The Battle for Your Children | Outside Eden

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Welcome to Outside Eden, two centers discovering grace together. Your hosts are

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John and Judith Moffitt. Hi there. Hey. I am the pastor of Grace Reform Church in Springville, Tennessee.

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Judith and I have been married for 20 years, four kids, ages 7 to almost 19 now, and yeah, next month,

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I guess a couple months, whatever, I kind of live for the next birthdays. This is birthday season for our family, right? Yeah.

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May, June, July. Anyways, but it's good. It's been a couple of weeks since we've been able to record.

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We do our best. We're not weekly podcasters, so we'll get behind the microphone when it works best for us and when we feel like we have something we'd like to add.

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We've heard several of your questions, so we're going to get to those at the end of the podcast today. But today, we're going to be talking about, what was the title we came up with?

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Something like we become what we behold. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Shepherding our homes. Another probably title

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I would give this is, and this is like super traumatic. I guess I would say dramatic, not traumatic.

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As a public speaker, yeah, as a public speaker, and you have to go back and hear yourself, I say things all the time.

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I'm like, I don't even finish my sentences. I did there. I didn't even finish my sentence. A warlike mentality, a home that has a warlike mentality.

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That's kind of like a scary, like really in your face title. So I'm not quite sure what we're going to title this episode.

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But that's what we want to talk about. And can I just start by saying, you and I have had multiple days where we've been talking about this subject and we're nervous.

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This is a scary subject. Yeah. I think it's hard because we want to help shed light on how the

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Bible is directing us to carry our homes and how to disciple our children, but at the same time, we never want to make it sound like there's this set of rules you have to live by.

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And if you live by them, your kids will turn out great. I also don't want to sound like we're judging anybody who doesn't do it like we do.

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So we really just want this to be 100 % helpful. Here's what we have learned.

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Here's what we have observed. And we hope it's helpful. So yeah, it's scary really to.

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It is. I think it's because we live in a climate right now on the internet, in social media, where there's just a lot of sensitivity and there's a lot of activity about people's opinion about what you should and shouldn't do.

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And this is hard. Our kids just got home from theater. So hey guys, and you might hear the dog in the background.

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But yeah, so we're just getting started. We wanted you to hear our hearts in that, you know, when

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Paul says that men and women should be passing down what they have learned from the

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Lord, from other people, how they've been discipled, we then need to disciple. So this podcast really is about discipling your children.

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We're going to hold the position that the church should be the primary means and way in which your children receive the

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Lord in education. But we are part of that church. So we would consider ourselves to be disciples of Christ.

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And then when Paul tells parents, right, raise your children in the fear and admission of the Lord, what he means by that is that you are discipling your children.

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And the word disciple, I think we should clarify that word. It means to teach somebody the ways of an individual is what it means.

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So when you have the disciples of Jesus, they were following and listening to what Jesus had to say about him and how that would affect their life and then how they would live.

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So I would not call us the only disciples of our children or even maybe even the primary, but we have an important role.

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I think the church should always be the primary means by which our children are disciples. And that's a whole nother podcast for a whole nother time and we'll let

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Theocast help you with that. There's I'll put some links in the below where we think the primacy of the church should be.

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Okay. We're going to go dark first and then we'll we're going to go for hope afterwards.

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So I think we should talk about the playing field that we live ourselves in. Right. Right. Yeah. I like the word we used beforehand was oblivious.

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Yeah. We are oblivious to how the world could inadvertently be raising our children.

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Yeah. That's a really scary thing to think about. And most people would be like, that's not happening to me. Yeah. And we're kind of here to say, maybe it is.

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Right. Right. The world is not neutral. Its influence is not neutral. So unless we are doing something to counteract what the world is constantly putting in front of our children, then the world is helping raise them.

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We live in a very media centric society and this is a debate for another time, but we also do not believe we live in a

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Christian society with meaning that those who are producing media are not using the

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Bible as their guide and the one who is guiding them. It's not like it's the same material, but just in a different flavor or style.

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We know that Satan is called the adversary, the enemy of God, who is directly opposing the mission and the method and the message of God.

