Latest / Main Thing Podcast / Faith and Parenting in a Shifting Society

Transcript

Faith and Parenting in a Shifting Society · Main Thing Podcast

• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Amen us to recall in today's divisive and dark culture, from foundational truths and scripture to the hot topics of today's culture.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Allow this podcast to inspire and motivate you on your faith journey.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Well, hello, church family and those listening, we're excited that you're with us for another episode.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: This is episode nine.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Pastor Steve, thank you for coming on again.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: My pleasure.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: We are going to talk about a previous sermon you preached on June 5th of 2023.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: The title of that is Battle for your Home, part 2.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And I thought for this episode and episode 10, it'd be good to kind of dig into a series that you did and just ask some questions about it and get some more in-depth feedback from it.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: So in this message, you preached about the family being under attack, both spiritually and culturally, and the responsibility that parents have to fight for their children even in the midst of the pressure of society.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And so the first question, and your main scripture of that, was 1 Samuel 30-38, the story of David seeking the Lord's guidance to pursue and recover his kidnapped family.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: The first question is who are the enemies of the family today, in 2024?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Probably the top enemies of the family in our culture today, number one would be youth athletics, youth sports, technology and helicopter parents.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: So that's what I believe very firmly are the enemies of our families today.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: And are athletics different in different parts of the region of this country, or do you think just all across the states?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Right now it's an issue.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Athletics is the new god for young families.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: I remember talking to one of our young families here at church a couple of years ago and we were having this discussion and they were telling me we're a Christian family and I said well, you believe that, but here's what you're doing.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: You're only in church four or five Sundays a year because you're at a tournament every weekend of the year and you eat a peanut butter jelly sandwich at the tournament and you say a prayer over it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: And so you think you're a Christian family, right?
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: The problem is, what you're showing your kids is that baseball or softball is God, not Jehovah God.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: And so what you're going to see coming in the next generation is your kids won't have a relationship with Jesus Christ and they'll have no use for his church, and you'll be sitting back as a parent asking we raised them to be Christians.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: I don't understand why they won't go to church.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: You're not taking them to church now.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: You're taking them to the ballpark.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Taking them to church now.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: You're taking them to the ballpark.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: In my generation, this has changed.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I actually served before I moved to Louisiana almost 26 years ago now, so it's in the last 25 years on the state Dixie Youth Board in Alabama and Dixie Youth was actually a Christian organization and absolutely refused for decades to play a ballgame on Sunday.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: They wouldn't do it Today.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: They're like everybody else, it's just another day.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we are telling our kids love Jesus, love God.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Church is important, but what we're showing them is that athletics is God.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Do you think that plays a factor in the mental illness of the Gen Z population?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, the statistics on that are crazy.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: A lot of the younger and when I say Gen Z I'm talking 17 to 26, 27 years old, the younger population the mental illness statistics on that are just outrageous.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, here's what happens.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Because I coached, I had three boys at play.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: We've been through this as a family.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: It's hard to navigate, okay, because there's all this pressure to do travel ball Right and if you don't do travel ball you're going to be behind, that's right, and you won't get a chance at a scholarship.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: You know, the stats are very clear.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: A very small percentage of high school players go to college.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: I think I saw a stat like 9% actually get an opportunity.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Now when I say college, we're talking all levels of college.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: You know many of them are JUCO, this kind of thing.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: So a kid to play at an LSU, for example, that's one-tenth of one percent.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I've made a habit of looking at the rosters at LSU over the years and you'd be amazed how few of those kids actually come, for example, from South Louisiana, from our region.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, they'll always have one, sometimes two or three, but when you've got 100 kids on a roster, 85 kids on a roster, three from this whole region made it to that level and kids that have played and made an impact I can only name less than one handful in the 25 years I've been here.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: So our parents have a false target in their head.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: If you go talk to them, they're all going to play at LSU Right target in their head if you go talk to them.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: They're all going to play at LSU, right?
