Click the link below to download the PDF.

I’m your host AMBrewster, and today we’re trying to apply everything we learned last time. So, if you didn’t catch that session, please listen to episode 643 before continuing today.

And—if you are returning—I hope your family is with you, you all have a copy of the LifeWork, and that you’ll take advantage of the related resources linked in the description as you and your family pursue spiritual maturity. 

Here’s our first practical application for the day. If we’re going to humbly confess our sin, then it will be easy to humbly pursue repentance through real change. That means we’ll have to continue learning, understanding, and making the necessary changes to the glory of God. 

The additional resources linked in the description are there for you to continue that study.

So, let’s get started.

Some of you might remember from previous studies that the best application is unique to you. It’s not good enough to say, “I need to love God and love my family today.” Though that may be true, it lacks actionable steps.

Loving God will involve obeying His will for your life, and loving your family will involve wanting and working toward God’s best interest for their lives. But even that isn’t enough detail.

What is God’s will for you three hours from now? What’s in God’s best interest for your dad, sister, or child tomorrow? When you answer those questions as specifically as possible, you’ll have practical steps you can take to walk in obedience to God.

So, the application we make on this show will be general—because I don’t know you and your family as well as I’d like. But if we were meeting in family counseling, I would help you make the most specific application possible. But since we’re not meeting in person, you’re going to need to help each other with this. Dad and mom, you—in particular—need to help everyone in the family be as careful in their application as possible. 

Of course, I’ll try to remind you of this as we progress.

But before we get any further into today’s topic, I’m going to humbly invite you to partner with us as we seek to glorify God by serving families all over the world. We desperately need your financial donations in order to continue this ministry. 

We’re getting dangerously close to having to shut our doors, but with a monthly donation from your family for 5, 10, 50, or $100, we can continue producing this free content, writing books, speaking at conferences, and counseling families.

Please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate or click the link in the description to give.

And now, Part 2 of Humility in Confession.

As we learned last time, David wrote Psalm 51 as a public demonstration of his confession and repentance. And the Lord wants to use this Psalm to help us better understand the heart and actions of a person who genuinely, humbly recognizes their sin and wants to change.

In order to help us do this, I encourage you to actually pray the words of this Psalm directly to God. The key is, of course, to be specific. Therefore, instead of reading the Psalm word for word, you’re going to replace some of the words with information that’s specific to you.

On your LifeWork, you can see that I’ve included all of Psalm 51 with blanks provided. Each of those blanks replaces a general word David used for our sin—words like transgression, iniquity, and sin.

So, what you’re going to do is insert nine of your own personal and specific sin struggles in the blanks provided. Of course, there isn’t time to do that now. I suggest that this be something each of you do either immediately when this session is over or some time later this week. I also encourage you parents to keep your kids accountable to complete this task and help them as they encounter difficulties. 

I also believe it’s best for everyone in your family (including the parents) to share their final lists with each other.

Now, before I give you a sample of what this should look like, I want to remind us that we all sin many times every day. You definitely sin more than 9 times, but here’s what we don’t want to do. Don’t put the same sin in every blank. If you disobey your parents a lot, you can include that in one of the blanks, but you’ll need to search your heart and life for 8 other sin habits for the other blanks.

This may prove to be challenging. If that happens, that doesn’t mean that you’re a really good person who rarely does anything wrong, it means that you don’t see yourself the way God does. Ask for help if you need it, but don’t give up because you don’t see your sin the way God does.

If you need help, you could read the verses I’m about to share. These biblical passages outline various sins and righteous behavior. If you do any of these sins with regularity, you can include them. If you don’t live righteously as God commands, you can notate that.

You should discover that you commit more sins per week than will fit onto these 9 blanks. When that happens, you can fill out the Psalm again with 9 more. And if you find even more, you can keep going. Every day you pray this prayer, you could insert 9 new sins. 

The key is, don’t pray empty words. Mean each one or risk the consequences that come from lying to God.

If you need some help better understanding what God calls sin, consider the following. By the way, these passages will be included in the transcript linked for you in the description of this episode. Matthew 5, Romans 1:18-22, Romans 12, I Corinthians 6:9-10, I Corinthians 13, II Corinthians 12:20–21, Galatians 5:19–23, Galatians 6, Ephesians 4, Ephesians 5:3–7, Philippians 4:8, Colossians 3:5–17, II Timothy 3:1–5, James 3-4, II Peter 1:5–7, I John, and so many more. Some have suggested that the Bible identifies over 600 unique sins including sins of commission and omission. 

Okay, so here’s a personal example of how I might pray through this Psalm. Follow along in your LifeWork to see where I inserted my own personal sins.

“Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my IMPATIENCE TOWARD MY FAMILY. Wash me thoroughly from my ANXIETY WHEN THINGS ARE OUT OF MY CONTROL and cleanse me from my ANGER WHEN I DON’T GET MY WAY. For I know my LAZINESS, and my DISCONTENTMENT is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have SINNED BY EATING TOO MANY UNHEALTHY FOODS and done EVIL BY WORSHIPPING MYSELF in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge.”

I’m going to skip down to the next sentence with a blank.

“Hide Your face from my UNKIND WORDS and blot out all my SELFISHNESS.”

Now, I could have been much more specific, but I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable or share anything about my family that would have been unnecessary. Here’s a made-up example of how specific I should have been if I were doing this for my own LifeWork: “Blot out my impatience toward my son when he leaves his dirty clothes all over the house.” 

Now, as a reminder, this is not designed to make us feel bad about ourselves. This is a Christ-honoring response when we rightly already feel bad about our sin. When we have experienced good shame and are convicted about our wrong choices—as Matthew 5 says—when we’re already grieved over our sin, that’s when we need to confess it to God.

Of course, too many of us are arrogant in that we don’t see our sin or we’re prideful in that our sin doesn’t bother us. That’s why need to be more humble. So, even if you’re prideful and arrogant (two great sins to include on your Psalm 51 list), working through this assignment will hopefully open your eyes to your need.

Lastly, before we move on, I know how it may seem strange to pray someone else’s words. Listen, you don’t have to pray the Psalm, but here’re a couple good reasons for it. 

1. Many of us don’t know how to pray well and don’t have a good prayer life. Praying God’s Word back to Him helps teach us how to pray better.

2. The Lord likes it when we pray His Word back to Him. This is exemplified in various prayers throughout the Scriptures.

You can of course, simply confess your sins to the Lord using your own words; that would be fine as well.

Lastly, if any of the sins on your list were a sin against someone else in your family, be sure to ask that person to forgive you for that sin too. In fact, the biblical example we see in Scriptures is that God wants us to be reconciled to others before we offer our worship to Him. It would be best to ask your brother or mother to forgive you before praying this to God.

If you don’t know how to apologize to someone, we have a couple resources linked for you in the description. 

But, it doesn’t mean anything if we confess our sins to God and others if we’re not going to actually change. So, the last portion of your LifeWork gives you spaces to carefully think through the precise ways you need to start believing, thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting in order to change into the likeness of Christ.

After confessing your sin to God and asking for His forgiveness, the second part of repentance is to “turn around” in your behavior and live in accordance with Who God is. Use the list from Psalm 51 which we discussed last week to guide your beliefs about God. Your beliefs about God will then guide how you should live.

If I believe that God is worthy of my obedience, I’ll want to obey Him, and then I will obey Him. That means that if I’m disobeying Him, I didn’t want to do right, and I didn’t want to do right because I believed that doing what I wanted was better.

This is one beautiful reason that David explains so much of God’s character in his psalms. It’s what we believe about God that’s the foundation of our entire lives.

With that said, I strongly encourage your family to work through the Merest Christianity Series. That study is one of the most important biblical truths you can ever learn. It’s the very core of our relationship with God. That study will also be linked for you in the description. 

Okay, so here’s where we need to be super practical and specific. I’ll provide some specific examples from my own life to help illustrate how specific you need to be in your own application. Of course, you may find the blanks aren’t long enough for the necessary specificity, so feel free to use another sheet of paper for this or type it out on a computer.

1. Because God is gracious, I should . . .

It would be super simple to write something like “be gracious.” And—again—that’s not inaccurate. But what does it need to look like for you to be gracious? Who is the one person in your family with whom you need to be more gracious? When are you tempted to be the least gracious?

First we should make sure we understand what it is to be biblically gracious. Generally speaking, grace is underserved favor. Someone may “deserve” unkindness, but God calls us to be gracious by not being unkind. We may think that someone deserves silent treatment, but it’s in those moments that God doesn’t want us giving them what they deserve.

Here’s a hypothetical example for me, “Because God is gracious, I should be gracious to Ivy if she forgets to take out the garbage on Tuesday morning. I need to remember that I too am a sinner who forgets to do things, so when I approach her about her forgetfulness, I need to lovingly and patiently show her from God’s Word how she can be more obedient in this regard. If she requires consequences, I need to give her ones that are appropriate to her sin and that will help her be successful in this area in the future.”

Do you see how that application is so specific to me that it probably doesn’t apply in your life? Now, I could have even thought more carefully about a specific consequence in order to make my application even more focused.

Of course, you might be thinking, “I though grace was not giving someone what they deserve. Doesn’t that mean you shouldn’t give her a consequence?”

Not necessarily. Sometimes grace may permit me to forgo a consequence, but often times its the consequences that are truly gracious. Our sin deserves destruction and pain. But God’s consequences are designed to help us become more like Him.

If you think it’s your responsibility to punish your kids, you don’t understand God’s role for you or what grace is. However, biblical consequences—though they’re designed to produce temporary pain—are also designed to protect us from the life-altering pain of continuing in our sin.

You can listen to our Consequences Series to better understand God’s plan for consequences.

The point is, if my daughter—God forbid—were to forget to take out the trash this Tuesday, I have already carefully considered how I need to biblically respond in order to love my daughter and obey God.

So, what’s the biggest area in your family where you need to be more gracious because God is gracious with you?

2. Because God is loving, I should . . .

Again, we need to start by making sure that we understand what it is to be biblically loving. We have a series all about Family Love that can help everyone in your home get on the same page about love.

The most basic idea is that we need to be wanting and working toward God’s best interest in someone’s life. This can include playing kindly with each other, giving biblical consequences, reproving, serving, and countless other expressions of love.

I Corinthians 13 provides an amazing list of what it is to be loving if you need some practical examples.

Who in your family do you struggle to love the most? When is it hardest to love them? What do you need to do differently to love them in a Christ-honoring way?

By the way, I’m sure you can tell that in order to do this part of the LifeWork well, you probably need to wait to fill out these blanks. Don’t do it now as we’re talking unless you just want to jot down some ideas to expand later. We want to make sure we’re understanding the assignment and then give our full attention to it later.