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I just want to read some verses where I want us to hear, remember, you know, when someone say, well, there's not a lot of verses in the

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Bible about parenting. I agree. But there is an endless amount of verses talking about our relationship to God and discipling our children in relation to what we know to be true of him.

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And we become the prime examples of our children at home where we are showing them the love and kindness of this.

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So to think that we live in a world that's neutral is oblivious. To think that there is an attack against us is crazy.

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So I'm going to read some verses and then you and I can kind of talk about them and respond to them. Here is a couple of passages.

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So this is 2 Corinthians chapter 11. We read a couple of verses in here, but in here, Paul says this to the church.

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He says, I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

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The reason I read this is he is writing to a church and his fear, if it wasn't a legitimate fear, he wouldn't have written that.

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So we as parents and as just as individuals, if you're a single parent, we do have a warning being written to a church.

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Now, is this one warning? No. Listen to how many times he sends these kind of warnings. Well, Peter is another apostle.

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1 Peter chapter 5 verse 8. He says this, be sober minded, which we're going to talk about this in a minute.

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Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

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Why would he write this? Because there's a legitimate warning against, and I think the wording here is helpful.

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I'll just talk about it now. Being sober minded. Right. Well, typically soberness is related to something that would control your mind, right?

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You control your cognitive ability. So like drunkenness would be a great example in the New Testament. The opposite of sober would be to be drunk.

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Right. So here, I don't think I don't think he means alcohol because the next thing he's talking about being watchful.

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Yeah. Just being aware. Yeah. We were talking to our kids about this the other night at dinner. We were talking about just, you know, going along when you're when you're with your friends or whatever entertainment you're enjoying, but not just to go along with it, but to actually stop and ask yourself questions like, where is this leading?

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How does this benefit me? And just I sober minded is just the perfect phrase for it because you're just stopping for a second and thinking it through.

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You're not just going along with the, you know, like the vortex of of what everyone else is doing.

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You're not getting just pulled into it. You're being purposeful about your direction that you're moving in because we're always moving.

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That's right. A direction. So. Yeah. And sober minded would mean that something else is occupying your mind and causing you to not be alert.

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My neighbor called me today and he said the other morning they were up super early and we we live on the top of this hill and there's some trees at the bottom and we've had a lot of deer that have come through our yard in his yard.

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And so they're sitting in the front porch and like, oh, look at that deer down there. Long story short, they realized it wasn't a deer. It was a cougar.

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Well, immediately my heart just sunk because I'm like, now I got to be watching out for the kids.

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I got to be watching out for my dog. You know, at least at night we'll let lady out. We can't like she's going to eat all of a sudden.

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Right. And right. But like that, this became a visual representation for me of like, wait a minute.

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I have to. I can't just be lazy. I have to be aware. That is the language that the world that you live in.

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You cannot be allowing your mind to be consumed with something that would make you unaware of the danger that's in front of you.

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So he doesn't just keep it vague. He says there's actually a spiritual force that is trying to come and trip you up, devouring me, meaning taking you out.

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And I don't think there's nowhere in scripture that we believe that you can lose your salvation. But in Second Peter, in the second letter,

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Peter describes us as those who have been entangled with Satan or entangled with this world. He says you're ineffective and unfruitful.

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So that is that's definitely a warning. And I just thought

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I was just thinking how and just covering everything in the name of Christian doesn't doesn't mean anything.

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I think the world has really infiltrated the church. And I think that's part of being sober minded and vigilant is is, again, no matter what group you're in, no matter what activity you're doing, and it might be church approved or whatever, something a lot of Christians do or any of that,

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I think it's important to still be sober minded and be asking yourself questions, you know, looking at the

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Bible. Is this is this productive for the kingdom? Is this you know, what direction is this taking me?

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Is this, you know, occupying too much of my time or my mind? Because I think it's not enough.

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I think as parents, it can be really easy to send our kids somewhere or let them listen or watch something and think, oh, well, it's

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Christian or it's oh, well, everyone in a youth group does this or whatever. I know there's just such a broad thing and I'm just making it very specific.

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But I think we still have to be careful because it's infiltrated the church in general.

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So well, when he says I don't have this verse here, but when Paul says take every thought captive. If you're if your children are being bombarded by the world's ideology and, you know, there might be children listening here.