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: And I don't have the heart to stomp on their dream, because maybe their kid is the one, but most of them will never play high school.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Most travel ball players never play high school.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: By the time you get to about 14 or 15, the athletes begin to distinguish themselves from everyone else.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: They're just blessed with God-given talent.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: You coach to enhance that.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: But a coach can't give you that.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Like speed, you're born with it or you're not.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: You can hone it, get a little bit better at it, but you either have it or you don't.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: And so these parents have these goals that are not realistic.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: And what happens is I've coached at the high school level here at our school, and I hear it from other coaches all the time you got a ninth grader and they're not starting on the varsity team and they're like well, she started every year on her travel ball team.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Well, on her travel ball team you put together nine players that you believe can play the best nine you can put together, and then usually they'll have one or two extras that can play.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: They put together, and so that kid automatically gets a position and starts every game.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: There's no real competition, right.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: So when they hit high school and now they have to compete for a position, mom and dad have been wired.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: My kid's a starter.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And they're going to start in high school.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Right, and when the kid's not starting, they melt down.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Because they have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Many of them have gone deep in debt.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: They've been in a motel every weekend for the last five years and they put their life on hold, and so it becomes more.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: They're angry about the investment they've made than they want to admit.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: So, yes, very unhealthy yeah.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: And shifting a little bit from athletics and ball today and the obvious idol that that is today.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: How does policies and public education become, or can be, an enemy to the family?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: historically, especially in recent years, is a huge enemy to your family.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I try to tell people.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: What they don't understand is the state's official position that they'll never tell you openly, but it's.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Their position is that they own your children.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Your children belong to them.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: They know better how to raise them.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: They know better how to educate them.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: They know better how to educate them.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: They know better what health services they need.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: It's amazing their position.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: They want to control your children to turn out the product they want to turn out down the road.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so when a parent pushes back against these things, oh, there'll be heck to pay.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: You better be ready.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Right, there's a I can't think of the organization now.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's called the Heritage Foundation.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, and you can actually pay them so much a month and they fight on your behalf.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if the state were to come against your children, it's crazy how we almost need that these days, isn't it sad?
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I'll give you an example.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: When my boys were in public school here one day, in PE class, they had this person come in and they took their shirts off and they put them against the wall and they measured the level of their shoulders.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, so then I get a—I didn't even know this happened, right, first of all, I didn't consent for anyone to examine my child.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: So I get a letter home that tells me that I have so many days to take my child to a doctor and to send them the results.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I called the principal and I said look, I've tried to be diplomatic.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: I said I appreciate y'all's interest in my child, but this is none of your business.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Ok, you need to teach him reading, writing, arithmetic that's your job, I'll be the parent.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: And of course, it didn't go well at all.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: I had another incident where one of my sons took his lunch every day and he had a teacher snatch a little Debbie Brownie out of his hand at lunch and tell him that was junk food.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: He wasn't allowed to have it.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Now, this particular child got too much of his daddy in him, so he reached, grabbed it by, stuck it in his mouth and said come get it.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: So I get a phone call and I get up there to the school and they've got him in a counselor's office.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: And here's the teacher and the counselor and me.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I've always been a big boy.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: The counselor and the teacher are bigger than me.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: They were huge people.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: My sons got, maybe at that time, 3% body fat and I tried to be very diplomatic and it was clear they thought they knew better what my child ought to eat than me.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: And at one point I said, look, we need to pay attention to the room.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: I look at your size, I look at your size.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: I look at your size, I look at my size.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Us three.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: We don't need little Debbie Brownies, but he's probably all right.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: So of course that didn't go well either.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: But they have this idea that they know better than you do as a parent.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: And in recent years, this whole garbage over DEI and gender stuff and all of this stuff.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Look, I'll have those discussions with my child.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: You're not having them.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: That's not your role.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: We had another problem where and Sean will remember this we, after Wednesday night, home of junior high evergreen game.