TLP 607: What Would Change in Your Home?

However, the more dangerous scenario is where their attention in class and with their homework is otherwise very good, but completely unaffected by God.

Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way

Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

God the preeminence in their parenting. Thank you for joining us this fine day. I pray you are celebrating

God's goodness in your life and are ready to be challenged and encouraged from his word. Of course,

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God with our parenting. To that end, nearly every episode comes with free notes, a transcript, and links to related resources.

And you can find all of that at the description of today's episode. Okay, so today's topic is an important one because it will confront us with a hypothetical question designed to reveal potential superficiality or a weak foundation or maybe nonexistent foundation in our home.

So let's get started. From time to time, if you've been with us for a while, that is, you've probably heard me ask a question like this.

If tomorrow it were proven with 100 % surety that God doesn't exist and that the

Bible is completely false, what would change in your life? This question originally came to my mind when a friend showed me a new gospel tract he had discovered.

On the front of the tract was a single question, what if you're wrong? Of course, the tract was designed to prompt people to reflect on what if they're wrong about their conviction that God doesn't exist or that the

God of the Bible isn't the real God. But that question, what if you're wrong, has been an important, humbling question

I try to ask myself from time to time, especially when I'm utterly convinced I'm making the right decision.

One day, as I was reflecting on the various implications of finding that what you believe about something is actually false,

I allowed myself to consider, what if I were wrong about the God of the Bible? What if he didn't exist?

What if it were all a lie? And that meditation was very revealing in my life and I hope it is for you as well.

I've asked that question for various reasons over the years on different episodes, but today we're dedicating the whole episode to this question.

We plan to investigate the importance of the question, the potential answers to the question, how to know you're answering the question accurately, and what to do if the answer isn't good.

And please, just to be clear before we start, I fully believe that the God of the Bible absolutely exists and is exactly who he says he is and that the scriptures are 100 % trustworthy and sufficient.

This episode isn't intended to cast any doubt on those realities, but it is designed to cast potential doubt on lies we and our families may tell ourselves.

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Now let's talk about this question. If tomorrow it were proven that God doesn't exist and that the

Bible is completely false, what would change in your life? Number one, the importance of the question.

As was mentioned earlier, this question is not designed to cause us to doubt the veracity of the Bible. By the way, if you do question the legitimacy or the completeness or the sufficiency of the scripture,

I would be honored to help you answer those doubts with concrete evidence. But this is not the time or place for that conversation.

This question is designed to help us identify exactly how much God means to us, exactly how devoted we are to him, and it can reveal whether or not we really believe

God to be who he says he is. Consider this. If my wife, God forbid, were to die tomorrow, that would have a huge impact on my life.

It would affect countless life choices, personal habits, relationships, and for some people who've lost a spouse, where they live.

I can't tell you how many people I've met who just couldn't live in the same home or even sometimes the same city after their spouse died.

People have changed jobs, moved out of the country, broken off relationships, changed the way they dressed, gotten tattoos, and even killed themselves after losing a loved one.

Why is this? Well, this happens because they knowingly or sometimes ignorantly didn't quite realize exactly how important that person had been to them, how influential they had been, and how much of their lives were impacted by that person.

Now, I'm sure you can understand then why this question is important for us to consider. If people make significant life changes when family, friends, or even pets die, if people will change their lives when they realize their political party has been lying to them, if people will practically morph overnight when one or two of their long -held beliefs change, then don't you think your life would have to change pretty significantly if tomorrow you stopped believing in God?

Well, with that groundwork laid, number two, the answers to the question. If tomorrow it were proven that God doesn't exist and that the

Bible is completely false, what would change in your life? As far as I can deduce, and I recognize that I am super limited and might have missed something, here are the available options.

Letter A, everything changes. Let's play this out for a second. If I believe in God, and absolutely everything in my life is impacted by that belief, and I were to stop believing it, then everything would have to change in some way or another.

Everything would be affected. Now, obviously, God -focused activities like praying, and reading the Bible, and assembling with the church, and listening to Christian music, and evangelizing, and counseling and discipling would all absolutely stop.

There would be no reason to continue doing any of it. But then there's all the other stuff that was motivated by my belief in God.

For example, if I exercise any moderation at all when I eat because I want to please the Lord by not being gluttonous and glorifying

Him whether I'm eating or drinking, I now no longer have that motivation. Now, that doesn't mean

I'll automatically start eating like a cow, but I might. But the motivation for eating the way

I have been must change. It will change, even if I don't make any changes to the food I'm eating.