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So I'll be very careful if you're having your kids listen to this. But intimacy distorted by the world in our music and in our entertainment.

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And it feels like you can't watch or listen to anything. And they're not telling you about homosexuality, transgender, premarital sex, you know, abortion.

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They're they're they're programming our minds to wear Christians today, which really breaks my heart that Christians today are saying, no, no, you can you can violate scripture, but it's not really, you know, homosexuality.

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It's not about it. And if you think that all of these little info, you know, so, oh,

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Johnny's saying we should never listen to secular music or never watch that. That's not what we're saying. So we're not trying to be overreaction.

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I think we're just trying to take the wisdom of scripture, saying you live in a world where you're under attack. You're going to have to pay attention.

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Right. And you're going to have to filter. I think for some people listening to this, if they come from a legalistic background, they're getting real upset right now.

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They're feeling like, man, this sounds really familiar. I don't want to be pulled back into this. And that is not the goal at all.

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But at the same time, we cannot respond. We can't do that whole pendulum swing where where we respond by just not even being careful and not even asking ourselves important questions like, yeah, like where is this taking my heart?

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Where where is my heart right now? Yeah. Well, Paul was a great legalist. You read Philippians. He said there was no greater legalist than myself.

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Right. So I think a man who writes about being on guard and being careful did come from a background where it's like, look,

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I know what it's like to live by the law. And what he says, it was it created a pile of waste for me.

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There was no value there. We would agree. We're not trying to create law based living to where if you do this, then this is produced.

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This is more of what formulates your heart and your mind. We do know Jesus tells us out of the heart, the mouth speaks.

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And he goes, it's not what you put in your mouth that defiles you. Right. It's what goes into your heart that it's what comes out of your heart.

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So this is the these verses we've used so far. Be sober minded. Take every thought captive.

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I mean, even Philippians, I don't have this one here, but Philippians tells us that what we're supposed to be casting our brains upon, you know, that which is pure and holy and uplifting.

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And, you know, we have to be very careful. You know, this is a conversation you and I are constantly having about what the kids shouldn't should what we should watch.

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We shouldn't watch, you know, what are we you know, there's a I'm not going to name shows that we've watched, but we've watched shows in the past that are fun.

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But there's nothing Christian about them other than they are telling a story we approve of, whether it's good versus evil or, you know, people working through struggle or it's it's a it's something that really happened in history that we find fascinating or whatever.

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But I don't want to get into what you should and shouldn't watch. It's more of the awareness of things around you.

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And then you have to start to use discernment. And if you can't, you know, if you're not sure, then that's, you know, talk to a godly person that you trust and ask them for some advice.

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But I'm going to just keep going. And then when I'm finished with these verses, we'll kind of rally back to some of this.

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This is Paul writing to Timothy. And I just want you to hear like when I say our home should be battle ready.

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I know I just it's it just sounds so extreme, like, you know, have barreled water and MREs and ammo in a bunker or something.

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That's not what I mean. I mean, a home that understands that Satan wants to destroy.

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I mean, think about I'm sorry I'm getting off track here, but just think about the dysfunctional, how dysfunctional homes are.

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Yeah. You know, people don't eat together. They don't live together. They don't spend time together. Well, I mean,

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I mean, it is it is the goal. Yeah. To destroy the home. And I'm not just going to say of our of our culture, but I think of Satan in general is to break down the home.

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Yeah. And he's going great. Yeah. I mean, you don't even have traditional homes. You've got parents of the same gender.

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And I mean, anyways. All right. So Paul says this to Timothy, he says he's trying to help him understand his disposition.

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This is this is true about you. He says that by them, you may wage this for Timothy 118, wage, wage the good warfare, holding, holding faith and good conscience by rejecting this.

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Some have made made shipwrecked their faith. So you're getting language of attack, you're getting language of warfare.

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And we know this one, don't we? This is 2 Corinthians 10 3. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war against the flesh.

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Jude and I both believe if you think you can protect your children from the world by simply controlling their flesh, meaning that,

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OK, we're cutting out all TV, we're cutting out all music, we're cutting. They can't go anywhere. They can't. You're going to fail because the war does not happen on the outside of them.

