Kevin DeYoung Reveals #ThePlan - Culture War for Christians

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Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.

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All right, well, let's jump right in today. I wanted to do a video about a

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Kevin DeYoung article, and it was from the Gospel Coalition. It was published on the 17th, which was yesterday, and it is titled,

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A Time for a New Culture War Strategy. Now, before I begin, I just wanted to say that a couple weeks ago,

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I put out a video and I asked everybody to share it, and the point of the video, it was like a two -minute clip, and the point of the video was

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I was asking, just kind of out loud, who's going to be the man within Big Eva, you know, big evangelicalism, the evangelical machine, the conference -speaking circuit, who's going to be the guy who breaks ranks with the social justice warriors?

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Who's going to be the guy that says, enough of this woke church nonsense, enough is enough, you cannot do this, this is pagan, this is sinful, this is anti -biblical, anti -gospel, in almost every single way.

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Who's going to be the guy that's going to do that? He's going to get de -platformed, he'll get kicked off his blog, he'll get kicked out of the conference -speaking circuit, he'll probably lose book deals.

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But I want to know, who's going to be the guy who shows some backbone to this stuff?

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Because I know there are some people that are in Big Eva who know that this is not right. And so I want to know, who's going to be the one that's going to risk their career in order to do what's right before God?

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And I ask in the video, kind of rhetorically, is it Kevin DeYoung? Is it Kevin DeYoung?

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Because Kevin DeYoung has, as far as I can tell, hasn't really bowed the knee as aggressively as a lot of Big Eva.

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In fact, I can't think of very many instances where he's even said anything kind of woke -ish.

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Now he has said some things that are kind of, you know, squish, which, you know, that's just part of Big Eva.

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Squish factor is part of Big Eva. But he hasn't bowed the knee as aggressively.

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By the way, let me just step out for a second. If you're sick and tired of squish factor, you're sick and tired of people nuancing things so much that it doesn't even have any meaning anymore, if you're sick of your

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Big Eva leaders doing that, please consider joining the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network club, because the

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Fight, Laugh, Feast Network is the anti -squish. You've heard a lot about anti -racism the last few weeks. Well, Fight, Laugh, Feast Network is anti -squish.

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We like to nuance things over at the Fight, Laugh, Feast Club, or I'm sorry, the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network, but we nuance things with teeth.

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We don't pull punches. We try to be as fair as possible. We try to be as biblical as possible, but we're not afraid to look like a lunatic.

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And we don't want to be lunatics. We want to be totally biblical, but sometimes when you're totally biblical and you refuse to pull punches where the

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Bible doesn't pull punches, you look like a lunatic. And I can guarantee you the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network is not afraid of that.

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We're worried about honoring God. We're not worried about honoring the masses. And so if you're sick of squish, join the

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Fight, Laugh, Feast Network club. Use the show code ROBLES, R -O -B -L -E -S. Now let's get back to the video because this article by Kevin DeYoung is actually pretty good.

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I'm going to try my best not to interrupt the article. I'm just going to read it and then give you my take. Here is what he says.

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It's time for a new culture war strategy. It's been a year of bad news, and for conservative

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Christians, the Supreme Court brought more bad news on Monday. In a 6 -3 decision, the

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Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

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While it is still possible for religious liberties exemptions to be carved out by the Congress, the ruling in Bostock v.

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Clayton County will have far -reaching consequences, including, Princeton's Robert George says, the eventual destruction of all women's sports.

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Without explicit legal protections, religious institutions with traditional read what has been believed by most of Western history, convictions around homosexuality and transgenderism will likely face a torrent of litigation in the years ahead.

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To add insult to injury, for many conservatives, the majority opinion was written by Neil Gorsuch.

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Trump celebrated SCOTUS' appointee. And note, many Republican senators are backing the surprise ruling as well.

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The prospect of a Gorsuch -type justice was the reason many Christians voted for Trump.

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Many of these voters went to bed on Monday feeling disappointed and disillusioned. I am not making an argument whether it was right or wrong for Christians to vote for Trump in 2016 or whether they should or shouldn't vote for him in 2020.

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That's a little bit of that squish factor that we were talking about. Back to the article. My point is simply to remind evangelicals that politics and politicians will almost always disappoint.

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It's always been a mistake to think we are one president or one Supreme Court justice away from a resounding victory in the culture war.

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Maybe there are more important ways to promote Christian virtue and preserve Christian orthodoxy in the world.

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Some people take Rod Dreher's Benedict option to mean a wholesale retreat from public square.

