TLP 452: Welcome Back!

Truth.Love.Parent.

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That's a scenario that few families have available to them. Most families flounder through their daily lives with no idea what

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God has for them and no one willing to help them grow. But you have access to everything you need for life and godliness.

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Welcome to Truth, Love, Parents, where we use God's Word to become intentional premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, AM Brewster. Welcome back. It is so great to be back in the studio with you.

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If you didn't know, most of the episodes we published this summer were some of our favorite episodes from previous years.

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And though I recorded a new introduction to each of them, I really miss creating new content and sharing it with you.

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But there was one original episode this summer. You should definitely check out episode 450. It's called

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Yes, Your Children's Lives Are Meaningless and Why They Need to Know That. And it's linked in today's description.

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I really enjoyed that episode and I pray that it benefits you. Can you guys believe that we've been podcasting now for five years?

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I'm not going to take the time today to step back through the past five years and recount all of the blessings and hardships, but I am going to thank the

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Lord for his sustaining grace and I want to thank you as well. Thank you to all who subscribe and regularly listen to this podcast.

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Thank you for telling your pastors and friends and coworkers about TLP. Thank you for following and liking and sharing our content on social media.

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Thank you for your donations. Thank you for shopping on Amazon using our affiliate links. Thank you for praying.

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Thank you for trusting and thank you for blessing us in the many, many ways that you have. I'm honored to be invited into your family life on a weekly basis, and I'm hoping we're going to be seeing a lot more of each other this year.

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So with that, let's talk about season 20 and the biblical family resources and opportunities that are available to you.

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Today's episode is really for everyone, whether you've been following us for the past five years or this is your first episode,

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I want to tell you about how we can help your family take their next spiritual steps this year. When it came time for Truth Love Parent to become a nonprofit, the government wanted us to identify our purpose.

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What does our nonprofit really hope to accomplish? Well, the board and I were able to identify three key areas where we hoped to help families, including yours.

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And if you check out the description of today's episode, you will find handy links that will take you directly to all of the resources

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I discussed today. Number one, we train families. Most of my adult life has been spent ministering to families.

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Much of that time has been spent with families in crisis, broken homes, and at -risk family situations.

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As many of you know, I used to work at Victory Academy for Boys, a boarding school for at -risk teens. Every year,

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I invited up to eight teen boys to live in my home with me and my family. That time was so rewarding, so painful, so instructional, and also so heavy.

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I actually started Truth Love Parent as a way to help the broken families to whom I was ministering while at Victory Academy.

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But I soon found that Christians all over the place, with drastically different family experiences, were hungry for the same biblical parenting content that we produced for Victory.

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That's why I decided to invest myself full -time in Truth Love Parent. I want to train Christian families from every walk of life how to find, understand, and implement

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God's will for their lives. That's why the Bible is at the center of all we do. The Bible has absolutely everything our families need for life and godliness.

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There are no questions or struggles that will fall outside of God's relevant Word. So here are some of the ways we train families.

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Obviously, this podcast is one way. This podcast is now five years old and has over 450 episodes, 99 .9

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% of which are as relevant and practical as the day they were published. And because they are rooted in God's Word, they will be evergreen until the

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Lord returns. Now, since there is so much content, I found that new listeners get the most benefit from approaching the podcast in these two ways.

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A. Some of our listeners stay up to date with the newest episodes, but they also search the past episodes for topics that apply to their families right now.

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They get the best of both worlds by taking advantage of the new but also dipping into the old. B. Other of our listeners stay up to date with the newest episodes, but they also go all the way back and work their way through from the beginning.

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The material is presented carefully enough that you don't have to listen to other episodes to understand what's going on, aka enjoying the newer ones, but the episodes are also built on each other and exist within seasons with common themes.

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Listening to them in order helps people appreciate how the information grows and layers from year to year. But keep in mind, whichever way you choose to dive in, don't miss the newest episodes.

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Don't just go back to the beginning and start working your way through and not catch up to the newest episodes until you get to them sometime down the road.

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I say this not because the newer episodes are better than the rest and you just have to hear them first, but because we often have special guests on the show and love to do giveaways.