This will definitely take some time, but that’s the point. If we’re humbly acknowledging our sin, we’re going to want to change, and each of these characteristics of God needs to inform how we live.

3. Because God is compassionate, I should . . .

Biblical compassion has to do with feeling for someone the way we should. It’s appropriate to feel sad for someone when they’re in a difficult situation. It’s glorifying to God to rejoice with someone who’s experiencing a high moment in their lives. 

Romans 2:15-16 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep, 16 by being of the same mind toward one another, not being haughty in mind, but associating with the humble.”

This will obviously require humility. We need to prefer others above ourselves. We’ll never be compassionate with others when we’re consumed with our own selfish feelings.

With whom do you need to be more compassionate? When are you most tempted to not be compassionate? What does that compassion need to look like?

By the way, it might be easy for us to make up a situation that will never happen. Instead, we should consider the past situations in which you were not compassionate—especially if they’ve happened many times.

For example, maybe when your sibling wins a game, you get angry while they’re happy. Or perhaps, when your sibling does something they shouldn’t, and they get hurt, but you don’t have compassion for their physical pain.

Now, it’s very likely you can imagine a bunch of legitimate, real-world ways your siblings might get hurt because of their sin. And it would be a good idea to have a plan for how you can be compassionate in those moments, but this is not a time to expect that your sibling absolutely will sin in this way. You should actually hope and pray that they don’t. You should lovingly be helping them not to fail in that way in the future, but in the event they do, you also have a pan for how you can respond correctly.

4. Because God is forgiving, I should . . .

The easy answer to this one is “forgive the people in your life who have sinned against you.” But we must not follow the world’s understanding of forgiveness. We also need to be careful of the unbiblical ideas of forgiveness that we see in the church.

For example, you cannot forgive a person who doesn’t want to be forgiven. You also can’t forgive yourself. 

We have a number of resources about this linked for you in the description. Just make sure your understanding of forgiveness is biblical.

5. Because God is powerful, I should . . .

Now, some of these might be difficult to apply directly to your family. You might say something like, “Because God is powerful, I should help my little sister clean her room.” And that’s not the end of the world, but that’s also not the best application of this truth.

How about something like this: “Because God is powerful, I should trust Him when my parents don’t seem to listen to me or my child is being disobedient”? How about, “Because God is powerful, I should stop acting like I can’t obey Him. He promises to give me all the power I need through the Holy Spirit to keep His commands”?

It’s amazing how often we excuse our sin because we’re not perfect. But God says, “Be holy as I am holy.” The standard is high, but He also graciously gives us the divine power we need to do right and a way to escape every temptation.

6. Because God is the recipient of all sin, I should . . .

A good application for this point might sound like this, “Because God is the recipient of all sin, I should not be angry and mean when people sin against me. Ultimately, their sin against God is far worse than their sin against me, and God is still gracious and loving with them.”

Of course, a specific application for you would be to list out a time when someone in your family sins against you. Try to pick the family member with whom you fail to respond correctly when they sin against you. Think of a specific time that will likely happen in the near future . . . not because you’re expecting or hoping them to fail, but because it’s likely that will be the moment that you are tempted to fail. You might say, “The next time my brother selfishly takes the last cookie, I won’t be selfishly upset because I realize his selfishness is a problem because it’s a sin against God . . . not because I don’t like it.”

Now, we can’t take the time to be super specific about the rest, but I hope the comments I’ve made so far will guide how you think about the next ones.

I am going to read them and say a couple short things, but we’re coming close to the end.

7. Because God is righteous, I should . . .

What’s the biggest area in which you need to be more righteous? What specific heart attitude, word, feeling, or action do you need to make a regular part of your life?

8. Because God is blameless, I should . . .

All of us should stop blaming God for the difficult things in our family. We should also not allow ourselves to complain about it or be discontent. All of that suggests that God’s responsible for the sin or is unfair or is acting inappropriately by allowing it to happen.

9. Because God is the only Judge, I should . . .

For this one, we need to consider the moments that we’re sinfully tempted to be the judge, jury, and executioner against others in our family. This is definitely a big temptation for the parents. Going back to our previous comments about consequences and punishment—we need to realize that God is the ultimate judge, and though we do need to judge rightly by being wise and discerning, it is not our place to pass final judgment on a person and—especially—give up on them.

10. Because God is truth, I should . . .

This truth should motivate us to tell the truth and not lie. Are there people in our home against whom you’ve lied? 

But this should also motivate us to reconsider our beliefs about this life. Quite often we’re living lies by believing things we shouldn’t. I can’t tell you how many professing Christians believe it’s okay to “follow your heart” or get revenge against people who hurt you or be sexually active and on and on and on.

11. Because God is wise, I should . . .

Praise the Lord that He promises to share His wisdom with us! For this application, think of at least one area in your life where you’ve been foolish, and then consider a biblically wise response. Another good application would be to pursue maturity by studying the Bible more.

12. Because God is pure, I should . . .

Purity refers to being without contaminant. What is the biggest sin issue in your life? Where are your thoughts impure because they’re filled with selfish, self-worshipping thoughts? Which of your actions and desires and words and feelings are the most impure?

13. Because God is steadfast, I should . . .

For this application, consider what you would have to do to become a more consistent and faithful child of God. Thankfully, the Bible has the answer. Bible meditation, prayer, assembling with God’s people, discipleship, and the like are all part of the process of becoming more steadfast and consistent.

14. Because God is relational, I should . . .

Think about the people in your family with whom you hate to spend time. Imagine how you could better love God and them by relating to them as family should.

15. Because God is the source of joy, I should . . .

Obviously, we need to be more joyful in our families . . . even with that strife-causer in the room. But we should also be a source of joy for others. Instead of causing strife, consider how you can better be a source of joy.

16. Because God is sustaining, I should . . .

First of all, we need to trust Him. Second, this is another good opportunity to think about how we need to serve, help, benefit, uphold, and bless the people in our family in the same ways that God sustains us.

17. Because God is the Savior, I should . . .

I hope—if you’re not born again—this truth drives you to Christ to become a born again believer. If you’re already a Christian, I pray this causes you to praise Him, but a really necessary, practical application of this truth would be to consider the people in your family who might not be born again. You need to pray for them. You need to share the Gospel with them.

18. Because God is praiseworthy, I should . . .

Do you praise God? Do your family members hear and see you praise God? Do you invite your family to praise God even when things are difficult?

And . . .

19. Because God is good, I should . . .

Yes, you need to be good. I need to be good. But we also need to understand what biblical goodness actually looks like. It’s very different from the cultural ideas about goodness. Are you a good influence in your family? Is it good to have you around? With whom do you need to be more good? To whom do you need to exhibit more goodness? In what specific ways do you need to start being good?

Now, I know, that was a lot of information, and we’re going long today, but please remember that this is not supposed to be the end of this discussion. If you’re truly serious about humbly confessing your sin and actually changing by the power of God to the glory of the Father, then you have some work you’re going to have to do. 

You will need to carefully take a lot of time to think through each of these truths about God . . . to know them, understand them, and be able to see how they need to change your life.

But you also need to start making those changes. It’s not good enough to continue in the sin . . . we need to change.

And—honestly—you could do and redo this assignment for the rest of your life. This is not the end of your maturity; this is merely a step. Continued sanctification and maturity will require more humility, confession, and repentance. The Christian life is a perpetual cycle of grieving our sin, confessing it to God, renewing our minds, putting off our sin, putting on Christ’s righteousness, and rejoicing in the love and grace of God.

Regardless of how difficult your current family situation has been (or may still be), rejoice in this . . . if you’ve genuinely confessed, you’re genuinely forgiven!

Please share this two-part episode, and email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if we can serve your family by helping you with these applications. 

And join us next time as we start a short three-part series called “Sleep & Your Family.”

I’ll see you then.

Click the link below to download the PDF.

Welcome to the Truth.Love.Family. podcast. I’m your host and resident biblical counselor, Aaron M. Brewster. I’m so glad you’re joining us for this short 2-part episode entitled Humility in Confession. We’re going to discuss the foundational truths necessary to understand the importance of confession as well as outline a number of practical applications for growing in the humble practice of confession.

You’ll notice that our usual free episode notes have been replaced with a piece of LifeWork. I recommend everyone who listens to these episodes should have their own physical copy in front of them so they can fill out the LifeWork as we go. And speaking of participants, this material is designed for the parents and children to sit down together and experience as a kind of family devotional or counseling session.

I recommend you listen to the audio together, fill in the LifeWork, and save some time throughout the week to review the material as you strive to implement it into your family life.

In the description of this episode (along with LifeWork), you’ll also discover a transcript and links to related resources that will help you dig deeper into this discussion. 

A short podcast episode isn’t enough to fully unpack these truths, but the accompanying resources should help continue the study.

So, feel free to pause this episode if you want to print out the LifeWork, and then let’s begin.

This study is going to primarily revolve around Psalm 51 which David wrote after Nathan the prophet confronted him about his sin with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah. These events are carefully detailed in II Samuel 11-12:23.

If nothing else, I hope you have your Bible with you. We’ll be working through this passage, and it’s best if you can see the verses yourself. Also, if you have the LifeWork in front of you, we plan to cover pages 1, 2, and 3 on this episode and pages 4-6 on our next episode.

I’ll move through the content quickly enough to stay within our time constraints today, but I want to express that this material could be the foundation for more involved study of II Samuel 11-12. Also, given the nature of David’s sin, I will be discreet in how I discuss it here. 

Lastly, I’ll be reading passages from the Legacy Standard Bible.

And there’s one more thing before we continue. Whether this is your first time listening to this podcast, or you’ve been with us since the beginning, I hope it blesses you and helps your family. We create this free content to glorify God by equipping your family to please Him.

However, this ministry is in great need of financial support. Will you please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to learn how you can become a monthly donor? We’re trying to raise enough money to continue ministering to families all over the world. Right now, we receive about $20,000 a year in support, but as thankful as we are for the sacrificial giving of our donors, that’s just not enough to cover our expenses.

So, please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate and become a monthly donor today.

Alright . . .

I’m hoping that most of you are familiar with who King David is. He was the second king of ancient Israel, he was described as a man after God’s own heart, and he wrote many of the Psalms. 

Unfortunately, we don’t have time to talk about all the amazing ways God worked through David’s life. We don’t have time to talk about Saul and Goliath and his careful leadership of the nation of Israel. Unfortunately, we only have time to talk about his most infamous sins and how—by the grace of God—he responded when he was confronted.