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Junior high was a huge thing in our town back in the day and our youth minister at the time was going to have a big fifth quarter you know, gathering after the game.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: And so the kids took little tickets to school and invited their friends.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Well, the principal calls me.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: He said I want you to know, this event Wednesday night is not approved the school event.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: So none of the kids will be allowed to attend.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Be allowed.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And I said okay, excuse me for a moment, you don't have any authority over what we do down at our church.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Well, we have a door-to-door policy Now, listen to this Made up by the government School system.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: From the time they leave their door and home in the morning until they walk back in their door at night, including school activities after hours, they are under the authority of the school.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I said to him look, mr Principal, I don't want to be a problem for you, but we're going to hold the fifth quarter and, just to be clear, you're not my child's parent.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: So what happened was this guy then went to the football team, to the cheerleaders, to the band, to the dance team, because my son was a football player.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: He heard the speech and he goes to every group and he says you are not allowed to go to that event on Wednesday night.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Just a personal vendetta, wow so as I pick up my son that week from practice.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: It was so funny and I was very proud of it.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I'd have parents from other churches coming up to me.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: We'll be there Wednesday night.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: He's not telling us where we're going.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: We had over 500 kids.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: We weren't there Wednesday night.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: He's not telling us where we're going.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: We had over 500 kids.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Wow, we weren't prepared for it.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: It was great.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: But they believe they own your children.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: It is so unhealthy.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: And that right there is why there's a moral shift in this country.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: The moral shift in our country has come from our education system being run by unhealthy liberals who have fed people's mind a diet of garbage now for several decades.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: That's exactly our problem.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so when we talk about society, according to Scripture, we have certain responsibilities for society.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Government is good, government's supposed to bless and help those who do good and basically punish those who do bad, and it's supposed to be a good thing.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: But, like you were saying, government has, for many, many years now, has overstepped that line and is now trying to control the family, and families are experiencing that, that pressure and that tension.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: And so how does a family use Scripture and use the truths of God's Word to battle this?
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think scripturally.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: My understanding of God's Word to us is that we're to respect and honor our government.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Obey our government until the moment our government is sinful.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Or the moment that they begin to ask us to do things that are clearly in opposition to God's Word.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Or they try to stop worship, or they try to stop worship Right.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Then I believe we, and I think it's clear we have a mandate to be the people of God Right, and so I honor government, I respect government, but I do not respect what we're receiving from government as a general rule.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: These days.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Just this morning, as you know, president Trump is starting this new office DOGE where they're going to try to eliminate government spending.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: So this morning on the news, as I'm getting dressed, they're giving some examples.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: We spent $1.5 million in Ecuador for a study on a road and how it impacted the climate in Ecuador.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: And I mean you got families that you and I both know who are holding up $20 or $40 at the end of the week trying to decide do I put gas in my car or do I buy groceries?
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: What do I do?
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: And they're doing this kind of thing with tax money.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: It's immoral the way they're wasting money and then just digging more and more out of people.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: You're affecting the quality of life of families and they don't see that.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: And so they've taken a great government in the case of our country, and they've now managed to confound it in such a way that you almost can't break the strand.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Confounded in such a way that you almost can't break the strands.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Betsy DeMoss, when Trump was in office the first time, department of Education tried to go in there and change the direction, but the Department of Education in this country is full of career lawyers who are liberals and she couldn't hardly bunch the place.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: So they've got it so entrenched.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: It's horrible and we have a mandate.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: We have a mandate because it's not just we don't like what they're doing.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: What they're doing is evil and immoral.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: What they're doing is evil and immoral.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Whenever society tries to get into the family, what are some safeguards that parents can do practically, for example with the school system?
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, a glaring one is Covenant Christian Academy.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen, I've done some biblical teaching there.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I've seen you teach there for 17 years, pastor Brent, other ministers that have come through here, many great teachers at the school now.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: So that provides a way out of the public school system into a school system that values not only academics but also spiritual, their spiritual walk, and so that's definitely one way.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: What about the parents who find themselves in the public school arena being pressured by society and they don't really have a way out?
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: What can they do in their home to foster better spiritual growth when the society's beating them down?
