everybody in his church.

Your ministry is your home as well. That's where your ministry begins before it's evangelizing, before it's loving others in your church.

All things that we have to do. Yeah, extending hospitality toward others, charity.

Yeah. Charity, missionary work. Going out with the gospel. All of that work has to begin at home.

Right. And that's where the love and grace of God is first exercised.

And then, yeah, outward from there to everybody else. So, that's where it begins for us. That's my commitment as a pastor.

That's been my wife's commitment to me. This has been, as a pastor, I've experienced a wonderful, well,

I'm coming up on 10 years. So, Saturday next week is 10 years since my ordination, which was on August 15th, 2010, exactly two weeks after we got married.

So, I'm coming up on 10 years of that. And this 10 years has been wonderful because I have a great church, absolutely.

But all the tough stuff that I've had to go through, because we're not a perfect church either. We've had very difficult trials in 10 years.

But all of those things have been manageable. I've been able to work through those things because I have a wonderful partner by my side and my wife who has been encouraging and supporting me all through that.

No matter what I was going through, no matter what conflicts in our church that we had to resolve, none of them were in my home.

And so, even when we're still struggling with sin and correcting those who are walking in sin in our church,

I didn't have to come home and then deal with drama here. My wife was always loving and supporting and encouraging and strong for me when

I was weak. And it made it easy to point to Christ in those moments. Yes.

And to keep our eyes on Christ. That's right. Because I had a spouse reminding me of that. Right, because I mean, when you're dealing with hard things, your eyes go down and you're dealing with what's in front of you.

And so, a lot of the times you forget to look up and keep your heart and your mind on Christ.

And so, it's good to have those around you reminding you. And Becky, you know, when

I'd wake up in the middle of the night with a panic attack or something like that because of just the anxiety of stuff that was going on,

I would struggle with that so much. She just knew how to reach over and tenderheartedly care for me in the right way and pray for me.

So anyway, all of that to say these 10 years of marriage have also been 10 years of pastoring. They've been 10 years side by side with one another.

And I've had a wonderful wife helping me all the way. We bring that up to encourage you in these things as well, that you love one another, that you sacrifice for each other.

When Paul tells the church in Philippians two, consider others more significant than yourselves. You consider your significant other more significant than yourself.

Right, they are the significant other. That's right. So you start there in your home, sacrificing for each other, dying to yourself, looking out for the needs of your spouse.

I mean, the husband is very literally told in Ephesians five, that you are to die to yourself, laying your life down for your spouse as Christ died for the church.

So you need to die to yourself. Now, when I say literally, I'm, yeah. Yeah. I'm just, you're being literally told to die to yourself.

That's what I literally told that. Not to die literally, right, yeah. A wife submits to her husband as we are to submit to the

Lord as the church submits to Christ. A husband is to lay down his life for his wife as Christ laid down his life for the church.

There is submission, a wife to her husband and a husband to Christ. And it's in these things that we have

God honoring marriages. And may we speak to one another with words that are honoring to God.

Yes. And then we honor each other. Yeah. So moving on here, this is, this is from Dana in Kansas.

Oh, and this has to do with something else I had posted on Twitter too. I had, when we were sitting down for lunch yesterday, the kids got my table talk magazine out.

Oh, okay. And my Baptist catechism and set it on the table because they knew we do

Bible study on Thursday night where we've got friends and family that come over and we don't get devotionals done as a family on Thursday night.

Because we're all eating supper together. Right. Yeah. And so, and we don't do catechism on Thursday night.

So they got it out Thursday at lunch. I didn't even ask them to, they just got the devotional book. That's awesome.

And the catechism out and had it setting at my place and they started eating their pizza. It's like, whenever dad comes in here and sits down, he's going to do the devotional and catechism.

So I took a picture of that and posted it on Twitter. And Dana from Kansas commented and said,

I'm pretty new in this walk, but what would you suggest when teaching my kids?

I've been reading them scripture and then we go over it. They know they are sinners and they know the gospel.

So as a pastor, what do you recommend for teaching when you are just learning yourself?

Well, here's my first question. Here's my first piece of advice. Don't try to reinvent the wheel.

Right? Definitely. In other words, don't try to be overly inventive on.

Mimic somebody else. Okay, elaborate on that. Cause I don't know what you mean. Like. You're saying do mimic somebody else or don't mimic somebody else.

Do mimic somebody else. Okay. Follow their lead. Well, I guess that's why she's asking.

Cause she's asking me, so what's your lead? Yeah, go for it. Okay. So don't try to be overly inventive.

Don't think that you need these grandiose curriculums or elaborate books or that you need to put together these complicated lessons for the kids.

What you're doing is great. So I've been reading them the scripture and then we go over it.