So, in II Samuel II, we’re introduce to David’s sin. We’re not going to read this passage, but I encourage you parents to cover this material in as much detail as is valuable for helping your children grasp the heinous nature of David’s sin.

1. The Sin

Here are a couple notes concerning the sin. First, keep in mind that when David was sinning with Bathsheba, he was convinced that what he was doing was right and acceptable. Also, remember that when David was having Uriah killed, David believed it to be the best course of action. And had David continued in his arrogant, delusional self-deception, he never would have been able to see his sin the way God saw it, and he never would have desired to confess and forsake his sin.

We do the exact same thing. 

We sin because we believe it’s best. If we believed something else was better, we would do that instead. This means that—in our sin—we’re delusional. We aren’t able to correctly interpret reality. We can do truly horrible things like disobeying our parents, stealing, lying, cheating, being lazy, gossiping, lusting, and even murdering and truly believe we’re justified in doing it.

However, just because we think we’re right doesn’t mean we are. What we need is to be confronted by truth. We need to be convinced of reality so we can see our sin the way God does. Otherwise, we’ll continue in our own personal lie.

Praise God that—in David’s case—Nathan loved God and David enough to do the hard thing and confront the king with his sin.

2. The Reproof 

In II Samuel 12:1-6, we see Nathan using a metaphor to help David see the depth of his sin. It’s very helpful to see the wickedness of our own sin by witnessing it in someone else. Nathan was very wise to take the focus off David. 

When we’re in sin, we’re obviously believing a lie about ourselves. But it’s interesting that in the middle of believing our sin is right and good, we can so easily see the sin in others. That’s called hypocrisy. We’re all hypocritical in our sin. In fact sin makes us increasingly hypocritical.

Knowing this, Nathan told David a story, and David could clearly see the awful thing that the man in the story had done to his neighbor. David had an accurate—though extreme—response to the sin described in the story. 

Therefore, recognizing that David wasn’t so delusional as to miss the sin in the story, Nathan then rebuked David. He identified David as having been the one in the story who sinned. Nathan didn’t do this to make David feel bad. He didn’t do it beat down David. Far too often we feel like the people confronting us about our sin are being mean or harsh. But what Nathan was doing was loving. He wanted David to stop lying to himself and agree with God’s assessment of David's character.

He also reminded David how many blessings David had received from the Lord so that he could instill and encourage godly shame in David.

We have an amazing resource all about shame. Too many of us think that shame is all bad, but some of it is bad and some of it is very, very good. If we don’t recognize good shame, we’ll fight it. But David needed to experience the shame that comes from sinning against a righteous, holy, and loving God. And so do we.

This is why Nathan detailed David’s sin in order to contrast it against the abundance of God’s blessing. 

And—by using the illustration and eliciting such a powerful response from David—before David could even respond to Nathan’s reproof, David had already outlined the consequences of his own sin.

He too deserved to die and to make restitution fourfold.

However, how impossible would that have been? You can’t make restitution to a dead man.

Now, let’s stop here to consider what we normally do when our sin is presented to us. Instead of seeing our sin and hypocrisy and delusion, we argue for it. We double-down. We add to our sin. We multiply our strife. We increase our pain and relational carnage.

Why do we do this? What is it in man that makes us so blind and aggressive toward truth? The Bible says that we are sinners, and the Bible communicates that sin makes us blind and stupid. Were incapable of seeing our sin, and we’re foolish enough to try to defend it. This is a result of pride and arrogance. 

We don’t have time to unpack the heinous and destructive nature of pride, but I will say this . . . we absolutely cannot see our sin apart from a work of God in our lives. That’s why when someone takes the time to open the Bible to help us see the destructiveness of our ways, we need to choose to humbly submit to that. God is lovingly trying to stop us in our tracks. We’re like blind people sprinting toward the edge of a cliff, but when He sends someone to stop us before we fall, we scream and kick at the person trying to save our lives. 

We need to stop, humble ourselves, truly consider whether or not we’re mistaken or in the wrong, and we need to submit to the Word of God every single time.

Lastly, before we move on, I want to talk to those of us whom God wants to use to confront our family members when they sin. Nathan had to tell the king of Israel that he had sinned in wicked ways. Listen, if David had rejected the reproof, he could have easily ordered Nathan’s death. David had already had one innocent man killed, what was to stop him now?

Nathan knew the only way to glorify God was to obey by confronting King David, and yet how often do we try to excuse ourselves from biblically correcting people. We’re afraid of the tantrum our child will throw. We’re afraid of our spouse’s reaction. We’re afraid what our parent may do if we speak truth in love. 

Now, I get it. People entrenched in their sin are scary, but we need to trust God more than we fear people. We need to obey God more than we submit to the terrorist demands of our family members. 

Of course, this two-part episode isn’t directed at the reprovers; it’s about the ones needing to be reproved. But we have plenty of resources that will help the reprovers to overcome their fear and obey God the way they should. The Anti-Terrorism in Your Home collection should provide aid. 

Also, I’ll link the Parent’s 5 Jobs as it discusses in depth what it means to Biblically reprove.

Okay, moving on.

3. The Confession before Man

Praise the Lord, that instead of arrogantly fighting and defending his sin and making excuses and remaining delusional, David humbly confessed his sin instead.

By the grace of God, help from Nathan, and the power of the Holy Spirit, David humbly confessed his selfish self-worship, sin with Bathsheba, and murder of Uriah.

Nathan then communicated that God had forgiven David, and that is a glorious truth. I wish we could take the necessary time to really praise God for His forgiveness. We don’t deserve it, but He forgives us anyway. And it’s unconditional. He will never hold that sin against us again. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences.

In David’s case, God’s forgiveness did not result in a removal of consequences, and it won’t in our case either. We have a whole series all about consequences: what they are, how to give them, etc. You should check that out if anyone in your home needs a better understanding of the doctrine of consequence. 

Now, we’re going to transition away from II Samuel. Remember, that was the historical account of David’s sin and correction, but Psalm 51 is David’s permanent, public record of his confession before God and man for his sin.

You could take the time to pause this episode, but we’re going to interact with it a lot over the next couple weeks, so I suggest you can read it now, but you should also read it in preparation for next week, and the LifeWork will present even more ways of interacting with the Psalm. 

4. The Confession before God

In Psalm 51 David did an amazing job of biblically confessing his sin. He wasn’t just “sorry.” He truly saw and communicated the depth of his transgression. He used God’s vocabulary to describe his sin, but he also did something else very important. David couldn’t truly understand his sin and see it for how terrible it was, nor could he understand the consequences he deserved if he didn’t know who God was.

A. David understood God.

I think our cavalier attitude toward our sin is a direct result of the fact that we don’t know God the way we should. But listen to the 19 different ways David talks about God’s character during his own confession.

David talked about God being gracious, loving, compassionate, forgiving, powerful enough to cleanse him, the main recipient of his sin, righteous, blameless, judging, truth, wise, pure, steadfast, relational, joyful, sustaining, the Savior, worthy of praise, and good. 

If you want to be someone who responds correctly to reproof with humble confession, you need to start now—before you get in trouble—truly understanding the glory and majesty of God. Only then will you see your sin for what it really is.

And it’s David’s familiarity with Scripture that allowed him to do this next point as well.

B. David understood his sin as God described it.

First, of all he spoke biblically about his sin.

As you read Psalm 51, you will find 4 different words David uses to describe his sin. The first we’re going to consider is the word “transgressions.” This Hebrew word is used to describe willful rebellion that “crosses over” a line. 

He also called his sin “iniquity.” This word carries with it an understanding of being guilty and deserving of consequences.

Of course, he also used the word Hebrew word translated “sin.” This word is used of sin in general as well as the specific sacrifices required of those who sin. 

And finally, he talks about what he did as being “evil.” This word is used generally to describe a wide array of wickedness.

But that wasn’t the only way David proved he was thinking biblically about his sin,

Second, David didn’t blame anyone else for what he did. He says thing like “my transgressions” in verses 1 and 3, “my iniquity” in verse 2, “my sin” in verses 2-4, and he even acknowledges the fact that he was a sinner from before he was born in verse 5.

God says that we’re responsible for our sin, and David—in his humility—was prepared to acknowledge that.

Of course, it was David’s knowledge of God and his sin that clearly lead to the next point.

C. David understood the necessity of consequences.

In verse 4 we see that David understood that God’s judgement was always righteous and good, and everything that contradicted what God said was deserving of that judgment. Verse 4 says, “Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And pure when You judge.”

Secondly, in verse 7 we read, “Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” One of the Old Testament consequences for being physically unclean was an arduous cleansing process. David here acknowledges that he saw his sin the way God did and wanted to embrace God’s plan for internal cleansing.

Third, David didn’t hate the fact that God “broke his bones.” In verse 8 he says, “Make me to hear joy and gladness, Let the bones which You have crushed rejoice.” David is referring to the metaphorical consequences of his sin, and instead of complaining about them, he rejoiced in God’s chastisement because he knew it was designed to heal.

Fourth, one of the very real consequences of our sin is a dwindling of our joy. In verse 12, David asks that his joy be restored, not because he thought he didn’t deserve that consequence, but because he looked forward to reconciliation.

And fifth, David recognized he was guilty of the blood of Uriah. In verse 14 he talks of his “bloodguiltiness.” He wasn’t trying to pretend that guilt wasn’t a legitimate consequence of sin, but simply that—again—he yearend for reconciliation.

Before considering our final two points, let’s review. David sinned. Nathan reproved, and instead of pridefully being blind to his sin or deceptively trying to manipulate himself out of the consequences, David confessed his sin before Nathan and everyone present. But he also confessed his sin before God. 

His confession wasn’t a sort sentence. He wrote 19 verses about it. In that confession, he acknowledge God’s character—the chief recipient of his sin. He also showed that he had a right understanding of the gravity of his sin, and he also acknowledged the legitimacy of the consequences of his sin.

The next thing we see throughout David’s humble confessions was . . . 

D. David desired to be reconciled to God.

I alluded to this on our last point, but it’s important to talk about it here. David didn’t just want to escape the consequences. He didn’t want to merely get back into good standing with the people around him and have them see him in a positive light. He didn’t just want to do what he was told so he could move on with his life. David earnestly wanted his relationship with his God to be restored.

In verses 1 and 2 he asked for grace because he knew the ultimate punishment for his sin was more than he could bear. “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the abundance of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.”

He knew God wouldn’t be gracious to him if he were simply playing a game. David was humbly asking God to forgive by blotting out his transgression. That would require mercy and grace.