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah well, it can be exhausting, but you've got to decide.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: You're going to fight that fight for the sake of your children.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: And so you pay attention to what's going on at your child's school.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: You go to the events and activities because that is where you will learn the most about how things are being done.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: You take a stand.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: You don't have to be evil or mean, but you can be consistent and firm.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: You let them know.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: I'll give you an example.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: One of my boys in elementary school many years ago.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: He's in 4-H public school right here in this parish and the 4-H teacher had a guy come prepare bananas foster for the elementary 4-H club and alcohol and all the bananas foster, oh, yeah, yeah.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: And the kids all tasted it, of course.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: And next day I'm in the office and I'm letting them know.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: You ever do this again, I will bring wrath down on you.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: This better not happen again.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: So one of our problems here locally is we like to think we're not a part of all these larger problems.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: We absolutely are, but it's because many of our parents don't pay attention to what's going on.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: They don't realize and the kids aren't going to tell you unless they don't know any better, right, they're just doing what everybody else is doing yeah.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: So my son comes home from 4-H.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Dad, we had bananas foster today.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: It was great.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: You know now I come from an alcoholic family, long line of drunks.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: There's never been alcohol in my home.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: It hadn't touched my lips since I was 15.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: And it's not going to be in my home.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: But hey, I send my kid off to public school and they're more than happy to help him out.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: So you've got to be involved.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: You don't have an alternative.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: And it's exhausting, it is.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: It's a fight that never ends.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: But you've got to be in the fight for the sake of your children and you've got to be consistently teaching them what you believe and why you believe it, why you're different than everybody else at school.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, you know, I'll give you an example, not to pick on Catholics, but just a true story.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: One of my boys is in junior high school summertime we're painting a house and he says you know, dad, if you're Catholic you can drink.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Now people have this misnomer that Baptists don't drink.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know where they get that, because everyone I know drinks right, but that's what he had heard.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: If you're Catholic, you can drink, and I just never looked at him.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: I said that's why you're not Catholic you know, and so we worked hard at teaching our kids the values that we believe.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: And look, your kids won't always buy it Right, because something about those teenage years, everybody else is smarter than you and you're ruining their life.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: But the Bible tells us to teach them the ways of the Lord and they'll not depart from them, and I claim that that eventually they'll come back to them, and I think we've seen that with our children.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: But I'm going to tell you there's a lot of times I laid my head down on the pillow at night and I thought, dear Lord, you know, I had one at Terrebonne High School taking a history class.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: They had a young liberal just graduated Nichols, and all he did every day was bash the Christian church.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Wow, my kid would come home every day and say you know what he said today, you know what he said today.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: So the principal at Terrebonne was a deacon in his church.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: So I went to see him and I said listen, I don't know how much you sit in on classes, what you know, what you don't know, but here's what's going on in your history class, your 10th grade history class.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: So I demand one of two things you either shut him up about the church and Christianity, or you give me equal time so the kids get a balanced diet and not just a bunch of liberal garbage.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: So of course I didn't get to go.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: You know they never allow that and I knew that when I said it.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: But supposedly so.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Then I have that teacher come up to me at a football game.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're so-and-so's dad.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, I am.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: And of course I knew who he was.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, hey.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I was wondering what are your credentials, what are your degrees?
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: So I rattled them off.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, you almost got what I've got.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I had a doctorate.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: I said, well, what do you got?
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I have a math.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: I said, well, what do you got?
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I have a math.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I said, well, no, I have more than you.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got more than you, if you want to compare apples and oranges.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: And they're all from SACS accredited schools.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I got more than you.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: So what's your point?
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: You know right, and he didn't really have one.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: He was just trying to get me to believe he was smart Right, you to get me to believe he was smart Right, you know, but my issue wasn't with his intelligence, it was his bashing of the Christian church, right, with no balance whatsoever.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, you got to fight, you got to be in the fight, let your kids know your moral values, but, more than that, why you believe what you believe.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: You know and you got to you believe.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know and you got to do it.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: You can't do it once.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: You got to do it over and over and over and over and pray to God that your kid gets it.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, it's kind of scary.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Right, and that's so good, Steve, because I can't count the times that parents have come up to me in the past and going, hey, can you talk to my kid?