Now, if I continue to eat the same way, I'll have to do it for new and or different reasons, my health, or my kids, or my wife, or my vanity.

But my eating will, in fact, be impacted if I stopped believing in God. And the same would be true for how

I spend my money, the type of entertainment I consume, the vehicles I drive, the stores I patronize, the habits

I have, and of course, how I parent. Now you may be hearing me explain this, and you would say, well, to be honest, the car

I drive, and the clothes I wear, and the food I eat, and the movies I watch have never really been motivated by God, but I can understand why

I wouldn't go to church anymore if I stopped believing in Him. Well, then you'd fall under the next category, letter B, something changes.

For people in this category, the obviously quote -unquote religious activities like prayer, Bible reading,

Christian music, and church attendance would stop. But all of the quote -unquote average daily slash practical things they do that they believe aren't dictated or motivated by God's word would stay the same.

They'd be doing the same things for the same reasons because God wasn't really influencing them anyway. And I might guess that that person in this category probably doesn't have much of a habit of other more significant religious activities like evangelizing and discipling.

Of course, if they did, those would stop too. And then there's the last category. We have the everything changes category, the something changes category, and letter

C, the nothing changes category. Few to none of their daily choices were made with God in mind at all.

And if they prayed, or opened a Bible, or went to church, it was under duress, or in a time of distress, or just never.

Therefore, very little to anything at all would change if they stopped believing in God tomorrow. So now, before moving on to our third point,

I want to revisit the last point, the importance of the question. I'm sure we can all understand how a devout

Christian would have their lives turned upside down if the existence of the Christian God were categorically disproven.

And I'm also sure that most people who listen to this podcast understand that if nothing in the individual's life changed, were they to stop believing in God, that's actually an indicator that they never really believed in God in the first place.

I think we can all agree that's a significant problem. That's a quote -unquote nominal Christian who at best occasionally participated in religious activities because of the perceived benefit.

But what about this middle category, this something changes category? What about the category where there appeared to be weekly choices made with God in mind, but the majority of the daily choices didn't consider

Him at all? My friends, I'd suggest that this category is actually the most dangerous.

Here's why. I found that many nominal Christians are pretty quick to abandon God when

His expectations become too uncomfortable for them. This is why they rarely pray, read their

Bibles, or even go to church. In counseling, these individuals will put up a fight for a little while. They'll argue for their salvation and their belief in God.

But over time, as the high biblical expectations are applied to their lives, the expectations that Jesus calls the drought because of the word and the parable of the soils, these individuals are actually quite quick to jettison their supposedly cherished beliefs.

But the middle of the road group, they represent two extremes. One extreme is this unbeliever we've just spoken about whose traditions are more important to her.

She'll read her Bible more than maybe other professing believers. She may pray more and go to church more, and she may even lead a gospel tract from time to time.

Of course, her eating and entertainment and spending and parenting are motivated by any number of things other than glorifying

God. In fact, some of it may be motivated by an idea that looks an awful lot like glorifying

God, but is nothing more nor less than legalistic obligations she believes God wants of her. However, on the other side of this middle ground are the genuine, yet very immature

Christians. They're actually born again, but they're young in the faith. The milk of the word is really all they can handle right now, and there are so many facets of their lives that are untouched by God and His glory.

What makes this middle ground so dangerous is that everyone in it passionately believes they're a

Christian, whether they are or not. Now hopefully you can see the significance of this question.

A genuine answer has the ability to reveal the spiritual life and health of your home and individual family members.

A child whose life would go completely unchanged should concern you, but so should a child who would have only minor changes here or there.

If your home would carry on exactly as it is today, even if everyone in your home stopped believing in God tomorrow, that means that the people in your home don't really believe in God right now.

Now before I continue, I want to share two resources that will help you if you want to understand these claims better. The first is called the

Mearest Christianity series. That series biblically substantiates the statements I've made about the nature and necessity of faith and belief as well as the practical outworking of it.

The second is called the Four Children series. That series unveils how to biblically tell if your kids truly believe

God or just think they do. The answer is based off how they respond to truth. But before we can talk too much about how to address the spiritual problems this question may reveal, we have to talk about number three, how to know if you're answering the question accurately.

You see, literally anyone can form the words, everything in my life would change if God were proven to not exist.

An atheist possesses the ability to say those words. An actor would be more than happy to be paid to say those words.