Second, David understood that consequences were part of the cleansing process. We saw in verse 7 “Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” 

But David also understood that regardless of how painful the consequences were, the cleansing they were designed to impart was a joyous thing. In the very next verse we read, “Make me to hear joy and gladness, Let the bones which You have crushed rejoice.” Consequence are uncomfortable, but from the sinner’s perspective, they should be comforting as well because they recognize that the consequences are just part of having our relationship with God fixed.

David longed for the reconciliation regardless of how difficult it was, and we see that in verse 9: “Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities.”

And finally, David understood that God was the only hope for salvation. We read verse 14 earlier where David pleaded with the Lord to deliver him from his bloodguiltiness. 

If you don’t care about God or wish to be reconciled to Him no matter the cost, you aren’t humbly confessing your sin . . . you’re arrogantly trying to move past the conversation so you can go on living for yourself.

And finally, after recognizing Who God was, understanding his sin as God described, accepting the consequences, and yearning for reconciliation with God . . .

E. David wanted to repent. 

To repent is to change. 

We have a bunch of episodes and series linked in the description of this episode all about the nature, necessity, prerequisites, and method of repentance. Teach Your Children to Apologize, How Your Children Respond to Sin, Biblical Conflict Resolution, and the Biblical Parenting Essentials are just a few.

But for the sake of our conversation today, in order to see how David humbly acknowledged the necessity of repentance and showed his desire for it, we’re going to explain repentance in its most basic form and see what David says about it.

In Ephesians we learn that the core of repentance is stopping the sin, thinking right about our sin, and starting the righteousness. We’re told to putt off, review our minds, and put on. I think that order is important because God says we need to stop sinning even if we don’t completely understand why. But it requires seeing our sin and ourselves the way God does in order to truly live righteously. 

Anyway, in Psalm 51 we see that the whole passage reveals that David was finally thinking biblically. His mind was definitely renewed.

The whole passage also outlines both generally and specifically the sin David needed to put off. We already saw much of that.

But because David was now thinking like God, and because David was going to remove so many sinful habits, he recognized that he needed to replace the sin with righteousness.

In verse 6 we read that he wanted to live in truth. It also shows that he wanted to become wise. “Behold, You delight in truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.”

In verse 7 we read about the ceremonial cleansing, and in verse 10 we read, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.” It’s clear David wanted to be pure.

Verses 8 and 12 show that he wanted to rejoice in God.

Verse 10—which we just read—exemplified his desire to be steadfast.

We also see how he wanted to remain connected to God. Verse 11 says, “Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.”

As we continue looking at the evidences that David wanted to put on righteousness and truly, humbly repent, we see in verse 13 that he wanted to teach others about God’s goodness. Verse 13 reads, “Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners will be converted to You.”

Verses 14-15 show that he wanted to praise God.

Verse 17 really exemplifies his humble repentance because he recognized that the only thing God wants is brokenness. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” No matter how difficult or painful it would be, David wanted to have a broken spirit. He wanted to humbly see himself and his sin as God saw him. That requires brokenness and grief.

He also wanted to be contrite. We see that as well in verse 17. Contrition is feeling sorrow and remorse for improper or objectionable behavior.

And finally, David wanted to truly obey God in complete righteousness (the right thing in the right way for the right reason and in the right power). In verse 19 we read, “Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices, In burnt offering and whole burnt offering; Then young bulls will be offered on Your altar.”

Now, the four-fold nature of biblical obedience isn’t seen in this one verse, but as we study the Scriptures—especially as it has to do with the Old Testament sacrificial system—we see that going through the motions was never enough. 

Please listen to our Teach Your Children to Obey series to go through a more thorough study of the Bible to understand what true obedience is.

And that is humble confession. That is the only way we can truly please the Lord and be reconciled to Him and the other people in our lives.

A lot of empty words are spoken when we’re caught in our sin, but we must all pursue true repentance, and that will require humility.

Now, you may think you respond humbly in reproof—and maybe some of you do. But if you’re anything like I am, then what you think about most of your responses is wrong. It’s your pride trying to convince you that you’re humble.

So, be sure to join us next week for the conclusion of this two-part episode as we humbly consider what needs to change in our own lives.

Also, please share this episode with your pastor, friends, and family. And never hesitate to email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if you need help with any of the things we’ve discussed today.

And then join us next week for Humility in Confession, Part 2 | the application.

I’ll see you then.

Click the link below to download the PDF.

Welcome back to our final session in this 4-part series on Useful Family Relationships. If you’re just joining us, please gather your family, print out the LlifeWork, and start on episode 639.

And if you’ve been working though Philemon with us, I hope your family is also with you, they all have their LifeWork, and you’re ready to work through the final 10 growth opportunities. In total, with last week’s session, there are 20 different practical requirements to be a useful family member. I hope these 20 items (daunting though they may be) will be constantly revisited and applied and practiced in your home. 

You can post the list where everyone can see it. You can discuss one over dinner every evening. You can revisit the list when people in the family aren’t being useful to God and others—identifying in which character trait they need to grow. There are so many ways we can use and pursue the items on this list.

And I hope—if nothing else—your family finishes this study with an understanding that everyone in your family still needs to grow. I need to mature. My wife needs to keep growing in the image of Jesus. My children need to deepen their relationship with the Lord. This is a whole-family endeavor, and we absolutely must be purposefully becoming more like Christ.

Part of that process—because we all know that merely listening to 4 podcast episodes isn’t going to change anyone—part of the process can include the various resources we attach to each episode. Whether it’s the free LifeWork, transcript, or the related resources, we present them all to you as tools you can use to grow in your spiritual maturity. 

Be sure to check out the description of today’s episode for links to all of those resources.

And now let’s begin.

As I mentioned, the letter to Philemon is not a how-to guide. It’s a personal letter that practically exhibits how Christians talk and act when they truly believe God’s Word. We’re picking out the various truths Paul communicated and identifying if we are living in the light as Paul illustrates for us in this letter.

In addition, please remember that today’s list of practical applications is a continuation of last week’s list. That’s why we’re starting with number 11. 

Also, don’t forget that since this is a List Episode, we’re going to be dealing with each of these points very superficially with the hopes that as you identify your struggles, you’ll continue the study on your own or as a family. 

And we also talked about how the best application for you is going to be precise and specific and unique to you and your situation. Therefore, each of the applications I’m going to share with you are too broad. They’re true. They absolutely need to be pursued. You mustn’t ignore them because they’re not as precise as they need to be. It’s up to you and your disciplers to create a more precise application of this truth.

But before we get into that, if you have enjoyed this series, if your family better understands how they need to change in order to be more useful to God and the family, please consider becoming a monthly donor. We desperately need your assistance if we’re going to be able to continue creating these free resources.

You can visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to sign up. It might only be $10 or $100 a month, but every little bit helps. Please, please, please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate and sign up today.

And now, let’s get started on our very important, non-negotiable LifeWork.

11. According to verse 11, what must our relationships be?

We aren’t going to read this verse because we’ve already discussed it. In fact, this is the portion of the letter from which we got the name for our series.

If you remember, Onesimus’ name literally meant “useful.” Understanding this helps us appreciate the wordplay Paul used in verses 10 and 11 where Paul describes Onesimus as being “formerly . . . useless to you, but now is useful both to you and to me.” 

That is the kind of relationship God desires His people to have—useful ones. Last week’s and today’s lists of relationship characteristics make for the most useful (and glorious) relationships on the planet.

This is what it’s all about. We want to stop being useless to people and God. We want to love God and others and be pursuing the Father’s plan for our lives.

What is that plan for you? Well, I’ll tell you this . . . the most important parts of that plan are discussed in the pages of Scripture. That’s where you’re going to find God’s plan for your life.

But—before we move on—I want you to know that I have a very helpful resource linked for you in the description. It’s a series called, “God's Will for Your Child,” and not only does it unpack a number of important non-negotiable truths for all God’s people, but there’s also a resource for helping your child identify a Christ-honoring occupation, as well as an episode all about how to make any and all decisions to the glory of God.

I hope you’ll check that out.

12. According to verses 18-19, for what should we be willing to sacrifice? 

In verses 18-19 Paul promises to repay anything that Onesimus may own Philemon. Since we’re assuming that Onesimus may have stolen from Philemon when he originally ran away, and since Onesimus likely spent all that he stole, and as a slave wouldn’t have been able to make much money while traveling to and living in Rome, Paul was willing to cover his debt.

Paul was ready to do whatever it took to remove any distractions so that Philemon and Onesimus could focus on the most important thing—reconciliation. 

Reconciliation is the process by which we address the wrongs, ask for forgiveness, grant that forgiveness, and return to a Christ-honoring relationship where we’re both loving God and each other.

So, what are you willing to sacrifice so that others be reconciled to God, to others, and to you? Are you prepared to help your family members in this process, or are you more interested in your own comfort? 

Who in your family needs to be reconciled to someone else, and what are you prepared to do to assist that process? 

13. This previous point is why Paul could say in verses 15 and 16 that our relationships should grow stronger when we experience conflict and difficulty.

Like a broken bone once reset will heal stronger than it was before it was broken, so a Christ-honoring relationship should be stronger once reconciled than it was before the sin that caused the initial break.

Is your relationship with your dad weaker than it used to be? Has your relationship with your sibling or spouse deteriorated? 

Which of your family relationships needs to be stronger and closer and better? What should you do to help that relationship be pleasing to the Lord?

In order to do this, you should look at our Biblical Conflict Resolution material.

14. According to verse 14, our relationships should have mutual what? 

Verse 14 says, “but without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but voluntary.”

Once again, the word for which we’re searching is not going to be found in the text. So, we have to engage our minds to understand what’s really happening here. Paul could have simply told Philemon what to do, and had Philemon been any more spiritually immature, Paul probably would have.

But Paul knew that Philemon, though he wasn’t perfect, was mature enough to want to please the Lord and heed Paul’s advice.

As I look at this, I see that Paul was willing to respect Philemon.

Do you start by giving God’s people the benefit of the doubt that they’ll submit to truth when confronted by it? Hoping all things and believing all things is loving, and loving people is the best way to respect them.

Of course, the person may prove by their actions that they aren’t mature enough to pursue obedience, and we will likely have to change our tactics, but we should try to start respecting our saved family members enough to give them the benefit of the doubt that they will do right when confronted by Scripture.

15. According to verse 7, our relationships should provide what?

We read verse 7 a couple sessions ago. It reads, “For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother."

We should truly enjoy the useful relationships we have with God’s people, and we should be a joy to God’s people. 

Are you a joy to your family, or do your family members brace for impact when you enter the room? What do you need to be to start being a refreshing joyful influence in your family?

I’m sure if you asked the people in your family, they may have some biblical suggestions for what you can do.