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: You know this needs to be a parent-owned thing.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: They need to own their faith.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: They need to understand the Scripture and if they don't, they need to start reading it now.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: To where they can combat these things when their kids come home and start talking about it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah Well, you've got so many kids.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Because of social media and what they're being taught at school, they're like, oh, I don't believe in God, and I'll tell them.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: That's nice.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Tell me your evidence that there is no God.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Now, that's something a parent ought to be able to do, right?
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Because I believe truth is truth, always and anywhere you find it.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: So give me the valid truth that you have that's leading you to believe there's no God, because I can give you volumes of truth that there is a God.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: So don't just randomly decide oh, I don't believe there's a God, what's your proof?
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: What if you're wrong?
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: If you want to believe that, have the integrity to explore it to make a decision At least have some justifiable evidence or something.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Don't just be mindless because some teacher said it's stupid.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: If there's a God, I mean, okay, who is this teacher?
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: What evidence do?
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: they have.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: So this is what we fight nowadays big time.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: And what way Steve does Covenant Christian do to combat that and give the students what they need for their faith.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Well, we teach Bible in every class all the way up every day.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, so we try to give them a good dose of Scripture, the foundation that they need.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: When you get into high school, many of the tests are Scripture memory tests, things like this.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Give them the Word of God, get in the foundation.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: We see a lot of kids saved every year and we praise God for that.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Just baptized one Dylan.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Just baptized one Sunday Dylan baptized one Sunday.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: You know, for years the school was not the front door to our church.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: But in recent years and it's amazing what's happened I'd love to tell you it was a plan, but it wasn't.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden we're seeing droves of family, families from the school coming into the church, family members getting saved.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: We had two kids in our preschool that were learning Scripture daily and they live in the neighborhood behind the church here and mom and dad decided they were embarrassed because their kids knew more about the Bible than them and they started coming to church.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Mom and dad got sick, so now they're members, and so it's a journey.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: A school's never perfect.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: I tell our principal, it's like nailing Jell-O on a wall, because it's living and breathing and forever changing.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Every time a new kid comes, a personality changes.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: One year from the next.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: You can look at 10th graders and they're silly and they don't have an attention span and they're just goofy and by the time they're 11th graders.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: It's amazing how much they've matured, right, right.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: So you spend all your time with 10th grade yelling at them.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: You know, shut up, sit down, I'm trying to teach, and the 11th grade will actually sit there and listen to you.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: It's amazing, but our biggest challenge here is we don't have a good Bible college close to us, so I have very few on our team that have any real training beyond their years in church, and so I spend a lot of my effort talking to them, helping them understand what it means to teach from a Christian worldview, and I'll be honest with you, we've had a few over the years that didn't fit our program.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Right now, I am more pleased with the school than I've ever been.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: We've got many teachers who get it and they're investing in these children.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: That's how you counter that stuff.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Seeing the fruit from that.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're seeing the fruit.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so thankful for them.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Our principals are doing a good job.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Both of them have degrees from secular colleges.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: They're both wonderful Christian men, but even they have had to walk the road of learning the nuances of teaching from a Christian worldview, as opposed to just doing education Right.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: In essence, you're asking someone who's never had experience in ministry to begin to do ministry.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: And that is a hard transition to make if you've never had experience there.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: That's a good point.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Teaching at Covenant is actually ministry.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I want you to teach the academics, and our test scores the last several years have shown that we're doing that well.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: In fact, I think the local Catholic school in our area everybody would say is the academic flagship.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: A couple of years ago we exceeded them on the composite ACT score, so we're right there with them academically.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: I'm very proud of that and the work we're doing, just as a small school, Only been here 17 years and we're way ahead of people that have been around a lot longer than us.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: A lot of effort goes into it, but a lot of it, quite honestly, is the pastor being that constant drip of water.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: I'm constantly reminding them.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Is this who we are?
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Is this how we do things?
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: What's the difference?
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: I used to get questions can we do something?
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: And I'd say, why would we want to do that?