Yeah. That's it? Like what were families doing three, four, 500 years ago?

Before we get the printing press and we get the Bible in every single home. And now in America, we've got, you know, average of three

Bibles in every home. Right. What were we doing before we got to this point? It was the scriptures that you received on Sunday because somebody was teaching them to you from the church.

And then there's the application of those things. The husband goes home and he continues to lead his family and those things that they heard declared to them on Sunday.

The things they were teaching in the church, now he's teaching his wife and his kids and following that Deuteronomy six principle of think about these things when you get up, when you lie down, when you go by the way, let them be as front lists between your eyes, let them be as bindings upon your hands.

So you're constantly finding ways to point to things and teach your kids about God and about how

Christ has died for our sins. And by faith in him, we are forgiven and we have fellowship with God.

So in whatever way that you can utilize those things, not just in Bible study, but in everyday things, teaching your kids to do all things to the glory of God.

Those are very basic things, very basic deals that we should be doing. When you're reading them, the scriptures, just doing exactly as you're doing,

Bible reading, go through the stories. So Genesis, Exodus, you may talk about the law, you might not wanna get too complicated in the law.

Before I went back to Table Talk Magazine, we haven't been doing that consistently every time. But before we grabbed the latest edition of Table Talk, I was taking my kids through first and second

Kings with the stories of Elijah and Elisha. So they were learning about the prophets and the history of Israel at that particular time, and things that were going on with the

Kings. And so you go through the stories, you take them through the gospel, of course, understanding who

Christ is, taking them through Acts. Here's the growth of the church after Jesus died and ascended back to heaven.

We have the Holy Spirit. Now the spirit has gone out and the church has spread through the teaching of the gospel, through his apostles and down to us today.

Then you have like memorization, learn basic verses. Teach your kids, the usual verses that you hear about being those

Sunday school verses, teach them those verses. And I recommend getting out the dictionary even and looking up some of those words.

I've got right up here, Bible dictionaries. Okay. So you have a Bible dictionary, you can look up people and places and words in the

Bible so you can understand what those things mean. Right. Because you're talking about like teaching justification and sanctification, so you need to know the definitions of those words, is that where you were going?

That's fine. I mean, if you're reading a dictionary to understand what justification is, but we also need to know the biblical understanding of what justification is.

So that's where a Bible dictionary would be helpful or a cross reference. The literal word

Bible app on your phone has some great cross references. So when you're reading Romans 3 .23,

for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, 24, and are justified by his grace as a gift.

So what is justification? So then you click on that on literal word and then it gives you the cross references that shows where else you find that word justification.

And so then through those other verses, you come to an understanding of what justification means. Awesome. Okay, and helping your, was that right?

Was that where you're going? Yeah, no, that's great. Okay. Yes. So then again, learning those basic verses like John 3 .16,

Romans 3 .23, Romans 6 .23. And cross references should be in your Bible, but some

Bibles don't have them. Yeah, not all of them do. Not all of them, but most do that I've come across.

Yeah, especially if you've got a study Bible, the most basic ESV Bible. Well, it's not the most basic.

There's some pretty basic ESV Bibles, but your basic cross reference ESV, single column cross references.

That was my first ESV Bible. Before I had the ESV study Bible, I had the cross reference

Bible. And so that kept me in the discipline of doing my cross references and not just looking at the notes at the bottom and then cheating and, oh, okay, there's my notes.

So teaching your kids how to cross reference. That was a big thing for me when I was a kid.

My dad taught me from the moment he taught me to read the Bible, how to use scripture to interpret scripture.

So you see this verse here, where have you heard this before? Like you're reading this, you know you've read this somewhere else.

Where have you seen this? And so teaching me to go back to underline things, to mark things and see how the whole story of the

Bible was interconnected, pointing to Christ. So that by faith in Christ, we have salvation.

Basic memorization. So like teaching your kids the 10 commandments. Psalm 23.

That's a good one. The Lord's prayer. We do the Lord's prayer with the kids pretty regularly.

And then there's catechism. And I think that catechism tends to be pretty overlooked, especially in Baptist circles.

But catechism is hugely important. And the book that was in the picture that I posted on Twitter had the

Baptist Confession of Faith on the left. It's a hardbound version of the Baptist Confession of Faith and the

Baptist Catechism together in one book. Keech's Catechism is what it's called. And that's all together in a single, kind of a medium -sized hardbound book.

And you can find it on Amazon. When I looked it up, it was like 15 bucks. That's not what I paid for it.

I got a little bit cheaper than that. Anyway, that's just a great book to have.

And hardbound, it's gonna last you a long time. So it's wonderful to have that Confession of Faith. You can go through those confessions together.