A person can even say them and believe them but be personally deceived. I can't tell you how many times in my own life my actions have proven that I'm not trusting

God when I would tell you that I am. So since this question and its answer are so important, we have to be diligent to make sure we're answering it honestly.

Otherwise it's no good. In fact, it's dangerous because it could actually give someone false confidence. Now a whole episode, maybe even a short series could be dedicated to figuring out if we're lying to ourselves and or others.

On that note, we do have a three -part series about parenting lying children, but let me lay out a couple of integral thoughts before we talk about how to fix the problems our answers reveal.

Letter A. Our choices must carry more weight than our words. Patch the

Pirate used to say that our talk talks and our walk talks, but our walk talks louder than our talk talks.

What this means is that people can lie. They can say false things whether they know it or not, but our actions rarely lie.

If I say I love my wife but I treat her like garbage or cheat on her, my actions have called my words a lie.

Now, it's easy to understand a point like this when we use hypothetical or hypobolic examples, but the truth still stands in what may appear to be a gray area.

A child who says he loves God but who lives in rebellion to his parents is showing that if he does at times love

God, it's definitely being contradicted by his current disobedience. In the same way, a person who says they love the

Lord but who rarely, if ever, reads the Bible, prays, or spends time with God's people is lying to themselves.

Again, a simple example always reveals the truth of this claim. No one will believe your daughter if she says she absolutely loves her boyfriend, but she hates spending time with him, tries to cut phone conversations short, ghosts his texts, and doesn't tell anyone about him.

No one would believe she loves him. No one should. Then why do we believe someone who says they love

God but who lives with little to no real concern given to him and his desires? But our choices aren't the final authority, let her be.

Our motivations must carry more weight than our choices. I can tell you that I love

God and you can see that my entertainment choices are pure and clean. However, if through conversation

I reveal to you that the only reason I watch clean movies is I want to impress my in -laws, or I don't want to get kicked out of my church, or I'm prejudiced against anything

I believe to be below me, or any other reason that reveals I'm doing it for my own glory based off of my own criteria, then

God isn't pleased. That's called idolatry. We impact this reality in our

Teach Your Children to Obey series. In that study, we look to the scriptures to learn that what we do and how we do it means nothing in comparison to why we do it.

But even our perceived motivations aren't the final authority. Let her see,

God's word must carry more weight than our motivations. What I mean is this, someone who lives in the darkness of their sin can shout until they're blue in the face that they're a child of God.

But when 1 John 1 .6 says, if we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not do the truth,

God's word has to win. When the scriptures reveal that someone who is being sanctified will be growing in the and be following the path laid out in 2

Peter 1 .5 -7, we don't get to contradict that. Let God be true and every man a liar.

The scriptures have to be the standard. By the way, if that doesn't sit well with you, then let me tell you that if God's word isn't the standard in your life, if it isn't absolute truth, then

God isn't who he says he is and you'd be better off not listening to him at all. So if these three principles are weighed against our answers, our choices weighing more than our words, our motivations counting for more than our moral -looking choices, and God's word ultimately being the final arbiter of them all, then if what we say lines up with the biblical truth, our choices, and our motivations, then we and our family members have answered honestly.

Otherwise, we're either deceived or deceiving. The answer to this question is a sham unless there's consistent, honest submission to the scriptures.

So, let's say that your family were asked, if tomorrow it were proven that God doesn't exist and that the

Bible is completely false, what would change in your life? And let's say that the answers were honest and accurate.

Number four, what to do if the answer isn't good. Letter A, if everything in yours or your spouse's or your child's life would have to completely change because there would be no more reason to do it, no more motivation for doing it the way you're doing it, then you have just revealed something very encouraging.

It doesn't mean you're perfect. It doesn't mean that you're better than anyone else. It simply means that by God's grace, you and your family are striving to do the right things in the right ways for the right reasons.

It means that you love the Lord enough that if you could stop believing him, which you can't, obviously everything in your life would have to change.

But let's consider the nothing category and then the something category. Letter B, if nothing in your family's life would change, that means that God clearly isn't that important to you.

I would argue, using the scriptures, that you're deluded and deceived and that whatever belief you think you have is either only a partial belief or simply knowledge and mere mental acquiescence.

If you have a son or a daughter who would continue talking the way they do and listening to the music they do and hanging out with the same friends and responding to you the way they do, then none of it was truly motivated by God and his glory or there would be no reason to continue doing it.