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If you don't stay on top of those new episodes, you may miss our awesome giveaways. By the way, you can check out

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TruthLoveParent .com forward slash giveaways to see our past competitions as well as our all -new 5th anniversary giveaway.

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We'll be giving away a five -piece bundle to one happy family, so check out our giveaways page

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ASAP and learn how you can win that bundle of biblical parenting goodness. But did you know that Truth Love Parent with A .M.

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Brewster is not our only podcast? We also created the Celebration of God podcast. Every year, that podcast steps you through the year -long

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Celebration of God, a discipleship experience designed to help you worship God every moment of every day and help your fellow disciples do the same.

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I created the Celebration of God as a discipleship resource for parents because everything we do as dads and moms should fall under either evangelism parenting or discipleship parenting.

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So definitely check out the Celebration of God and add it to your podcast listening. With that podcast,

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I suggest you do listen to the introductory episodes first and then just keep up with the newest episodes and then check out our past series from time to time.

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Once you learn more about the Celebration of God, you'll understand why I suggest you approach it in this way. But that's not where the training stops.

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All TLP followers have access to most of our website, which is filled with tons of free articles, resource suggestions, games, holiday celebration ideas, and so much more.

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But if you sign up to be part of the TLP family, you also gain access to even more resources created just for you.

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The best part, though, of joining the TLP family is the content, but the second best part is that it's free.

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And then our TLP friends, those who support the ministry financially, get a bunch of free stuff from the

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TLP store. And speaking of the TLP store, we have a ton of family -related products and we're slowly expanding it to include more training opportunities.

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You can sign up for all of our free email parenting courses, and we're working on video courses and workshops as well.

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And speaking of workshops, we offer live, in -person, and virtual conferences, workshops, and training events.

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Whether it's a TLP meetup, free to all of our TLP family members and TLP friends, by the way, or it's a full

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Truth Love conference, we would love to serve you and your community in a more personal way. You can check out the conference tab at truthloveparent .com

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or go to ambruster .com to learn more about how you can add us to an event that you're already hosting or how to host a full

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Truth Love Parent event. Like I said, there are so many training opportunities for you and your family, whether in the podcasts, online, live and in -person, or pre -recorded, and we're constantly working on more, the vast majority of which are free.

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And we encourage you to take advantage of as many of those as possible this year. But we don't just train families.

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Number two, Truth Love Parent trains anyone who works with families. We work with pastors, biblical counselors, teachers, mentors, disciplers, family ministers, youth workers, and more.

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We call it family discipleship training, and it's available for absolutely anyone who wants to better understand how to help hurting families or disciple families in general.

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As a biblical counselor, I frequently receive phone calls and emails from people who know a family that needs help.

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Oftentimes the conversation sounds like this, Hey Aaron, I have this family I'm wondering if you could work with.

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But here's the thing. I'm just one guy, and I believe the best help comes from the local body of believers. Not just the pastor, but the entire body.

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Now that's not to say that I can't be helpful or even play a big part in helping a family, but one of my deepest desires is that the members of the church be equipped to help each other.

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Ephesians 4 tells us that God gave us pastors slash teachers to equip us to do the work of the ministry. And then

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God describes that work of the ministry this way, Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even

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Christ, causing the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. We the body of Christ should be building each other up in love.

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We should be encouraging and edifying and reproving and rebuking and correcting and training and admonishing each other.

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We should be equipped to do that work of the ministry in our local body of believers. And that's where TLP can help.

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We love to work with the people who want to help families. We want to equip them to better know and understand how to help the hurting families in their lives and in their churches.

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I and other of the TLP counselors specialize in working with trauma cases, people in sexual sin, addictions, troubled teens, at -risk children, broken marriages, and so many more hard situations with which most people haven't engaged.

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So we go into a school or church or camp to equip these individuals to biblically serve and disciple these hard cases.

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So if you work with families or you would like to learn how to help them, please reach out to us at counselor at truthloveparent .com.

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We offer this training in person and virtually. You don't have to be a pastor or biblical counselor. If you would like to learn to identify and help families in need, we'd love to help you.