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The war happens on the inside of them. And so just to think and I've been around parents like this, that they just think that they protect their kids from the world, then they're going to be safe.

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No, it's inside of them. That's the issue. So there's more than just protecting your children from, you know, wrapping, wrapping them in spiritual bubble wrap.

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Right. One more verse. I'll just read this one. He says this is Ephesians 6 12.

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For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and against authorities and against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in in the heavenly places.

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If you're sitting here and you're like, wow, this is super heavy. Then you're getting the point

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Paul is trying to make. Yeah. You're raising children in a battlefield that you can't even see.

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And that's even harder. Which I think the biggest step towards towards,

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I don't want to say success, but the biggest steps in the right direction. What we're called to do is, yeah, is just asking questions.

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Yeah. You know, is just realizing and accepting that this is a battlefield and that there is no neutral zone and that if you do not purposefully step into your children's lives and pursue their hearts, the world will do it for you.

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Naturally, on their own. You don't even have to, you know, unfortunately, our hearts are so evil and wicked that'll leave themselves that way.

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Right. I want to take a little bit of a pause before we kind of get into some practicalities here. We are not what we're not like in our home.

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We're not the pressure our kids are not underneath is to be performing. I'm not asking my children to perform, you know, especially because they're pastor's kids.

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It feels like they're already on our microphone. You got two PKs right here. Microphone, sorry. I'm like, what?

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Microscope. See, public speaking is hard. If I speak slower,

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I won't misspeak. There we go. But you and I both grew up in a pastor's home. We have felt that pressure where people look at you and they say to you,

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I can't believe you did that. You're the pastor's kid. More than yes. Many times I was told that growing up, which thankfully my parents defended me.

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They did not like that. They really tried to protect me from that. But yeah. Love on your pastor's kids.

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As my son walks by, cross eyes, makes a weird face. Yes. Thank you. Beloved, beloved oldest son.

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I think that the goal here, and this is where for Judith and I, parenting has changed.

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I think a lot of times we were just trying to protect our kids from Satan. That was like the end goal, which is not wrong, you know, but then it's like, we're not just surviving attacks.

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We're actually a part of something that's advancing. That's a part of a greater, beautiful, glorious mission.

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That's what we should be excited about because a lot of times, Judith, I'll just speak personally here. It sounds as defeating to just always be afraid of attacks.

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Like what kind of, it just feels like you're this prey and you're always just waiting to die. Yeah. And as a parent that can make you just constantly be making new rules.

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Well, this might happen, so I better make this rule. This might, you know, and that that's not, that's not productive because in the end obedience, which we talked about earlier, um, obedience is not the ultimate goal.

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Yes. We want them to learn to obey because if they're obeying us, they're also learning to obey God. But obedience is not the ultimate goal.

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The ultimate goal is their heart, having their heart and directing their heart, um, to, towards the things of God.

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That's right. Yeah. I said this a while back in an episode I did a long time ago. I can't remember, but it got a lot of attraction.

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I'm like, the goal of the Christian life is not to sin. There's no way you should read scripture. And it's like, okay, the ultimate aim of your life.

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Don't sin. First of all, what a depressing life because we sin every day and we have to ask

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God for forgiveness. God in his kindness gives us something to strive for.

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And as we fail in striving for it, we find his mercy and grace. This is why

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Paul's like, no matter what situation I find myself in, he's excited about the mission. This is why he says,

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I could go be with Jesus, but for your sake, I'm going to stay for the sake of the advancement of the kingdom. So I, I am a person.

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If you tell me, no, I don't. It's unfortunately, the, the, the sinful nature of that. I battle with, if you say, don't do that,

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I'm going to do it. You say, no, I'm going to do it. Right. God bless your mother, by the way, just going to say that. And you, and it doesn't work in reverse.

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Like if you try and manipulate me, I'm like, I know what you're doing. Uh, what has really helped me in my parenting, and what's helped me as just a, as a man and as a pastor is that, give me something to accomplish.

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Like give me something that's significant than it matters. Then I can compare the two like that is a distraction.

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And it's not helpful for what I want to see happen, which is to honor and glorify the Lord and the advancement of the kingdom.