You've got the catechism questions so that you understand basic principles of basic teachings of who

Jesus is, what does it mean that he is incarnate, who is the Holy Spirit, what is the

Trinity. Those catechism questions are gonna help you in teaching your kids those things.

And they apply those things to memory and then they're able to articulate and explain. Okay, the last thing that I have written down on here is truth and grace memory books.

These are the books that are put out by Founders Ministry. So if you go to founders .org and you click on their bookstore, you'll find those truth and grace memory books.

And they're ordered by age group. Yes. So I think, do they have it, was it like a first and second grade reading level, third grade, how is it that they organize those?

If I remember right, there's only two grade, I mean two levels. There's an early reader and then there's a later reader.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I wanna say there was three or four though. Are there? Yeah. Are there more than that?

Like three or four stages, like stage one, stage two. I only remember two.

Oh, but I could be wrong. Okay, well, I could be too, I don't even remember. They could have added more since I've looked too.

Just go check it out. Yeah, go look it up for yourself. Yeah, and those tend to be, right, they're on a very low price range and.

And they're good. Yes. They're really good. So as you said, Dana. They're in the book, you gotta flip through the book though whenever you get it because there's stuff to do in the beginning and there's stuff to do in the middle too.

So it's not really an order. It's kind of an order, but you'll know it whenever you.

Okay, just look through the book. Yeah, thumb through it first. Before you start teaching it. Yes. So Dana, you mentioned that like, what do you recommend for teaching when you are just learning yourself?

All of these methods that we've presented to you are going to teach you also. And you're also gonna learn on a very basic level and it's fun.

Yes. It's great that you learn these things and the kids are learning them with you and you get to talk about them even when you're not studying these things.

I think you're gonna get a lot out of that. Yes. But don't be over. Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing.

Don't be overwhelmed. Right, okay, you got it. We were on the same track there. It feels like a lot, but really whenever you get started, it just gets exciting.

So just be excited to learn. Go with the flow of things. Be excited to learn Christ. Yeah.

We're all as children at the feet of Christ. Yes. Who is showing us the Father. So it's a wonderful joy to be learning these things, even for me, for the decades that I've been a

Christian. Anastasia commented on Dana's question of mine.

And she said, we used kids' Bibles when they were younger. They outgrew those and I started reading stories from the gospels for them and discussing them.

Then we moved to whole historical books, one chapter a day, Old Testament, Gospels, Acts.

Now we do any book, a chapter a day. They are nine and 11. Oh, wow, that's awesome.

So even your nine, 11 -year -old can understand opening the Bible and reading it. And my oldest two are nine and 12.

Okay. I knew Annie was 12, but Z just turned nine. So I still haven't moved the -

He's halfway done living at home. Oh, yes. Okay, there we go. Yeah, I remember it. That's an interesting way to think about it.

But they understand, having their Bible open, going through the scriptures. And I have different techniques of teaching them how to identify the meaning.

And one of the things that we'll do together is what are the verbs? Show me what the verbs are.

So what is this telling you to do? The verbs are calling to action. So what's the lesson that we're supposed to be taking from this?

I hope the best for you. Neil from the UK, he had also commented and said,

I wish I could go back and teach my children instead of teaching them to get me a beer out of the fridge.

I pray that the Lord will have mercy on them for my failing as a father. And Neil, I'll pray for you too.

This is not an uncommon story. We've received emails like this from many brokenhearted parents who wished they had done more when they had their kids at a more influential age.

With my siblings, I'm the oldest of six. So with my siblings, there were, in their formative years, really ridiculous decisions that I made as a professing

Christian, and yet they're seeing me walking in sin. And so I've tried to go back to my siblings and tell them, okay, this way that I lived back then was wrong.

And I want you to know the true gospel, which I was not witnessing to you in my actions.

At the time when I was saying I was a Christian, I was not doing Christian things. I was not a good witness to them in those years when

I could have been a better older brother than I was. So in that sense, Neil, I understand that failing and I'm praying for you.

And I hope that, well, I mean, to tell you this, it's not too late to get in touch with your kids.

Oh, definitely. And even apologize for past failures and share with them the gospel. Yes. You can still do that even now.

Definitely. Let's, we've got one last thing here. We got less than 10 minutes to cover it, but Lou and Evelyn from Poland.

Dear Pastor Gabe and Becky, greetings once again from Poland. So we've heard from them before.

We have a quick question about homeschooling, which we imagine will be better directed at Becky. Our eldest son just finished the eighth grade, which is the last year of primary school here in Poland.

We would like for him to get his high school education from a good and affordable, we don't earn in dollars,

Christian homeschool program. Because we are in Poland, we would prefer a program that could be just about 100 % online because having to ship books and materials here would be expensive and quite a hassle.