16. Also according to verse 7, what else should our relationships provide?

Paul had joy and comfort. Is your biblical love for others a comfort—not because you let people get away with sin, but because people can trust that you will always point them back to the most important reality in this world—their relationship with God?

Are you a trustworthy, mature comfort in your home? What can you do to be more comforting to your parents, spouse, children, or siblings?

Just remember, true comfort is not just making people feel good in their sin. True comfort comes from loving others as God loves you.

17. In verses 7 and 20, how does Paul describe a useful relationship?

The Greek word translated “refreshed” and “refresh” refers to a ceasing from labor to recovers one’s strength—a necessary rest that rejuvenates. It’s like a break or a vacation. 

Can those who know us best say that we refresh their hearts in Christ?

Are you a refreshment in your family?

18. According to verse 15 these earthly relationships are also what? 

Forever is a long time. Though we may be separated from each other for a time, these truly useful relationships are designed to be eternal.

Praise God that the relationships we’re building with God’s people here on earth are designed to last forever! Are you building a foundation that will need to be unmade in order for it to last eternally, or will the useful relationships you have with God’s people beautifully transition to their eternal state?

We need to be building the useful relationships that will seamlessly transition into glory.

19. According to verse 20 our relationships should what each other?

Verse 20 says, “Yes, brother, let me benefit from you in the Lord.”

All useful relationships will always benefit everyone in it. But we must always remember that a truly beneficial relationship will always be defined by God.

We’re never benefiting anyone by sinning against them. We also don’t benefit anyone by encouraging them in their sin . . . no matter how much they like it.

A truly beneficial relationship will result in the other person being more like God.

What needs to change in your life to be a more beneficial influence in your family?

And finally . . .

20. In order to have truly useful relationships, you must first be a prisoner, worker, soldier, and child of God. And then you must take full advantage of all the resources God provides. Only then can you experience what it’s like to have a genuinely useful relationship to the glory of God.

And here we’ve come full circle. On our first session we saw how God wants His children to be identified, and then we worked through a list of the resources God provides so that we can be the people He wants us to be. Then we worked through these 20 points to better understand how we’re to live, and it’s here and now that we see that living a useful life will result in strengthening our identify in Christ. We can only truly be a good prisoner, worker, soldier, and child of God when we fully submit to Him.

Now, some of you may be wondering how I constructed this list. I’ve been jumping back and forth in the letter; why didn’t I just work through from beginning to end?

This list moves from the most basic and necessary facets of usefulness and grows into the characteristics of the more mature useful relationships.

It all starts with salvation in Christ. That’s the most fundamental necessity of a useful relationship, but that’s not the end. From there we need to live like a biblical family . . . united in God. Love was the next requirement, and then we saw the importance of speaking truth. These are all very fundamental necessities for usefulness.

From there we started to get into character traits that require more maturity. We must be humble in order to accept truth spoken in love. We need to be strong in order for obedience to be our passion. Immature people also don’t serve each other. And immature people don’t pursue consistent goodness. 

Then our 9th character trait shifted from what might appear to be mere external behaviors to the inward motivations. We saw the importance of being genuinely willing to do right—to really want it. And the 10th trait was being biblically accepting—mature enough to appreciate Christ-honoring differences and genuinely enjoy spending time with each other. 

And then we talked about being useful, willing to sacrifice, growing ever stronger, and respect.

And it’s at these higher phases of biblical usefulness that we start to be a joy, comfort, and refreshment, able to truly appreciate the eternality of these relationships, and—ultimately—genuinely being a biblical, valuable, useful benefit in your family.

This list wasn’t random, it set identifiable stepping stones. 

If you aren’t beneficial to your family, it’s because you aren’t valuable, refreshing, a comfort, and joyous to your family. 

If you aren’t those things, it’s because you’re not respectful, strong, sacrificial, and useful. 

If you’re not those things, it’s because you’re not accepting and willing to do right.

And if you’re not willing to do right, you’re probably not good, serving, and humble. 

And if you’re not that, then you’re not speaking truth in love as a true family member should.

And that’s probably because you’re not really born again into new life in Christ.

Of course, this list isn’t in the only right order (that would be ridiculous to claim), and—truthfully—many of these things happen simultaneously as we mature—but I hope you see how it was carefully built to provide a roadmap for growing in usefulness.

I also hope you see how cyclical it is. True speaking truth in love is obedience that requires humility and will be refreshing.

Serving people is a biblical family trait that grows from an understanding of our eternal relationship. 

Each of these character traits needs to impact and influence the others.

So, how about you? Of the previous 20 points, which 5 describe your best relationships? 

I hope as you answer this question, you do so biblically. You might say you’re loving, but you only say that because of how you feel toward someone. But biblical love isn’t merely a feeling. Biblical love is defined by God as truly wanting and working toward God’s best interest in the person’s life. If you don’t know God’s plan and aren’t working toward it, then that relationship isn’t really loving.

So, please be careful as you identify the 5 character traits that you believe are alive and well in your relationships. But also remember that just because these might be visible in your life, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to continue maturing in them.

And then the second application question asks “Of the previous 20 points, which 5 do not typically characterize your relationships?”

Again, be honest about this. We all need to grow in all of these points, but the top 5 that come to your mind are probably where you need to start.

By the way, you should be humble enough to invite your family to help you identify your 5 best and worst characteristics. They can see the blindspots you can’t. 

Of course, those two application questions are only the start. From there, you need to get more and more specific as you figure out precisely how you need to grow and change in the unique family relationships you have.

Let me end with one example.

Let’s say that I need to be more patient. That’s true, but with whom do I struggle the most being patient.

So, I identify that I need to be more patient with my daughter. Now, I’ve narrowed the application to the relationship with which I need to grow the most in my patience.

From there, I should identify the times I’m most tempted to not be patient with her. How about this, I need to be more patient with my daughter when she forgets to take out the recycling.

That’s a good start, but what does it mean to be biblically patient? What does being patient look like in that moment when I told her to take out the reclining hours ago and it’s still not done and she’s sitting on the couch? What are indicators that I’m not being patient? 

You see how as I continue to make this application as unique to me and the situation as possible that it becomes much more detailed?

That’s what we all need to do with each of these 20 elements of useful relationships.

I pray this series has set your family on the road to usefulness. From here, I hope you’ll come back week to week for more biblical family content. But I also want to give you a gift. Since you made it to the end of this short study, you can use the link in the description of this episode to get a 50% discount on our Family United in God Devotional.

And you can—as always—find many links to plenty of other resources that will help you dive deeper into our list.

Also, please share this series with a family that wants to be more useful to God and others, and reach out to by email at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if our biblical counselors can serve your family.

And don’t forget that your donations will make it possible for us to continue creating this free content as we minister to families all over the world.

And I look forward to meeting with you next week to broaden our understanding of humility.

I’ll see you then.

Click the link below to download the PDF.

I’m glad you and your family are back for this part of our study. It’s one thing to know what your identity is and understand the resources available to you . . . it’s something completely different to actually use those resources to become a biblically useful member of your family. 

I hope you’ll avail yourself of the LifeWork, transcript, and related resources all linked for you in the description of this episode. Our blog, Taking Back the Family, is a treasure trove of audio and written content designed to help your family glorify God more and more.

So, let’s take everything we’ve learned so far and try to put it all into use in our lives.

Before we start, though, it’s very important that you understand something about “application.” Good application is truthful, but the best application is specific. I have a couple resources linked for you in the description that will discuss this in more detail, but the part I want us all thinking about today is how to make our application specific to us. We all need to love God better, but what that means for you on Tuesday evening at 6:37pm in your family may very likely be very different from what I’m experiencing at that exact same time.

If we’re too general with our application, it will be easy to think we’re already doing it. “I love God.” It will also not truly help us when we’re in the moment and tempted to hate GOd’s plan and act hatefully to the person in front of us. But a specific application should jog our memory because it was uniquely created for that particular moment.

Okay, so one more thing. I love creating these resources for you and your family. I pray God uses them in powerful ways in your life. We try as hard as we can to pack them full of biblical truth and application. But in a very short time we may have to stop creating these resources. We need families like yours—families that have been impacted by the biblical truth presented in their podcasts—to partner with us financially. Some of you may be able to give $100 a month, but others maybe only 50, 25, or even 5. Please don’t not give because you don’t think it will make a different. I assure you that everything will help.

Please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to become a monthly donor so that we can continue creating this content, speaking, counseling, writing, and helping families all over the world.

And now, let’s review where we’ve been. Everyone in your family is called to be a prisoner, worker, soldier, and Christ-honoring family member. And we have plenty of resources to do the job. 

But we must now stop to acknowledge and inconvenient reality.

First, everything that follows is a direct command for all Christians.

Second, all Christians have everything they need to do what God commands and, therefore, no excuses.

Third, non-Christians do not have the resources available to them to live the way God is about to command us and enjoy the blessings God is about to enumerate.

Fourth, if you believe you are a Christian, but the people closest to you cannot describe you as a prisoner of Christ, a worker for God, a solider of the Lord, or an active participant in the family of God, then there is a huge problem. It’s true that Christians sin, but unbelievers are characterized by their sin.

So, fifth, if you are not a prisoner of the Lord. If you aren’t on God’s workforce or in His army or part of His family, please submit to Him Who loves you with an everlasting love. Drink deep from His water that quenches your deepest thirst. Consume His bread that gives eternal life. Follow after the Supreme God of the universe, your Creator, the One Who sacrificed His sinless self to snatch you from death.

If you or someone else in your family isn’t truly a child of God, please listen to our Biblical Families series. That study steps you through I John to be able to identify if you’re genuinely born again and what to do if you’re not. 

And sixth, when you become a child of God, you will then not only have access to the resources necessary to fulfill God’s expectations, but you’ll also have a new purpose for your life.

And part of that purpose encompasses all that comes next.

1. According to verses 4, 10, 19, and 22, our relationships must have a common foundation of spirituality.

This is the foundational factor in all relationships. Whether or not the other individual is born again informs how the child of God is to relate to them. 

Now, I’m not talking about the world’s understanding and fixation on what they call “spirituality.” I’m talking about the spirituality identified in the Scriptures. Spirituality is when we conform our beliefs, desires, actions, words, and feelings to God’s will for our lives.

If you are not born again, if you’re not striving to think like the Father and act like Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, then you will never be a spiritually useful member of your family.

On the other hand, if you are a Christian, but you are a double-minded person who vacillates between true worship of God and self-worship, then a useful relationship with you will look very different.

However, only when everyone in the family is a maturing believer can the whole family benefit from the supreme joy and blessing of everyone functioning usefully to God’s glory and all of their good.