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: And they would make the mistake of giving me the answer Well, HL Bourgeois does it.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: So why don't we just send our kids to HL Bourgeois?
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Why would their parents pay tuition to come here if we're just going to do what the public school does?
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: What makes us different, See, and so I'm that constant drip of water that drives them all nuts.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: You know I cannot step away and not be a constant reminder.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Right, right, amen, and we talked about the moral attack.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I'd just like to touch on this, though, because I think this is so important how does media and entertainment influence children's morals and worldviews?
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's huge.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: For years surveys were done to determine what in a child's life has the most influence, and it came back over and over again the parents.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: So parents would think everybody else was ruining their kid.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: But the truth is, you know the kid.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: I had a kid in our school tell me the other week.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: I was talking with this child and the mom had come to me and they were having trouble.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: And the kid said well, I'm finally old enough to know what a hypocrite is and I've had enough, right?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: So as parents, we don't realize how powerful our statements and our actual activity must line up.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: And when they do, it's a powerful influence on your kids and you know you can control a little bit who else is involved in your child's life.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: But with social media, unless you're just riding herd, you can't control it.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: And there's a.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Social media is like a hammer.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: You can use a hammer to build a house or to hit somebody in the head.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Social media is basically amoral that comes through it.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: It's just a tool, right, and I use the Internet for all kinds of really good things, but there are way more really bad things that come through there too, and those things influence your kid.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they, you know, especially the developmental years.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: We know that like 30% of sixth graders have viewed pornography on their phones.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness, okay, yeah.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: That's 11, 11-year-old, 12-year-old, that's 11, 12-year-old child have already began to get their brain rewired.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: That's what pornography does it?
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: rewires your brain.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: You begin to see women as objects instead of human beings, and it leads to terrible things down the road.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Marriages break up because of this stuff, you know, and so parents will give their kids a phone with little or no controls.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Right, and I argue with parents all the time about this.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Now there was a shooting yesterday at a school.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: A girl was at Wisconsin, I think.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: I haven't even seen that.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a girl went into a school Christian school.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: A girl goes into a school, shoots several people.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: A second grader called police on his phone On his phone.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Now people will want to use that.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: See why he ought to have his phone.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Well, there were a lot more phones there than that second grader, you know, but we've got people giving small children phones Access to the whole world.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Access to the world and they can't figure out why their kid's having the issues they're having.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Number one there's so much we've identified since COVID.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: There's so much negative information being fed to your kid that teenage depression and suicide is at an all-time high, the bullying that takes place and there are tons of really bad issues with this.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: So every family's got to navigate this the way they feel is best for their family.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: But I'm telling you it is, I believe in my lifetime, the most dangerous tool that's ever been created is out there right now in the hands of your kids.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: You know, when I was a kid they had the magazines for pornography Playboy or Penthouse and they were at the convenience stores behind the counter with brown wrapper around them and as a young boy, all you could do was wonder what was in that book.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Right, and if you found yourself believing, you were lucky.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: You know, under your Uncle Bob's mattress, when he was gone, you found one.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: So it was hard for a child.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Our society, our government, our laws and rules tried to protect children and they're doing better these days.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: They really are, but it's still an epidemic.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: It's an epidemic and our children, the mental health of our children, is being destroyed by these media devices Right.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we homeschool our kids, so we have to work and make sure they're having friends in the neighborhood, they're going to extracurricular activities and they're not just at home.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: I can tell you know, caden's the oldest, he's nine.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I can tell when he's got a 10-year-old friend that that 10-year-old friend has experienced the world.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: You can see it in a child.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: You can see it.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: And it's just shocking to me.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: You know the visible, you can really see it.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that affected me early on.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I came up when I was in high school.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: That's really when social media started, you know.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: So I kind of missed that at an early age and I saw the effects of it just then.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, whenever Apple iPhone started coming out and you were able to access the internet a little quicker with 3G and friends were texting friends, hey, check out this site and this site and you know, sean and I were talking before we started you can access the dark web just with a URL.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: And I mean these sites are hidden in apps in students' phones so their parents don't know what they're looking at.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: That's just in recent years that that started.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: But the average parent, who is usually not tech savvy, is the kid.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, most of these kids get away with that.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: They don't have a clue the parents that it's going on, yeah.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's things out there like I don't know if you ever heard of the Gab phone.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: No, it doesn't.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: As far as I know, it doesn't connect to internet and it doesn't have anything other than text messaging and calling, and you're only allowed to text certain things.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: And so there are companies out there that's trying to have a way where younger kids can have phones, but, yeah, to eliminate that access.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: But look, I understand the pressure parents are under.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: My oldest son got a phone when he was 16, started driving.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: That was our rule you start driving, we can get you a phone, and if I call it, you better pick it up.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: The second child got a phone at 16, when he started driving.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: By the time we got to the third one, I think he was 14 and he got a phone.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: And not only were Jan and I getting pressure from him, but from families in the church.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: He don't have a phone.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: You got to get the child a phone, you know.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: So not only are a lot of these decisions unhealthy, they're happy to put that pressure on other families.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Right, you know?