And if it were all self -serving from the beginning and the problem was evident before the question was asked. When I counsel, you might not believe how many people

I've encountered who have honestly acknowledged that nothing in their lives would change. And then they either admit that they never really took

God seriously or they have this honest moment with themselves when they realize that they've only been playing a game.

Many people in this category end up shuffling off religion, deconstruct, and become agnostics or atheists.

By God's grace, though, some of them are convicted and are truly born again. But what about that mushy middle category?

Letter C, if only some things in your life would change, you need to give very careful thought to the implications.

Whether it's your whole family or just one of you, this answer needs to be carefully investigated. Here's why.

First, it reveals immaturity. At best, the individuals with this answer are truly born again, but they're very immature.

Their answer reveals that the areas in which they wouldn't change are the areas in which they need to better know

God, understand him, and submit to him. And honestly, I mean seriously, none of us fall into the everything would change category.

I think we're all probably in the some things would change category. Just for the more mature ones, more things would change, and for the less immature ones, fewer things would change.

But let me give you one example. Let's say how your child interacts with their academics wouldn't change at all if they stopped believing in God.

This might be because they're unashamedly lazy or cheaters or foolish, and that's an issue regardless of their answer to the question.

However, the more dangerous scenario is where their attention in class and their homework and their pursuit of knowledge is otherwise very good, but completely unaffected by God and his word and his intentions and his desires and his expectations.

This reveals unbelief. It shows that belief, love, and submission to God aren't the motivations for their academics.

That means that their academics are pursued for their own glory and in their own power. That's called idolatry.

So I hope you're seeing that if you walked through all of the decisions you or your child make in a week, and you considered what effect disbelieving

God would have on those decisions, any time you find a decision unaffected by God, you've uncovered an area for spiritual growth.

That's really beneficial. It gives our parenting some real focus as we seek to rear our kids in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord. But remember, this is a best -case scenario. The other reality is that, second, it reveals unregeneration.

Yes, a Christian sins. Unfortunately, I sin on a daily basis. I'm trying to grow and mature in my walk with the

Lord so that I sin less and less, but it's still my reality. Our sin is a result of spiritual immaturity that we should want to address.

But unbelievers sin just like Christians sin and for the same reasons. The trick is identifying whether the sinner in front of us is a believer who has slipped once again into self -worship or an unbeliever perpetually in their self -worship.

If there are areas in your life or your kids' lives that would be completely unchanged, you need to identify if it's a result of spiritual weakness or spiritual death.

And remember, they're identical on the surface. The key to discovering spiritual counterfeits is the same as discovering counterfeit currency.

Don't spend your time looking at the problem. Look at the truth. We have an episode called, The Second Most Important Question You Need to Ask Your Kids.

That episode helps us move past the counterfeit to consider the biblical realities against which we should be comparing the potential counterfeit.

I would also strongly recommend the 4 Children series I mentioned earlier. This is an absolutely invaluable resource

I use all of the time in my life, my parenting, my discipleship, and my counseling. In cases like this, we need to get to the root.

Does your child truly believe in the God of the Bible? We're not asking what they know about God.

We're not asking if they like the idea of God or philosophically can justify the existence of God. We're looking for genuine life -altering belief.

If it's not there, then your child's lack of change—were they to stop believing in God ?—is actually just a revelation that they never actually believed in Him in the first place.

It's revealing spiritual death. And as we close, let's reflect on Matthew 7, 15 -27, based on everything we've just learned.

Quote, Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my

Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, in your name did we not prophesy, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many miracles?

And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

True, genuine good fruit that's a result of spiritual life and empowerment is the right thing done in the right way and for the right reasons.

The reasons need to be for God's glory and pleasure and because He's worth it. The way is in accordance to His commands.

So if tomorrow it were proven that God doesn't exist and that the Bible is completely false, what would change in your life or in your kids' lives?

Now that's not going to happen. God isn't going to be categorically disproven, but reflecting on that question is still very valuable as it will definitively reveal areas of spiritual immaturity in your family's life, but it may also reveal spiritual death.

On regenerate hearts that may think they're born again, but who are simply deceived. God forbid anyone in our homes leave believing they have a relationship with God if they don't.

Please share this episode with your pastor, friends, and family, and make sure you subscribe. And if you have more questions or would like individualized assistance in identifying the spiritual state of your household, please email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com

or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894. And don't forget our goal for our 10th anniversary.

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forward slash donate. And join us next time as we consider the biblical reality and implications of the fact that change demands death.

I'll see you then. Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship

God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study God's word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness.

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