If there is anyone in your family who isn’t born again, you should be praying for them and sharing the Gospel with them so that they too can see the amazing grace of God. And even if they continue to reject His love and salvation, you should continue to faithfully pray and speak of God’s offer of salvation and the consequences of rejecting it.

If members of the family are true Christians, but they’re choosing to step away from the light into the selfish sins of self-worship, you need to lovingly confront them with God’s truth, beckoning them to change and mature in Christ. As brothers and sisters in Christ, you have the joint responsibility with each other to perform the One Anothers. This includes love and edification, but it also includes rebuke, reproof, and admonishment. 

If your family members are saved and growing, God wants to use you to help them become more mature and stronger in the faith. 

We have many episodes about evangelism and discipleship that can assist you in knowing how you are to practically relate to the other members of your family in regard to their spirituality or lack thereof.

I also recommend you work through the Evidences of Spiritual Life if you have any questions about whether or not you or someone else in your family is truly a maturing Christian.

2. As we’ve previously seen, according to verses 2 and 16 our relationships should be familial.

It’s unfortunate that modern families often exhibit the worst interpersonal relationships. I have interacted with countless friend groups and teams and communities of people who are not Christians and not related to each other who get along far better than so many actual families in the church.

In God’s plan, your family is to be the pinnacle toward which all relationships reach and with which they are compared.

The relationship of a husband and wife is a picture of Christ’s love and care for His people and His people’s submission to His authority. The relationship between parents and children as well is a picture of the beautiful relationship the Father has with His children. And the relationship of siblings is supposed to mirror the glorious relationship Christians are to have with each other.

How sad it is when families who profess to be followers of Christ exhibit the worst of their behavior in the home.

We have many resources concerning the roles and relationships of your family. I would say the best resource with which to start would be the Family United in God Family Devotional. 

Moving on . . .

3. According to verses 12, 13, and 22, on what should our relationships be founded?

As you scan those verses, you’ll notice that none of them identify one obvious word to write in the blank. Instead, what you’ll see is the fruit of one of the resources we discussed last time.

During our last session we learned that love is one of the amazing resources the Lord provides for us to be useful in our family. Verses 12, 13, and 22 illustrate one aspect of familial love. In verses 12 and 13, Paul explains how he sent Onesimus back to Philemon even though he would have very happily kept Onesimus with him in Rome. And in verse 22, Paul writes about how much he longs to see Philemon again.

One of the natural consequences of true biblical love is that we should long to spend time with each other. The other person does not have to be delightful and winsome for us to want to interact with them. 

In the same way God’s love pursues us when we were His enemies, so our love should constrain us to pursue others.

How about you? Do you truly enjoy spending time with your family? If not, why? If you’re quick to answer that with an accusation against them, please understand that your answer is untrue. You don’t enjoy spending time with them because you don’t truly love the Lord and that family member as you should. 

Now, I’ll admit, it’s a lot easier in our sinful flesh to want to spend time with people who are nice to us, but I used to work in a home for at-risk teen boys, and—though I failed in this regard on many occasions—I truly enjoyed spending time with them. At those moments, in the in power of the Holy Spirit, I wasn’t considering my own desires. Instead, I was pursuing God’s glory and the good of those boys. I knew they needed to know Him and grow in Him, and so I truly enjoyed even the difficult moments with them because I knew that was part of God’s plan for their lives.

If you want to be more useful in your family, start prioritizing God’s will and the good of your family, and start enjoying being with them.

4. According to verse 8 and 21, our relationships should allow us to boldly speak truth into each other’s lives.

Like Ephesians 4:15 commands, we should enjoy speaking the truth in love so that others are built up in Christ. If we shy away from lovingly unveiling God’s Word for others, it’s a revelation that we are not loving as we should.

Do you deliberately lie to your family? Are you so strongly influenced by the delusions of this world that you inadvertently speak falsehoods? Do you encourage each other in their sin, or do you point them sinner to the Scriptures?

If you or members of your family struggle speaking in truth and love for the glory of God, I suggest you listen to our one-off episode entitled “The Communication House.” It too will be linked for you in the description of today’s episode.

Remember, this episode is an overview episode. As you identify the big-picture ways you need to apply the truth we’ve learned and start being more useful in your family, the linked resources will help to unpack each of these applications in more detail and with more Scripture. They will be very helpful as you strive to be more and more specific in your personal application. Remember, the more specific the application is, and the more detailed it is, the more beneficial it will be in helping you change.

5. According to verse 9, our relationships should be founded on love, which should allow our admonishments to be easily and readily what?

Verse 9 reads, “yet for love’s sake I rather plead with you—since I am such a person as Paul, the aged, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus.”

This whole letter is Paul’s advice to Philemon. Instead of being uncertain whether Philemon would accept his advice and act on it, Paul was confident that he would do the right thing.

The word that goes in the blank is “accepted.”

Since we are all sinful, there will be times of weakness that we pursue our selfish desires. When that happens, you useful and loving family members should reprove and rebuke you. In those moments, if you want to be a useful member of your family, then you need to accept their biblical correction.

When we love God and others, and our fellow believers speak God’s truth to us, our love for the Lord should compel us to submit to His Word.

No doubt there is plenty of specific and detailed application for you on this point. Do you remember the last time a parent or sibling had to confront you about something you did or said that was wrong? How did you initially respond?

Well, if we love God and others, then you probably should have responded in a very different way. You should humbly accept the truth and strive to implement it into your life by putting off the sin, renewing your mind in the Scriptures, and putting on the righteousness of Christ.

Again, we have plenty of resources that help in this regard, but you will need to develop a personal plan for how you can respond in a better way the next time someone has to confront you about your sin.

6. According to verse 21, by what should our relationships be characterized?

Verse 21 says, “Having confidence in your obedience, I write to you, since I know that you will do even more than what I say.”

As we’ve seen, this is an inescapable reality. All prisoners, workers, soldiers, and children must submit to God’s commands. Obedience should be our passion.

We don’t have the right to decide that God’s expectations are wrong. We don’t get to do whatever we want. We have been born again to follow Christ and be more like Him. If our Savior did nothing more nor less than pursue the will of His Father, so too should we.

We have a fantastic resource called Teach Your Children to Obey that can help all of us better understand what God means when He talks about obedience. I’ll tell you this much . . . simply doing the right thing in the right way may still be very disobedient.

Check out the description of the episode for that link.

Before we move to our next point, just imagine for a moment if everyone in your family were obedient to their authorities. But now consider yourself. Are you obedient? When was the last time you disobeyed an authority. And—listen—this question isn’t just for the kids. We all are required by God to obey Him and the authorities in our lives. 

Okay, so consider the last time you disobeyed. How can you stop doing that in the future. What plans and processes can help you obey in that situation? As you think about this, hopefully you’ll recognize that you need to pursue God’s glory instead of your own comfort. You’ll also need some help from your family to remain accountable to obedience.

Again, the best application is unique to you, so talk with your family members about how you in particular can obey better in your home. And if you need more professional assistance on this point, you should reach out to counselor@TruthLoveParent.com so one of our biblical counselors can partner with you to help you learn how to obey to the glory of God.

7. In verses 12, 13, 16, and 22, we should be doing what for each other?

I’m going to read all 4 of those verses with no breaks. “I have sent him back to you in person, that is, my very heart, 13 whom I intended to keep with me, so that on your behalf he might minister to me in my chains for the gospel. No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. 22 And at the same time also prepare me a lodging, for I hope that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you.”

What do these verses illustrate? What was Paul doing for Onesimus and Philemon by sending Onesimus back to Colassae? What did Paul want Philemon to do for him?

There are probably a lot of words that could be used, but I chose the word “serving.” Paul served these men by sending Onesimus back home. He was inviting Philemon to serve him if he had a chance to leave Rome.

The most loving thing we can do for another is to want and work toward God’s best interest. And, as we’ve seen so far, that involves serving each other.

One of the ways we serve God is to serve each other. In Romans 15:25 Paul wrote that he was “going to Jerusalem to serve the saints.”

Galatians 5:13 reads, “For you were called to freedom, brothers; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”

Do you wake up in the morning asking the Lord how you can serve your family today? Talk about a useful family member!

I want to challenge you to take all of these applications seriously in your life. We’re disobeying God if we pick and choose the ones we want to do. That means that we absolutely need to have a plan for serving our family members.

8. According to verse 14, what should characterized our relationships? 

I’ll give you a hint: Paul knew that because of this trait in Philemon, Paul wouldn’t have to use compulsion to get Philemon to obey.

Verse 14 says, “But without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but voluntary.”

The word for which we’re looking is “goodness.” Are you known by this character trait? In addition to being readily identified as being loving, God’s people are to known for their righteousness.

Christians should be good. This word is sometimes translated “good treasure” or kind. It refers to doing that which is beneficial, morally right, and when it’s used of God Himself refers to absolute and consummate goodness.

This is more than mere outward obedience. Do you desire, in the core of your being to be holy and righteous and just? 

We need to if we’re going to be useful in our relationships. 

9. Also in verse 14 we learn that our relationships should be characterized by willingness to do all that God commands.

Grudging obedience is never truly obedience. We must be joyfully willing to submit. Are you willing to serve and obey and love and help and be good and speak truth? Do you desire that above all else?

Now, you might ask, “How do I desire to live for others? That’s so hard! And you’re right. It is hard. In fact, it’s impossible in our own strength. 

I think it’s the Merest Christianity Series that will most help you with this question. Of course, working with a biblical counselor will help as well.

And finally (for today) . . .

10. According to verse 17, what word should describe our relationships? 

Verse 17 says, “If then you regard me a partner, accept him as you would accept me.”

My friends, we need to be accepting, but we must be careful to understand this point as God communicates it. To accept someone doesn’t mean that we ignore their sin or—ever worse—approve of it. 

This word has the idea of literally taking something to oneself and signifies a special interest on the part of the receiver. We should gladly embrace and fellowship with God’s people.

We should accept our family members as not just our family, but also our sacred trust. These are the people God has given us to serve and disciple and help and obey and love and challenge with truth. 

Too often our family relationships are broken and strained and filled with rejection. Yes, we need to reject sin, but we need to accept each other unto ourselves.

Who in your family have you rejected? Which of your family members would say that you reject them more than you biblically accept them?

That’s the relationship on which you need to start working today.

Now, again, I feel the need to explain how much these “List Episodes” are difficult for me. I love to grab onto a single idea and unpack it over enough time for us to really understand and apply it. But these List Episodes are designed to present a little information about a lot of topics. We can’t understand them as deeply as we ought, and therefore applying them well become difficult.