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: and yeah, yeah.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: And so so many young families not wanting their child to be the outcast, to be the only one, bow to this pressure.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: And I just encourage them to stay strong, stay strong.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Lastly, spiritual, the spiritual attacks.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: How does spiritual apathy in the home open up doors for evil influences?
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, here's the bottom line.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: The more you're in the Word of God, the more you have a prayer life, the more you're seeking God, the closer you're going to be to God, the further you get away from those avenues, your prayer life, the Word of God.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: You are voluntarily creating a distance between you and God.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: It's like a marriage relationship.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: You know, if I'm married but my wife lives in one house and I live in another one and the only time we communicate is, well, the faucet's leaking.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Could you come by and fix it?
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: You know, that's not much of a marriage and that's what happens with us individually.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: We're, in a sense, spiritually married to God.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: He wants that relationship with us, and the more we take him casual, the more he's not real for us.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: We open the window and then the door to the influences of Satan into our home.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden, something that you would never do, a place you would never go, a movie you would never watch, becomes okay, it's not a big deal, we'll watch this, we'll do this, we'll, whatever, you know.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: And so I just shake my head sometimes, because I'm on social media, and I'm on social media for one reason.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: I used to get this all the time, pastor, nobody came to see me at my surgery.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I didn't know you had surgery.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: I put it on Facebook, you know.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: So we're at a place in the church.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Nowadays if they post it on social media, we're all supposed to know.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: You know what's going on in their life.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: So I fought it for several years.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't care to be there, but I finally gave it up and I got on social media.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: And today's a good example.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: A family posted their child's having surgery tomorrow.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: I was able to contact them, know what's going on with all that, but they didn't tell us they were in church last week.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: They didn't say a word and it's a major surgery.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: But the reality is that it then consumes us.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: It takes over our lives, our thinking.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Chet, I know people who they go into depression because they post something and they don't get very many likes.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Boy, is this the epitome of a low self-esteem?
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: You know they don't know who they are in Christ.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: They need these people on the other side of a screen somewhere to tell them there's somebody.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: It's so sad.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: And today we've got people posting the craziest personal stuff you've ever seen in your life.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, I read one not long ago, this woman.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: She says just want to let you all know, I've got a urinary tract infection today.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: It hurts so bad.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Everybody, please pray.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: I don't want to know.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: You've got a urinary tract infection.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: So we're in a place People have no boundaries, there's no boundaries.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: They put their whole life out there and then when somebody disagrees with them, oh, they melt down Totally.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: It's the end of their life, and so this stuff is so unhealthy.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: But, as they all say, the jack is out of the box.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's not going back in it's not going back in.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: No.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: So we've got to learn as parents, to manage this stuff as best we can, and I don't know that there is a best way to do that.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: I think every family's just got to maneuver that road as best they can.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've heard this from you through the years and I've counseled families through the years with this as well If they're not in church consistently with their children in the children's ministry, in the preschool ministry, in the youth ministry, they can't expect for the whole family to have a tight connection with the Lord.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: And serve in Him?