We found this one. It's AOP and the curriculum is Monarch, but we know very little about it.

And this is of course, our first experience with homeschooling. Have you heard of AOP? Would you recommend it or something similar?

Thank you in advance for your help. And of course for your ministry, it is a daily blessing to us. Okay, I remember who Lou and Evelyn were now.

They were the ones that had emailed and asked about my little snafu regarding Bob Jones University curriculum.

Oh, okay. And I said, I was wrong. Don't listen to me. You're probably more experienced in this curriculum than I am.

So AOP is another one, Monarch. What do you know about it? Okay, so I remember hearing about them and I've looked into them and I know that it's not really in our budget.

It's not in our budget. Right. So you think - It's not too budget friendly. Okay, Monarch is more of the higher end.

Yes. Okay. Yes. As far as price goes. Yes. But it says in my research, it says that if you have like one child or even two, that it's doable.

But if you have more than that, then it's better to do the Switched on Schoolhouse.

So Monarch is 100 % online. It is the same thing as Switched on Schoolhouse, but it's online.

Whereas Switched on Schoolhouse is, what do you call those things that - Like the flash drive?

Yeah, flash drive. Okay. So it's all on a flash drive. You folks out there in listening land didn't see this little gesture she was making for -

I'm like, you just plug it into your, you know. I know what she was talking about. Yeah, little flash drive you stick in your computer.

All right, leave me alone. I'm old school here. You missed the cute gesture there though. So anyway.

Okay, so bear with me a little bit here. Switched on Schoolhouse, they are

Protestant. They, you can use it child per child.

Whereas Monarch, you have to buy it per child. Okay. Like you're buying the, does that make sense?

You're buying the curriculum. You're still doing your little side - I am. Plug -in gesture. Plug -in gesture.

I just need to sit on my hands. The curriculum's on a flash drive. Yes, so you're buying the flash drive with all the curriculum for that grade level.

But with Monarch, you're buying your child's grade level just for that child online.

Okay, gotcha. So Monarch is going to be more expensive. I gotcha.

Okay. But as far as like the stuff that they're actually teaching in the curriculum you're following. Everything seems to be on the up and up.

It is repetitive. So that can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. It depends on your child. I take it as a good thing because I need -

Yeah, we need that repetition, right. So often. Even when it comes to learning scriptures we were just talking about. Repetition's always real good.

It is good. Okay, so then it's nice because you can see that your child is attending school.

You have all of that right in front of you. Well, I hope so. I mean, you are homeschooled.

Right. What are you doing down there? But I mean, it's not you, it's very teacher friendly.

It's very parent friendly. It's not so much child friendly. So in the beginning it's gonna be a lot of work for your child and maybe a little bit of frustration.

But once the child gets a hang of it, then it's fine. I would think that any kind of homeschool curriculum needs to be understood that way.

You're not just sticking your kid in front of it and letting them go. Right. It needs to be, you're the teacher and you're helping your child understand.

So there is gonna be a learning curve there for your child where the parent, it's more interactive for the parent and then the kid is gonna kind of catch up on that as they go.

Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But other than that, that's. All right.

I think if you find it worth your money and time, then yeah, by all means. Good stuff.

Let us know what you think of it if you try it out. Okay, right. Yeah, because I made a judgment error on the last curriculum that you asked about.

So, but thank you for your questions. I did like how they said they were Protestant and all that.

Yes. Online, like right on their website and everything. So that was very refreshing. Right, sharing some very similar understandings and statements of faith.

Well, thank you so much for listening. We respond to questions on the Friday edition every week, God willing, and you can submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

We'll be back with our study in Romans on Monday, in the

Psalms on Thursday. We're pretty close to finishing up the Psalms. Yeah. And then another Q &A next week.

Let's conclude with prayer. Yes, let's. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together and we rejoice in so many good things that you give to us, marriage and fellowship and relationship and the church and learning and education, the patience and love that you show to us.

May we demonstrate that same patience with others. We thank you for the care and the nurturing that you provide for us day by day as we grow in our faith, in our understanding of Christ, in godliness, in holiness.

Convict us of sin. Never let us reject those corrections when they come, if they mean to move us more in the direction of Christ and help us also to guide one another, not just our children, but even other adults, friends, as we desire to imitate

Christ and grow in holiness day by day. Help us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12, two. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. And it's in these things that we have

God honoring marriages and may we speak to one another with words that are honoring to God and then we honor each other.

Yeah. Anyway. I think it's great. I do too. I don't have anything to add.

I'm cool with this. I like our marriage. I think it's all great. I think all that you were saying was good.

Thank you. And I don't have anything to add. Check. Got it. All right.