So, why do I do these List Episodes? I do them because we often see lists in the Scripture without much explanation. And God does this for many reasons, not the least of which is to motivate His children to fig deeper into the Word to make sure they truly understand what He’s requiring of them.

So, I hope this episode does the same for you. I hope you’ll listen to the other episode linked in the description, and I hope you’ll study through the Bible to better understand these concepts. I also hope you’ll meet with a mature spiritual authority like a parent, pastor, discipler, or counselor to better understand how to become a useful individual. Applying these truths to your own life and changing accordingly is absolutely necessary. Just learning and understanding is never enough.

So, be sure to share this series with the people in your life so they too can learn to be useful for God in their homes, and email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if we can help you better apply these truths.

And then join us next week as we work through the second half of these applications as we pursue having Useful Family Relationships.

I’ll see you then!

Click the link below to download the PDF.

Welcome back to our 4-part family counseling series where we’re learning how to have useful relationships amongst the members of our family.

Last time we talked about the necessary nature of the people involved. If you didn’t catch our last episode, please stop here and listen to that session first. In that session we learned about two absolutely vital components of usefulness. If we’re not rightly related to God and submitting to His expectations for our relationships, we absolutely can never be useful to anyone else.

And today we’re going to study the various resources we see in the short letter from Paul to Philemon.

I hope your whole family is with you. These were designed to be part of a family devotional time where you listen to this episode together and discuss the application for your family afterward . . . whether that be immediately after or (better yet) at intervals throughout the rest of the week.

There is also free LifeWork linked for you in the description of this episode. You should print out a copy for everyone in your family who can read and write so they can be following along and participating in this study. 

When you look at the description of this episode, you’ll also discover that we have a transcript and links to related resources. Those resources are designed to answer additional questions and keep the study going and developing and maturing as necessary. With over 600 episodes, we have all sorts of tools for you.

So, with those things in place, let’s dive in.

No doubt, everyone listening to me today has done some sort of job. You may not have been paid for it, but whether it was part of your employment or it was a chore like washing the car or taking out the garbage or feeding your pet or cleaning your room . . . you’ve done some sort of job.

And most of those jobs would have been impossible without the right tools. You can't perform surgery without tools. You can’t even feed a dog without tools—in the most general sense. You need various items to wash the dishes, and you need so many resources to accomplish your main employment. 

And the same is true for the Christian life. We can’t do it alone. We don’t have the power or knowledge or ability necessary to live the life God wants us to live. Let me put it this way . . . none of us can be useful to anyone else without a lot of help. We have nothing in ourselves to be truly and beneficially useful to anyone. That’s because of our sin nature that leaves us totally depraved but for the common grace of God in our lives.

Now, you might not like the way that sounds. You may have been told your whole life that you’re special and powerful and perfect and all you need. And in one tiny degree some of that is true. You are a unique creation of God, and—to that degree—you are beautiful and special. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. But the praise ultimately goes to God since He was the one Who made you that way. You don’t really get to pat yourself on the back for any of that.

Other than that, the Scriptures are clear that we are born sinners and enemies of God. The Bible says that we’re dead in our trespasses and sins and incapable of pleasing the Lord in our flesh. We’re blind and lost and like ridiculous little sheep. We cannot please God in our own strength. We cannot save ourselves. We truly are wretches in need of spiritual life and power.

It’s for these reasons and more that Paul reminds Philemon of the amazing resources at his disposal to do the very difficult job of forgiving Onesimus.

And—as I observed last time—Paul’s letter to Philemon exposes deep theological realities expressed in the seemingly casual words of a personal letter. What I’m saying is that Paul did not write Philemon to be a textbook. But all the doctrinal truths about God that filled Paul’s mind informed and guided all of his words to Philemon and to us. 

But before we look at the first resource Paul casually identifies, I want to remind you of the monumental task that it was to have a 10 year old podcast with nearly 650 episodes. It has been a true labor of worship to God and love for all the families who have ever joined us . . . even if it were for only one episode. 

But—moving forward—we need your help. We need the resources we’re going to discuss in this episode, but we also need financial resources to keep doing this job. Times being what they are, we are need of more donations to continue producing these free resources and to accomplish the many more dreams we have. There are still more books to be written, more courses to be created, more counseling to be done. But we can’t do that without donations from families like yours.

Whether it’s $5 a month, or 10, 20, 50, or $500 a month, we need your help to continue this ministry. Please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to become a monthly donor today.

And now let’s continue our study.

If last week’s study did anything, it probably left you feeling a little overwhelmed. The nature of a Christian is a prisoner of God, a worker for God, a soldier of God, and a child of God. And there are other passages that teach us that we’re servants of God. This means that we’re not free to live our lives however we want, and that reality might have caused some of you angst.

In our flesh, we’ll never be truly useful to anyone else because all we care about is ourselves. We have comforts and dreams and desires we’re chasing instead or pursing everyone’s else’s best. But even when we want to care more about God and others—those who are completely comfortable allowing God to dictate how you’re to live—you should also realize how humanly impossible it is for us to submit to God that way. We need so much help!

And Paul knew that, so he mentioned many of the Christian’s resources throughout the letter.

1. According to verses 3 and 25, what’s the first resource God gives us?

Verse 3 reads, “Grace to you.” Verse 25 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

Now, statements like this can be confusing. First, if you’ve been attending church for very long, you’ve heard the word “grace” thrown around so constantly, but only rarely is it ever defined and explained. This happens because pastors and teachers so often just assume that everyone knows what they’re talking about.

And if you’re knew to Christianity, the idea of grace can easily be misunderstood or watered down due to the cultural meanings.

It’s clear from this text that Paul is describing grace as a necessary benefit and resource that’s available to believers. Paul regularly extends these same statements to the many believers in each of his epistles. But what is grace?

Grace is God’s unmerited favor. It’s the extension of a benefit that we do not deserve. God isn’t required to save anybody. We don’t deserve spiritual life and power. But God gives it to us anyway. 

Some people have explained the relationship between grace and mercy this way. Let’s say that a parent tells his or her children that if they get all “A’s” on their report card, the children will receive an ice cream cone. But if the children get any “F’s,” there will be a negative consequence.

And let’s say that the report cards come back, and one of them has nothing but failing grades—all “F’s.” Well, what does the child deserve? She deserves consequences, and she absolutely doesn’t deserve ice cream. I believe an accurate—though simple—explanation of mercy and grace would go like this. The parents might choose to extend mercy by not giving the child the negative consequences she rightly deserved. And the parents could choose to show grace by giving the child the ice cream she does not deserve.

Now, kids, please don’t hold your parents to this expectation. They’re not unmerciful or ungracious to follow through on their expectations and give you the consequences you deserve. I have plenty of other episodes that help parents navigate these truths. 

I share this illustration so that everyone listening right now understands that even though you don’t deserve access to any of God’s resources and gifts and blessings . . . He is gracious. He offers them to us anyway.

Everything else on today’s resources list comes by the grace of God. But grace itself is also unmerited. We don’t deserve it, and yet God so amazingly gives it to us.

Now, I could talk for days about God’s infinite grace, but we must move on.

2. According to verse 3, what else does God give us?

The verse says, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Peace provides stability and rest even when God is requiring us to do hard things. Peace isn’t the absence of difficulty or conflict. Peace is the soul rest God gives to those who are His children, servants, prisoners, workers, and soldiers.

We don’t have to be anxious. We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to feel depressed or be sinfully angry. God wants us to be at peace, and we can never be at peace in and of ourselves. We need to receive this resource from God. 

However, though peace may rightly be considered the grace of God, please understand that most of the New Testament describes the fact that peace is conditioned on our submission to the Lord. This doesn’t mean that we somehow earn it or deserve it. This means that God has expectations for us. Like we discussed in our Biblical Family series, if we’re living in the darkness of sin and disobedience, we can’t receive the blessings of living in the light of truth and righteousness.

We don’t have time to unpack it, but our Peaceful Parenting series steps through the book of Philippians to help us better understand the part we’re to play in the peace of God.

3. According to verses 4-6 and 22, what powerful resource allows us to speak to God Himself?

You can, of course, feel free to pause this episode at any time if anyone in your family would like to answer the question.

Verses 4-6 read, “I thank my God, always making mention of you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints; 6 and I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the full knowledge of every good thing which is in you for the sake of Christ.” And verse 22 includes, “I hope that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you.”

God speaks to us through His Word, the Bible, and we speak to Him in prayer. Prayer is a powerful and deep concept in the Bible. It’s also mysterious and sometimes confusing when we don’t understand it well. 

The Bible tells us that God is always accessible and wants to hear us. He cares about us and desires to commune with us. Now, I want to be clear. There’s nothing that God doesn’t know. And He will never give us something that’s not good for us regardless of how much we ask.

The biggest blessing of prayer is the effect it has on us. As we go to prayer seeking to speak to God in a way that pleases Him, asking for those things that are in line with His will, and pouring our hearts out to Him, we are changed for the better as we submit to Him in prayer.

God wants us to talk to Him about the struggles we have in being useful. He wants to hear us confess our sins of being unuseful. He wants us to pray His Scriptures back to Him as we try to understand how to be useful. 

Now, again, we could spend an entire series on each of these resources. However, our point today is simply to open our eyes to them, remind ourselves about the fact that we have all the tools we need to be a useful addition to our families, and dedicate to using the resources God’s offered us.

4. According to verses 5, 7, and 9 what must we have toward the Lord and each other?

Verse 5 says, “I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints.” Verse 7 says, “For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love.” And verse 9 reads, “yet for love’s sake I rather plead with you.” 

I Corinthians 13 teaches us that once faith and hope are no longer necessary, once they have ceased, love will continue for all eternity. 

Unfortunately, most church-goers have a very unbiblical understanding of what love is. They listen more to their culture, the world, and their own opinions more than they do the Bible. 

We have a series that steps through the four family loves. I’ll link it for you in the description of this episode. That series will walk you and your family through the biblical data concerning love to learn what it is, how the four loves are different, and how to become a more loving family. 

However, for our purposes here, let’s understand that biblical love allows us to do what is in another’s best interest. Instead of pursuing our own passions and desires to the detriment of the other people in our family, we can—through God’s power—want and work toward God’s best interest in their lives.

Love is a truly beautiful reality in Christ, and we all need to spend more time understanding the love of God in our lives.

And even though love will outlast other resources, that doesn’t mean they’re not important now.

5. According to verses 5 and 6, what should we have toward the Lord?

I’m going to start reading in verse 4, “I thank my God, always making mention of you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints; 6 and I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the full knowledge of every good thing which is in you for the sake of Christ.”