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: No, absolutely not so that has to be a thread of their life that is important.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: I'll give you an example.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: I got a 12-year-old granddaughter that my wife and I have just very lovingly and consistently because her dad's always been in the oil field and his schedules are nuts, as you know, and gone a lot things like this and he's here practically every Sunday at church.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: But we've made a point to have her involved since day one, at 12 years old.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: This little girl loves Jesus and she gets it.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: You know she gets it.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: She's the real deal and so it can happen.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: It can happen Now, even over at Covenant, a Christian school.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: She'll come home sometimes and she can't hide it.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: I read her like a book and I'm like little girl, what's wrong?
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Nothing, don't lie to me.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: So we'll eventually drag it out of her.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: And one of the things I try to teach her all the time okay, some boy said you had a big nose, all right.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Now, middle school boys are stupid.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: They're going to be middle school boys.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: That's what they are.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: The problem is middle school girls don't understand that, so they take everything to heart.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: So it was a formula we use and she hates it.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: When I do this, I'll say okay, is that guy your mama, your daddy, your granddaddy, your grandmother, your brother?
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: Who is this guy to you Nobody?
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: That's the word I'm looking for.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: So why would you let him have control over you?
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: He's nobody to you, he's just a dumb middle school boy.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: He scratches himself in public and pees his pants half the time.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Don't let that rock your world.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: And so that's what I mean by constantly fighting.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: In that moment we're not having a spiritual conversation, but we are.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: Where does your worth lie?
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: And then we'll get to that place where I'll say who's number one in your life?
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Because I've taught her this Jesus, right, you think he loves you, yes, you think he's happy with you?
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: I hope so.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Well, good, that's the only one we worried about, you know.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: And so you got to have conversations to give direction, constantly, constantly.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: I think it's helpful too, steve.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: If parents are not fighting each other, they have energy to do that for their kids.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: But if there's a marriage and constant conflict, there's no energy, there's no breath.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: You know, wait for your children.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: Well, and look, I'll just say it.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: I tell young women all the time you want your husband to love Jesus more than he loves you, Because a woman always wants her man to love her more than anybody else.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: I get it, but he will never properly love you until he loves Jesus more than he loves you.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: You want him to love Jesus more than he loves his kids, because then his kids are going to be very fortunate people.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: And so the two of you, if you both love Jesus and you're on the same path with the same goals, you can raise healthy, happy children.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: But what we've got right now is a culture of broken children and now broken adults, because it's been going on for several decades and you know the marriage is the key decades.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: And you know the marriage is the key, it's the key to everything, Absolutely.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: So if they're not a team, yeah, you're going to have a divided kingdom.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: Right, Because kids are not dumb.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: If they see mom and dad not on the same page, they'll exploit that every time.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: And one last thing, and we'll close, Steve, because I think this is important even in our church.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: What do you say to the single moms who are struggling to make ends meet, struggling to have the energy to protect their children spiritually?
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, what encouragement do you have for them?
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Keep doing what you're doing.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Don't give up.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: There is a light at the end of the tunnel and while a husband and wife in the same home on the same path as ideal, being divorced does not guarantee you have to fail or your child has to fail.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: I know a lot of examples of single parents who have raised their children well, and I had a single father that coached with me for years, a member of our church, and he and I would talk.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: We'd finish a weekend tournament with baseball.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: I'd say, oh, I'm going home and getting my chair.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: He said, coach, I got to do laundry ball.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: I said, oh, I'm going home and getting my chair.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: He said, coach, I got to do laundry, you know, and so, but he very faithfully just plugged day in and day out and raised two of the finest young men I know anywhere.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: You know one just graduated the Naval Academy last year.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's awesome of me last year.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: And so you know, yeah, yeah, you can do it.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: Just trust the Lord, draw on his strength, get up and put one foot before the other one and just determine that failure is not an option.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, right Amen.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you, brother, appreciate you being here, my joy.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: All right guys.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: See you on the next one.