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Man, this has been really vital for, I think recently into shepherding a lot of our kids because sometimes they're like, but dad, it's not wrong.

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And I'm like, you're right. It's not wrong. But Paul says, or the writer of Hebrews says to lay aside the weight and the sin, which means there are things that like a

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Paul says are okay. They're not profitable. Right. Right. So this is where there are times where we had this conversation in the night entertainment.

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Right. And I was even trying to come up with a definition for this, you know, and I would say another way of saying entertainment is how we amuse ourselves.

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Like we're trying to find something that makes us happy on an emotional level and entertainment can be a weight, right?

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It can be that thing that you said it last night at dinner or whatever night it was. We move, our life is our life is centered around entertainment.

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We move from one entertainment to the next. Right. And work happens to get in the way, right.

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Or life happens to get in the way. And the greatest ambition of our life is to entertain ourselves.

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Well, entertainment is not wrong, but I think that in that definition you give is an abuse. Yeah. And so I'm going to wrap this all up and we can move on to the next section.

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You know, we're, we're kind of going along. When you are thinking about this war, the war is we are here to advance the light and the salt of the kingdom on, on the world.

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Right. That is our aim and our goal and how, you know, the Bible says the world will know that you're my disciples by the love that you have for one another.

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I believe that's true of my home. Like how I love my children and how my children love me and how they love each other can be a reflection for those who don't know

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Christ. And I tell our children not to give them this pressure of like, you have to perform when the world's going to hell.

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That's not what I'm saying. But it's like the guys there's, there's more to obeying your parents just because that's what you're supposed to do.

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Like there's a significance to an eternal one. Right. And, and doing that loving each other is what will ultimately bring joy.

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That's what, that's what God promises us. And so in a way, we're also trying to free them from, um, you know, the captivity of the lie of sin and pleasure, constant sin and pleasure, um, and give them the freedom and the joy of what it's like when you live for the kingdom.

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That's right. So, um, there's more we could definitely talk about.

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I want to take us down a road that gets real sticky now. I'm looking at my notes.

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Is this my notes? Uh, no, it's just, I bring it down to some practical applications.

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I, so, um, what happens if we keep this general, then people walk away and they're like,

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Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I guess I need to be on alert. I just want to challenge you as a parent and whoever else is listening to this, um, potential parents, or even just if you're single, or you're thinking about getting married, you know, in your home, um,

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Satan wants, uh, he is described as the ultimate deceiver.

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He's the father of all lies and he's good at what he's doing. He was able to convince Eve who lived in a perfect garden, who actually walked with God.

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He convinced her to eat of the fruit and then, and then convinced Adam. I mean, it's, he's, he's a brilliant what he does.

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He's convincing us all. He's convinced nations that two genders get an act logically and scientifically.

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It's, it's okay to do that. I mean, it's, it's, it is mind blowing what he's able to do. So you, you have to live with that reality and say, okay, um, how is he causing my mind to either be numb, blind or distracted from the joy of Christ and the gospel?

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And I think numb is a really good word. Yeah. No, no. I use numb because numb often means you're unaware of the change.

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Right. Yeah. So where are you, were you leading to what a battle ready home looks like when you said, yeah.

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Okay. Yeah. So Judith, I mean, just, you know, I know this is scary and people we're not here to like offer you like, here's the shows you shouldn't watch all that.

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We just want to challenge you in a couple of practical areas of saying, all right, you need to think about this information from Satan.

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He can put it on a platter that is 99 % Christian or it looks good. And it's that 1 % that gets lodged in the brain.

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Right. And if we're not processing with our children and we're not, and so I will say this, listen, a lot of this starts at age five.

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If you are not, um, if your children are younger, you and your spouse need to get on the same page.

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Use this time to start talking through these things because even John and I had some disagreements on these kinds of things, entertainment, um, and different, you know, different, um,

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I can't think of the word right now, lines that we were going to draw. That's right. Yeah. And a lot of that is based upon influence upon me and things that I've changed.

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But I remember early on, we were trying to describe what is modesty. What should our kids watch? What should they listen to? Where's the line being drawn?