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That's not the way of faithfulness. We must continue to make the case for Christian convictions and continue to be involved in politics, in higher education, in the media, and wherever else we can be a faithful presence.

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But retreat is not really the point of the Benedict option. Dreher's point has always been that we must recommit ourselves to strengthening alternative institutions, investing in countercultural church communities, and catechizing our own children.

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Let me underscore that last item. I am grateful for serious Christians involved in the political arena.

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What happens in DC matters. Elections have consequences, but families have more.

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To marshal our energies as if political victories were more important than strengthening the family is a decidedly unconservative position.

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I'm not calling for abandoning politics, but I am asking the question, what does it profit a man if he gets textualist on the

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Supreme Court but loses his own children? Here's a culture war strategy conservative

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Christians should get behind. Have more children and disciple them like crazy.

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Strongly consider having more children than you think you can handle. You don't have to be a fertility maximalist to recognize that children are always lauded as a blessing in the

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Bible. Maybe on another occasion I'll write about the triumph of birth control in the 20th century and how it happened with little theological reflection from the church.

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But for now, let me at least nudge you in the direction of John Frame. It seems to me that birth control is permissible in many situations, but it bears a high burden of proof.

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It can be a responsible choice, but it is probably overused. As I've said before, in the not -too -distant future, the only couples replacing themselves in America will be religious couples.

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Although there are many good reasons to have a baby, at the end of the day, as Jonathan Last maintains, there is only one good reason to go through the trouble a second time, because you believe, in some sense, that God wants you to.

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The basic reason countries stop having children is they've come to see offspring as a liability rather than as a source of hope.

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As Christians, we know better. Do you want to rebel against the status quo? Do you want people to ask you for a reason for the hope that is within you?

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Tote your brood of children through Target. There is almost nothing more countercultural than having more children.

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And once we have those children, there is almost nothing more important than catechizing them in the faith, developing their moral framework, and preparing them to be deeply compassionate lovers of God, and lovers of people, and relentlessly biblical lovers of truth.

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I understand that being a good parent does not guarantee believing children. I understand that many couples will be unable to have all the children they want to have.

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We have to allow for God to work in mysterious ways that we would not have planned. And yet, in so far as we are able, let us welcome new life and give our children the best opportunity for new birth.

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Presidents and Supreme Court justices will come and go. A child's soul will last forever. The future belongs to the fecund.

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Fecund? I don't know that word. But then again, I went to public school. It's time for happy warriors who seek to renew the city and win the culture war by investing in their local church, focusing on the family, and bringing the kingdom to bear on the world one baby at a time.

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All right, I looked up the word fecund and it means fertile. So in case you went to public school like me, it means fertile.

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That's the end of the article. That's the end of the article. And let me just say this, that I agree.

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I agree completely. This is the strategy, gentlemen. This is the strategy.

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This is what, you know, in the beginning of this year, I started selling No Despair t -shirts and I started hashtagging things

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No Despair 2020. This happened in January. So this is before all the insanity that started this year.

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And I don't think I could have picked a better year to sell No Despair t -shirts. You know what

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I mean? No Despair. Because despair is actually the opposite of hope. When you're in despair, you have no hope.

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And as Christians, we want people to be asking us, what is the reason for the hope we have within us?

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What is the reason that you're not in despair like the rest of us? And to me, one of the primary reasons for that, well, obviously the primary reason is because of Jesus Christ, right?

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We trust the Lord. We trust him to be good to his people. And as his people, though bad things might happen to us, we always know that the things that happen to us, whether good or bad, whether something as good as an inheritance or as bad as you're being enslaved, all of that stuff is a blessing from God for his people.

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Everything works out for good for God's people, for those who love the

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Lord, right? We know that. And so that's why we have hope. That's why we're not in despair like everybody else. But there's another reason why we can not be in despair is because God has revealed himself to his people, right?

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God has revealed what he's like to his people. It's not like he put us out there in the darkness and expected us to figure out what he's like.

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So the natural world shows us what God is like, but he chose to go a step further. He gave us specific revelation in his word, and he told us what he was like in very detailed ways, right?

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Not exhausted, but very detailed. And then he went a step further. He said, here's what you should do.

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So here's my world that I created. It can tell you things about me. Here's what I'm like. He wrote it down in a book.

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And then he said, here's what you should do now. And the thing is, our marching orders as Christians are really very simple.

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They're very simple. He gave us simple commands on what to do. And building a culture, making the world better, improving upon what

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God created was part and parcel of that mission. And there's so many different ways you can go to do that, right?