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And that leads me to the third way that we serve families. TLP trains families, we train those who work with families, and number three, we provide biblical counseling for individuals and families.

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Yes, it's true that there aren't enough of us TLP counselors to help everyone, and it's also true that the best help will come from mature

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Christians within the local body of believers, but there are still plenty of people that I and the TLP counselors can serve.

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And this final category is unique in that it's far more personalized. Our podcasts and conferences will apply to most people in most situations, but our biblical counseling ministry personalizes

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God's Word for you and teaches you how to apply it to your unique family situation. This biblical counseling can be done in person or virtually, and we're working on a brick and mortar biblical counseling center in Brevard, North Carolina as well.

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Now imagine, if you will, that your family is weekly receiving honest, loving training from God's Word, and in addition, the men and women in your church who are discipling your family are also being trained how to best help you grow in your relationship with God, and if you ever need specialized help, a

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TLP counselor is only a phone call away. That is a scenario that few families have available to them.

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Most families flounder through their daily lives with no idea what God has for them and no one willing to help them grow, but you have access to everything you need for life and godliness, and we are honored to be part of your family journey.

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Now, let's get a little more specific about what you can expect from season 20 of our podcast and then we'll be done.

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Season 20 is called Change Your Family's Thinking and will run from September through the end of November. If you look around at the world today, you will see billions of people in slavery to lies.

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They do what they do and they say what they say and they feel what they feel because they're believing a lie.

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And everything we do through our training and teaching and counseling is directed at helping you know, understand, and apply

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God's Word to your life. It starts with our minds and it pours out to our actions. So, this season we want to deal with some of the most basic biblical concepts concerning how to help someone think correctly about God, His Word, and their lives.

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Our plan for the season is as follows. I want to start off by addressing us, the parents.

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I'm putting together a three -part episode that will help us identify any lies that we may be believing and then teaching to our kids.

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Then—and I've been waiting for this for a long time—then I want to do a four -part episode where we get a better understanding of the main jobs

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God wants all parents doing. I already introduced the main concepts in our Parents 5 Job series, so if you haven't heard that series,

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I recommend you start there. But during this new four -part series, I want to unpack those concepts even more and look at a ton of scriptures that will teach us exactly how to do those four jobs in our kids' lives.

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And then I'm really excited about revisiting another idea we introduced a while back. I'm planning another four -part series to unpack and really dissect a concept

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I introduced in our Teacher -Children -to -Learn series. During that three -part episode, I introduced the circle of learning.

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Well, this season I plan to spend four episodes talking about each part of the circle of learning and applying it directly to your family.

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Again, I suggest you listen to the previous episodes in order to have a good foundation laid because we won't have a lot of time to reteach the basics as we dive deeper into these biblical concepts in order to challenge and hopefully change our family's errant thinking.

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Once again, I'm so excited to be back behind the mic. I'm so happy to be spending time with you every week to help you be a better dad or mom.

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I love the families I've met doing TLP meetups. I love the families I'm serving in biblical counseling, and I look forward to getting to know your family better this year.

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Don't ever hesitate to reach out to us at TeamTLP at TruthLoveParent .com or Counselor at TruthLoveParent .com,

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or you could call us at 828 -423 -0894. Now, do you remember how

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I described what a very special opportunity your family has? Do you remember how I mentioned that billions and billions of people in the world today don't have access to opportunities like you have?

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Well, please do your part to help other families find this kind of biblical training. You can share this episode on your favorite social media outlets.

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You can tell your pastor about TruthLoveParent. You can show a friend. There are so many ways you can spread the word about TruthLoveParent and the biblical help we offer.

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In fact, you can go to TruthLoveParent .com forward slash giveaways and participate in our five -year anniversary giveaway.

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That's a fantastic way to not only tell people about TruthLoveParent, but also potentially win five resources for you and your family.

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So with that, I hope you'll join us next time as we once again open God's Word to discover how to parent our children for life and godliness.

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To that end, we'll be discussing the definition, nature, and cure for something I like to call false parents.

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Truth, Love, Parents is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

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