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Why are we drawing those lines? And I think we, as a couple, we're still growing, just spiritually trying to figure out who we were.

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And thankfully the Lord was kind enough to get us on the same page before our kids were old enough to figure out what's going on.

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And I think we're still, the thing is we still evaluate. Right. Constantly. And it's, you know, it's different with each kid.

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Cause each kid will have their different things that they're drawn towards. But so what does a battle ready home battle ready home look like?

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Practical ways that that I've been talking a long time. So if you have some thoughts, go for it. Well, I think a lot of it has to do with, and I know we've talked about this in previous episodes where we were focusing on parenting, but a lot of it has to do with protecting that family time because when are we going to have these discussions if we're all so busy running from here and there and dropping off here and, you know, going to this thing and that, and when are we having these important discussions?

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This is not a one and done thing. This is a constant conversation day in and day out.

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And purposeful on, on the parents part that we have to be having. And we can't have that if, if our family is never together.

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So I think part of having a big part of having a battle ready home is just being purposeful about the time that we spend together as a family.

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And that is counter -cultural. We've talked about that before, but I, I believe with all my heart that it is one of the most important things.

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What do you mean by like be purposeful? Like give an example. This is, again, we're not setting up a law.

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I think every culture and home can look different, but what do you mean by that? Well, I mean about the conversations or about the time together.

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Yeah. You said be purposeful. Sometimes if someone has never done this before, they may not know like, well, where do you start?

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Okay. Well, we look at our, our week, our months. Um, and we really try to see how much time we are getting together as a family at least.

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And, and our lives are busy too. We have three teenagers and you know, being in whatever the leader, you're the leader of one of the leaders of, of a baby church.

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You know, there's, there's not, it's not like there's a ton of staff. So, you know, a lot of times you have things that you have to do, elder meetings, um, you know,

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Bible studies, like classes that you do. So I, we understand busy. Um, but you, so you really have to be protective of the times that you do have.

29:07

So we try to make sure that several times a week, really three, four times a week, at least that we are at the dinner table together.

29:14

And sometimes that means, no, you can't do that. Even though the thing you want to do is good. Um, no, you can't do that.

29:20

Tonight's family. I know we love your friends, but you can't go over there tonight because we're having a family night.

29:26

And, um, you know, when you say that, uh, there's just a lot of cultural things that you have to throw out the window and, and not care about.

29:34

Um, but I think, I really believe that is very important. So purposeful, just by protecting family time, purposeful.

29:41

Okay. We're all gathered around the table now. This doesn't have to be formal, but Hey, let's talk about some stuff.

29:46

That's right. It was funny. We started something new that I found in a parenting book recently that I thought was helpful book.

29:53

Wasn't so great, but this was good. And it was so funny because Knox was the one who was excited.

29:59

We call it what's your beef night. It's Monday night. You don't have to bring something, but if you do have is something that's, wants everyone to bring something.

30:07

He's like, what's your beef? And it's good. Cause it could be about anything, but specifically it's the freedom of the kids to say, okay, there's something in the home.

30:16

That's kind of bothering me and I want to bring it up for discussion and it's healthy because it allows,

30:21

I learned something about my habits of I'm apparently too loud in the morning.

30:28

I don't want to irritate my children, but I'm the dad. And so for them to say, dad, you're being too loud might be just be overwhelming for them.

30:36

And it was like, okay. And I won't blame what child did it, but it was like, all right, that's fair. You know, like I'm really glad we did this because I don't want to be just because my personality is bubbly in the morning.

30:46

Doesn't mean everybody else has to be. Right. But, um, what's your beef? Something that we do often is that we just say,

30:54

Hey, let's talk about Sunday sermon. You know, we'll do this either on Monday or possibly Sunday, but it's just a simple way.

31:00

They may not have anything, but it's something to start the conversation or I'll bring something.

31:05

I mean, I'm the one that preached, but I'll bring something, something we're doing now. All of my children are readers and they read a lot and they're in high school and I'm realizing

31:14

I need to start creating a library for them of really good books and it could be a wide range, but we are, we're going to, we have one by Brian Chappell called praying backwards.

31:23

We're going to use, so there's different theological books that we might use. And listen, um, Judith and I are probably the worst at creating like a schedule where everything has to happen exactly the same.