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There's different things, different tasks, different callings that every person has. But working on building is something that is a very simple thing to do, simple to work on, although the outworkings of that might be more or less complex, depending on who you are and what you're up to.

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Somebody asked me if I could defend from the scripture engaging in a culture war.

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Why would you engage in a culture war? We should be a people about the gospel. She didn't say this, but that's what she was asking.

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She was saying, how can you defend being in a culture war? And I said, well, it's very simple. Because God commanded us to build culture in the garden with a dominion mandate when he told

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Adam to take dominion and to work the garden. It wasn't just to maintain the garden and to keep it the way it was.

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No, it was to improve upon the garden. That's what God wanted Adam to do. Now, Adam decided he wasn't going to do that.

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He was going to do his own thing. And then, of course, we know what happened in the fall. And then we saw

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Christ, the second Adam, accomplishing that task. In fact, when Christ resurrects from the dead, the first thing that he's seen doing is working the land, gardening.

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If you remember, someone thought he was the gardener when he appeared after his resurrection. I think the reason they thought he was the gardener is probably because he was working the land, right?

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But even if we didn't have that, if you say, okay, A .D., you're reading too much into that. Okay, fine. But the Great Commission is likewise a command to faithfulness and a command to disciple the nations, to build a godly culture.

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You see, because the Christian culture should be different than the pagan culture. And so when we're teaching the nations, we're baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then we're teaching them to obey all that Christ commands.

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That's basically what God's telling us to do there is to disciple the nations, to act the way

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God told them to act, to love the Lord the way God told them to love the Lord, to put their faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ the way God told them to put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And now there are hard ways to do that.

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And then there are easy ways to do that. And this is why we should have no despair because, look, trying to change politics and change the members of Congress and change the

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SCOTUS and change the presidency and to change these huge gigantic systems of oppression and systemic injustice, that is very, very complicated.

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And you don't have control of other people, right? You don't have control over what the

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Congress does. You have a measure of control based on who you vote and based on other things.

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But you have, it's very difficult. It's complicated. It's complex. I'm not saying don't try.

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I'm not saying don't do that. But you have to understand that's a very complex situation that you have very little control over.

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And here's what I am saying. In your family, in your individual family units, in your church, you have a lot more control over what happens.

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It's a much easier play to train your children in the way that they should go because your children believe what you say.

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And so if you're teaching a Congresswoman, like let's say Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez, and you say,

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Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez, here's what the Lord commands. And you go through the Ten Commandments with Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez, or you tell her about the story of David and Goliath.

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You tell her about the story about King Saul and Solomon and all the things.

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I was telling my sons about Nebuchadnezzar, God turning him into a beast. If you try to tell

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Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez that, and she decides she's not a believer, there's really not much you can do there.

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She's her own person. She's an adult. You know what I mean? You can hope that the Holy Spirit will change her mind.

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You can give her that gospel because that's the only thing that will change her mind. But that's just up to God.

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And it's true with our children as well, but God gave certain children to Christian families because he wants them to be discipled, and he gives us a promise.

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He says if you train a kid in the way he should go, even when he's older, he won't depart from it. So when I tell my children about the story about King Nebuchadnezzar and how he was so proud of himself and he was on top of his rooftops saying,

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I'm so great, look at me, and then God turns him into a beast. You know what my children believe?

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They believe that Nebuchadnezzar stood on top of his rooftops one day, thought about how great he was, and God turned him into a beast.

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And they don't even question it. And they don't even question. Now when they're older, they're going to start thinking for themselves, and then they're going to, you know, they're going to start thinking, well, why do

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I believe this kind of stuff? And the thing is, like, I trust the Holy Spirit to work that out with my children. But you see, when

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I tell my son that there's three persons in the Godhead, and it's the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and they know that, and they memorize that, and it becomes part of how they understand the world,

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I trust the Lord that when they grow older, that will continue to be part of how they see the world.

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They will continue to know that if they need help, or if they're scared at night, they wake up in a terror, and they do all this kind of stuff, they can pray to God and God will help them.

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If they are lacking courage in a certain situation. One of my sons, he was having a hard time taking showers because he hated when the water came onto his face, and he would just scream bloody murder.

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And my wife and I would tell him, look, when you need courage, you know, just pray to God and he'll help you with that.

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And you should just see this, he's five, you know, and he's just praying, God, please help me not to be scared of the water.

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And you know, for the first few times, he's still scared of the water. And then one day, it just clicked with him, and he started getting his face all wet.

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And then he was practicing, he was saying, okay, God, please help me be brave. And he'd go into the water, and he'd do it again, and he'd do it again.