31:34

Um, I don't know if we've ever had two matching days in our entire life and yet, um, there is a rhythm to our home.

31:42

In other words, there's an expectation that we spend time together. So to say that we have family devotions or even anything remotely like that every night, not even close.

31:51

But do we spend time in conversation, purposeful conversation, talking about life and evaluating, and we've even watched movies and at the end of it say, let's talk about that movie.

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What did we think and why was that a problem? And you know, how do we feel about that?

32:07

Uh, we just talking about purposeful. We're trying to shape their hearts and their minds and we're going to use whatever it is.

32:13

Heartaches. Cause something's going to shape it. That's right. That's right. And I'll say this now, we prioritize church.

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And I feel weird because people are like, well, you're the pastor. It's like, well, I know a lot of pastors who don't teach their children to prioritize church and they end up hating church.

32:29

But we do, we try and teach our children. We don't want to be tired Saturday night. Like we want to, uh, men's and women's group, which are our oldest daughters.

32:36

We're starting to talk to them about, you should be involved in these with midweek. And the, and the reason is, is that we can't be the only form of gospel messaging to our children.

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You know, we need the community of Christ to come around them. So listen, I know we're kind of here, there, and everywhere, but my encouragement to you would be sit down and evaluate what is influencing your children.

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And I'll just make this mathematical equation for you. If you're having a five minute conversation with your child a week, and they hear a 35 minute sermon on Sunday, do you really think that's enough, a sufficient to drown out the world that they're hearing around them?

33:19

You don't want it to be church just to check it off your list. Cause we had a lot of that, especially in the

33:24

South, the Bible belt. You want it to be a heart. Kind of church that you go to matters.

33:31

Right. And, and the heart though, like, you know, why are we going and the importance of it and not just sitting, but being part of an actual church family and being active in that.

33:43

Yeah. Yeah. I'll, I'll throw this in at the end. If you prioritize sports and entertainment, don't be surprised when your children leave the home that they do not prioritize their faith, right?

33:56

Ouch. Yeah. It's hard because what is, what is our culture telling us? Even, even the

34:02

Christian culture, you know, what are you, what are your kids involved in? What do they do? What are they, you know, all those things and do as much as you can.

34:11

Yeah. If they can do it and they're good at it, do it more, you know, that type of thing. But I don't know,

34:16

I don't know how many points I gave towards what a battle ready home is, but I think for sure, prioritizing family time.

34:24

Um, yeah. And I would say even being another thing to be purposeful about is, you know, planning time alone with each of your kids.

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So, you know, you're headed somewhere, grab one of your kids, have them go with you. A lot of good things happen on drives.

34:39

A lot of things come up. Sometimes nothing comes up, but just having the, just having the opportunity of making time for that in case something does come up is, is very valuable.

34:52

Yeah. I cherish the last few years. Wednesdays was with Titus Thursdays where there were Karis, uh, on the way to school.

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And, um, I really, you know, at times we would listen to podcasts, we'd listen to music, but I made sure there was always a time where we would pray together and then just talk about life either on the way there or on the way back.

35:10

Um, and sometimes it was just basic. It didn't, you know, sometimes, I know we can feel this pressure.

35:16

Like we need to make everything significant and meaningful, but to relieve that pressure and say, just be involved in your kid's life because you want to be an influence there.

35:24

You want to be there for them. And we're exhausted and we're tired. And I don't always feel like talking at the end of the day, especially hearing about some random conversation they had with a friend that I don't really care about, but I do care about it.

35:38

Well, there's a lot more that we could say. We're already at 35 minutes. So we should probably start bringing this down.

35:43

We did have a question that I think we'll answer it. And it is relevant to this particular topic. What if I'm hearing this for the first time?

35:50

And my child is 15 and they probably already have been highly shaped by music and entertainment and social media.

35:59

Boy, we're going to need to do one on social media soon. What do I do? Yeah. Yeah. That's a hard one.

36:05

I would say at that age, sit them down and apologize and say,

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Hey, you know, I'm just, I'm just now learning this. And I realized that I really haven't been helping to shape and influence your heart.

36:22

Like I, like I should be like, like the responsibility that God has given me. I think you could totally start with that.

36:29

Yeah. And don't make it like it's their fault. Like, Oh my goodness, we're in this emergency 911 moment because all of a sudden they're going to be afraid of anything that comes out of your mouth.

36:38

You're going to cut everything off. Every conversation is going to be awkward. And my encouragement to you is you always want to be leading your children towards something, not away from something.

36:47

And while you lead them towards something, you naturally leading them away from something. And it's easier to say we're going to walk this direction.

36:54

And eventually they're going to pick up like, well, if we're going that way, I can't be going this way at the same time. Right. And so it's healthier to show them the beauty of Christ and the wonder and the joy and the benefits of Christ than saying, here's all the things we're not going to do.

37:10

Right. Right. Versus, well, if we love Jesus and we love who he is and what he represents and you want to do this, let's match the two together.

37:18

Do they mix? It's kind of like, well, no, I guess they don't. It's like, no, they have two different messages, two different outcomes, two different promises.

37:26

Um, one is telling you that, you know, you can, you know, the, the messaging out to say like, this is like premarital sex is wonderful.

37:35

And it advertised that and it's wonderful and it's normal. Well, let's see how the Bible describes beauty and joy and how the

37:43

Bible describes sexuality. It doesn't describe it that way. And so who are we going to say is right a culture that they can't agree on or a

37:51

God who loves you and gave his son for you. Right. So it's not about telling our kids, no.

37:57

As a matter of fact, I'm probably the worst parent. I don't like saying no. I try and find ways to say yes.

38:02

Even if I have to say no, I'm like, all right, how do I say yes to this? And so when you're dealing with a child that's 15 or 16 and you're like, man,

38:10

I only have a couple of years left. Um, well, maybe you could have many years left if they trust that you love them and you're not trying to be their friend.

38:19

They want you that you need to be their parent. So this idea of like, Oh, we're just going to be friends.

38:25

You've already failed. You're done because they are, they have a lot of friends. They need someone who's going to guide and protect them.

38:32

And so that would be my encouragement to you is I agree. Sit down and say, Hey, look, um, I need to share some things with you that I want both of us to evaluate this relationship that we have as parent and child, but also our relationship with God.

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And all I want for you is to be safe and happy. And I want you to really have joy.

38:51

Does that sound good? Yeah. I don't want to have to tell you no. And I want you to be aware though, that this world is not neutral.

38:59

It wants to hurt you. And as crazy as that sounds, it's my responsibility to shine a light on the danger and give you the hope of Christ.

39:07

That would be my response to that. Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah. And just, um, constantly praying, of course, that God will help you love like you should, because that will be even harder when you are opposed in those ways to continue to show grace and love to him or her and to yourself through, cause it will be a major change.

39:27

It's out, you know, it sounds like, um, so yeah. And just remembering and trusting that God gave you this child.

39:35

It was not an accident. He gave you this child and everything you need to raise him or her or her in the love of Christ.

39:47

So have confidence in that and have faith that God is going to help you. Because again, like we've talked about before, he wants you to glorify him.

39:55

He wants your life to glorify him. And so following that and praying for it and walking in his ways, um, just, just have faith that he's going to bless that.

40:07

That's right. And my last encouragement to you is you are on no circumstances to do this on your own. God has called you into a community of other brothers and sisters and godly men who will shepherd you called elders.

40:18

And you utilize that. If you think your parenting responsibility is up to you on your own, it is not.

40:25

So find comfort in that. Trust the Lord in his means. Well, I'm sure we'll have more questions that come in.

40:30

There's no way we covered everything we wanted to cover, but we started the conversation and I know going forward,

40:36

Judith and I are still processing this. We're new to podcasting. We're new to even talking publicly about our own family.

40:41

This is kind of weird for us. So be patient with us. Please be gracious with us. If you don't agree with us, just use the same tone we're using.

40:49

Just be kind. We're not here to fight. We'll have more coming in the future.

40:56

Please keep your questions. If you'd like to ask a question, you can go to theocast .org, go to Outside Eden's page.

41:02

There's a form there and you can fill that out. If you're in our church, just talk to us on Sunday.