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And this is the thing, man, this is the thing, when in your family, there's a lot more that you can control.

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In your family, there's a lot more that you can control. And in your church, there's a lot more than you can control and your local assemblies, your local bodies, your local government, there's a lot more than you can control.

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I'm not saying abandon the big things. I'm not saying abandon the big things. But here's the reality.

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If you've got no discipline, and you're not discipling the small things, the things that are in your control, the things that God has many promises about, like, let's just face it.

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God doesn't promise that when you tell Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez something, that something's going to happen. No. Instead, he promises if you teach your kids something, something's going to happen.

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It's not a formula, right? It's not like you can say, well, if I do X, Y, Z, then this is the result.

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No, it's not like that. But there is a promise there. There is some meaning to that verse in the Proverbs, where it says, train up a child in the way you should go.

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And even when he's older, all that kind of thing. You see, God brought man and woman together as a family because he wanted godly offspring, right?

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He wanted godly offspring. So I think he intends to give those that he brings together as man and woman into a family.

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I think he intends to give them godly offspring. This is the plan, gentlemen. This is the plan.

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This is how we take over the world. We have a bunch of kids, and we teach them to love the

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Lord. We teach them what God's universe is like. Let the pagans teach their kids that they might be a girl, and it's okay to use the girl's room, and they might be a third way, and they might be a dragon kin and all that.

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Let them teach them all that nonsense. You can't control that. You can't control that.

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Now, if you want to fight that kind of stuff in the public square, go have at it.

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Have at it. Fight it out. Duke it out. Because the reality is that showing a backbone in the face of insanity, in the face of totalitarians, is another way you can train your kids.

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I saw Jacob Brunton. Jacob Brunton has a lot of good things to say. Some people don't like Jacob, and I can understand.

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He can be a bit of a serrated edge. I don't agree with everything Jacob Brunton says, but Jacob Brunton has a lot of smart things to say.

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One of the things he said is, one way to disciple your kids is to stand up for what's true, and to show them that you don't have to go along with the crowd, and that's 100 % right.

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So stand up for that stuff, but focus on those kids, man, because God doesn't promise that you'll have a victory with King Nebuchadnezzar.

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He does make victories with that, right? He does change the heart of the king sometimes as well, but he does have a lot to say about your kids.

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He claims those people. That's why I baptize my kids, because those are Christ's kids. Those are Christ's kids, and I'm going to teach them as if they were

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Christ's kids. And so, you know, as I watch my kids grow up and understand more about the world, and they understand more about God, and they understand more about what it means to be one of God's people, man, hearing my sons, he's five years old, man, pray at night,

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God, please help me put on the full armor of God. And he doesn't understand the nuances there, but when they're five, they understand at a five -year -old level.

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And when he's six, he'll understand at a six -year -old level, God willing. When he's 10, he'll understand at a 10 -year -old level.

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And you move on from there. It's going to be part of how they understand the world. See, nobody teaches their son that the sky is blue expecting for the son not to believe that the sky is blue.

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You see what I mean? So this is the reality. This is a great culture war strategy, because it's a long game, right?

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We don't give up the short game, but we play the long game. You understand what

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I'm saying? I want to have a victory right now. That's what my whole YouTube channel is about. I want victory now.

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But I understand that sometimes this is not how God works. He doesn't do a cataclysmic thing all the time.

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He does sometimes, like when he struck Nebuchadnezzar, turned him into a beast, and then he woke him up again, there was an instant change there.

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There was an instant change there with King Nebuchadnezzar. He does that. But, this is what the guys across politics say all the time, we run all the plays.

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We want a quick victory, but we want to set ourselves up for a long victory as well. That's why this is a great article.

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If you're a single Christian, that's fine if you've got a good reason to be a single Christian.

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If you're doing the work of ministry and it's a situation that requires you to be single, okay, there could be some exceptions there, but most

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Christians should be seeking to raise Godly offspring to the Lord.

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That's what I'm talking about, baby. This is what the essence of no despair is, because God's commands for families are simple.

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Disciple those in your care that it's most easy to disciple, and move on from there.

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Don't give up the public square. Don't give up the play to try to get a quick victory, but at the same time, play that long game.

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Make sure you're playing that long game, because as the pagans off each other in record numbers as they're killing each other in the streets, as they're killing their own offspring in the womb, as they're enjoying relationships that do not produce offspring, we'll be over here living in God's universe.

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You can have the upside down. We'll stay in God's universe, and before you know it, the place is going to be full of us.

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What are you going to do then? Anyway, I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless.

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Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.