Now, I just pointed out that love is superior to faith in that love will never cease though we will no longer need faith in eternity. However, right here and now, faith is an absolutely beneficial, vital, important, and exceedingly necessary resource in our lives.

If someone asked me which Truth.Love.Family. study is the most important study that all families need to do, I would say—without hesitation—our Merest Christianity series. That series teaches us why we do what we do and how to truly, genuinely change. 

The world says that people never really change, but God is daily intending to change us, and He will ultimately perfect all of His children in eternity. Yes, we can and must be changing in this life. But we will never consistently change if we don’t understand the absolute preeminence of faith in our lives, what it is, what it does, and in what we need to have faith.

Ephesians teaches us that this resource is a shield that protects us from the various attacks of Satan. Faith truly shields us from everything bad and destructive and hurtful in this life. 

Again, so much could—and needs to—be said, but the purpose of this study is to open our eyes to the glorious resources the Lord provides so that we’re excited to find out more about them and how to use them in our useful family relationships. 

This study should—in part—encourage you to continue to study the topics we’re introducing. These four episodes will absolutely not change anyone in your family. But if all of you listening today recognize who you’re supposed to be in Christ and get serious about understanding and using the resources He provides, you definitely will see amazing and lasting change.

6. In verse 6, what has God given Christians?

Let’s read it again, “I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the full knowledge of every good thing which is in you for the sake of Christ.”

There are so many beautiful truths that can be mined from small portions of the Bible. I hope this study encourages you to slow down in your own Bible reading and truly start to meditate on the Word.

II Peter 1:3 tells us “that [God’s] divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” Knowledge is a resource most grand and absolutely necessary.

Without it, we can’t even have faith because you can’t believe what you don’t know. But the knowledge of God and from God is one of the most powerful tools He gives us. He didn’t create the world, set it spinning, and walk away. He communicates with us. He’s given us the Bible that has absolutely everything we need for life and godliness.

If we’re going to be a useful addition to our families, we absolutely need to better know, understand, and obey the Word of God. 

7. According to verse 7, what does God provides His children? 

Similar to #2, this resources has its biggest effect on our mental state as we strive to please the Lord.

Verse 7 says, “For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.”

Do you have comfort in your family? If you don’t, it’s because you or they or all of you aren’t being useful. But even when life is difficult and people in your family are being hurtful, God wants you to have joy. In fact, God commands us to have joy.

Happiness is something that’s contingent on your circumstance and environment, but joy has nothing to do with what you experience. Joy is a choice, and—once again—you may be sitting there uncertain what joy is, or you may have a very wrong understanding of what joy is, so I hope you’re being challenged to better understand this beautiful, undeserved resource God has for you.

When you utilize the joy of the Lord, it gives you strength, it makes you enjoyable to be around, and it helps you be a blessing to your family. 

8. According to verses 15, 16, and 22, what is God?

Verses 15 to 16 read, “For perhaps he was for this reason separated from you for a while, that you would have him back forever, 16 no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.” And verse 22 says, “And at the same time also prepare me a lodging, for I hope that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you.”

Now, if you’re uncertain what’s being taught here, please know that you’re not going to find the word for the blank in these verses. These verses are illustrating a glorious reality that’s taught all throughout Scripture. 

Paul was trusting in God’s plan for Onesimus that even though it seemed bad for Onesimus to have left the way he did, God’s plan resulted in the best for Onesimus and Philemon. In the last verse we read, Paul had hope that he would reunited with them both in Colossae . . . if the Lord willed.

These verses are illustrating for us how Paul viewed the sovereignty of God. The word “sovereign” is the word that goes in the blank.

The fact that God is ultimately in control coupled with the fact that He’s loving and good is the best resource a Christian could ever have. We can trust God to know and do what’s best. It’s our faith in God’s sovereignty that gives us joy, peace, gratitude, and contentment. 

It’s such a powerful facet of our usefulness that I wish we could dedicate so much more time to it. But we actually have. In our parenting sorrowing and suffering children material, we deal with this point in much greater detail because it’s in our pain that we’re so tempted to stop trusting God’s control over our lives.

But we must move on.

9. From verse 1 through verse 24 Paul names ten believers (not including mentioning the whole church who was in Philemon’s house) who were a help, comfort, and encouragement to Philemon. One of our resources is the body of Christ. How does verse 7 describe how saints should affect each other?

Verse 7 says, “the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.”

Because Philemon had grace, peace, he prayed, he loved, he had faith, knowledge, joy, and recognized that God’s sovereign, he was a refreshing relationship in Paul’s and the church’s life.

Are your family relationships refreshing? Are you a refreshing influence in the life of your family?

God’s people are supposed to be refreshing to each other. God empowers the church to provide a necessary ministry to us—from leading us to Him, to reproving and rebuking us, to loving and encouraging us, to sharpening us—making fellow believers a glorious tangible blessing.

Your need the influence and refreshment of a truly biblical body of Christ. Your family needs to be attending and participating with a church—but not just any church—a church that’s functioning the way God created it to function. Please check out the description of this episode for an amazing resource if you want to determine if your church is what it should be.

We cannot be refreshed and be refreshing if we’re not actively participating in a healthy, discipling, equipping church.

Now, in conclusion—so as to not go too long today—let’s remember that we have access to absolutely everything we could ever need in order to accomplish God’s will in our lives. We must never believe the lie that totally submitting to God and sacrificing ourselves to Him is “too hard.”

Yes, it can be difficult because of our sinful flesh, but it’s not impossible. We can and must be useful family members. We must embrace our identify as prisoners, and soldiers, and workers, and family, and servants. And we can only do that by utilizing and resting on the resources God provides. 

So, in our last few moments, I want to encourage you to take very seriously the last two questions on your LifeWork.

The first is, “How about you? For which of the above tools are you most thankful?” Which of the resources we considered today excites you the most? For which one are you most glad that God has given it to you?

And the second question is, “Which of the above resources have you historically neglected the most, and why?” This is a very important question. It’s time to be humble and honest with ourselves. Maybe you have to ask your other family members which one they think you’ve neglected the most. And the second part of the question is very important as well. Why have you neglected that resource? Why have you been acting like it wasn’t a tool designed to help you be a useful addition to your family?

I hope you’ll give careful consideration to those questions and share the answers with your family as you continue to discuss this material with them.

And I hope you’ll share this series on social media and be sure to tag us! And if you need more personalized help working through this material or some other difficulty, please email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894.

And then we’ll meet together next time to start putting all of this together into super practical application so that you—and everyone else in your family—can start being more useful in the family to the glory of God.

I’ll see you then!

Click the link below to download the PDF.

I’m your host AMBrewster, and I welcome you to Season 36! At the end of this season, we’re going to celebrate our 10th year of podcasting and our 651st episode. 

That is a huge milestone in podcasting. Chatgpt provided me the following statistics. “Millions of podcasts have been created since podcasting began. A very large percentage become inactive after only a handful of episodes. Only a relatively small fraction survive for 5 years. Reaching 10 consecutive years of production places a show among the more established podcasts in the industry.” It then went of to say, “650 episodes works out to about 65 episodes per year. That’s approximately 1.25 episodes every week. Compared with the market: Many podcasts stop before reaching 20 episodes. Reaching 100 episodes is already considered a major milestone. 300+ episodes is uncommon. 500+ episodes generally indicates a long-running, disciplined production operation.”

I hope that helps give you some perspective about the number of resources at your fingertips and the massive foundation that has been laid. Each of these episodes stands on the shoulders of those that went before, and they’re all interconnected like a fractal. They support, expand, and inform each other.

That’s what we’ve been trying to consistently produce since 2016, and—Lord willing—it will continue for much longer.

It also helps that each of our episodes comes with free notes, a transcript, and carefully curated links to related resources so that you can benefit from our vast collection without feeling lost.

So, I hope you’re excited about this season and ready to learn what God has for all of us.

This season we’re diving into some of the most regularly visited family counseling topics. Biblical counselors speak into every facet of the human experience because God’s Word gives us everything we need for life and godliness. But when it comes to the families whom I serve, there tend to be a lot of things in common. For that reason, we frequently end up studying similar topics and passages of Scripture.

So, our first short series of the season will span four episodes. It’s called “Useful Family Relationships,” and we’ll be studying this concept from the book of Philemon.

Now, before we dive in, I hope you have your family with you, and I hope you’ve taken advantage of the LifeWork PDFs available on our blog, Taking Back the Family. If you click the link in the description of this episode, you’ll be taken directly to our blog so you can access that LifeWork.

When a family and I work through this content, they do the LifeWork at home, and then we’ll apply the truths to their lives during our sessions. We’ll also answer questions and dive deeper as necessary. Of course, in a podcast, I can’t speak one on one with you, and that means our application can only go so deep.

For that reason, I hope you’ll do two things. First, as you listen to this with your family, I hope you’ll keep the conversation going. I hope you will guide your family to the specific application that they need to become useful for God.

Second, if you’re hitting a roadblock and don’t know how to apply the material in helpful ways, please consider reaching out to us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com so that our biblical counselors can work with your family to identify the best application of God’s truth.

But before we get any further in today’s study, I hope you’re excited to see this podcast hit 15 and then 20 years. But we can’t do it without your help. The vast majority of the content we produce is absolutely free. The goal was for this non-profit to raise the necessary funds from donors. As those donors support the ministry, we could continue creating free resources for hurting families and thriving families. 

But we’re going to need to raise a lot more money if we ever hope to reach our 11th year of podcasting. We’re currently trying to raise the money necessary to become a sustainable ministry. That means that we need listeners like you to become monthly donors. All you have to do is visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to learn more.

Each monthly gift—regardless of its size—will help because they will all add up, and we’ll be able to budget better than we do when one-time gifts come in.

So, please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to become a monthly donor, and let’s get excited about what God is going to do for this ministry.

And, now back to the show.

Get your LifeWork pages ready, because here we go.

The Book of Philemon is about reconciliation and the overall relationships between Christians. Onesimus (whose name means “useful” in the Greek) was a slave of a believer named Philemon who lived in Colossae. As you read the passage, it appears that Onesimus had stolen from Philemon and fled the country. 

Some time later while Paul was under house arrest in Rome, is appears that Onesimus met him and eventually became a Christian. 

Now, Paul wrote this letter around the same time as Colossians and gave them both to Onesimus to carry back to Philemon. This is corroborated in Colossians 4:9 where it says, "and with him Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here.” 

Then Paul appealed to Philemon to accept Onesimus back into his household, as a brother in the Lord rather than a slave. In Paul’s estimation, Onesimus was far more “useful” to Philemon (v. 11) now that he was a Christian. Paul even promised to pay whatever debt Onesimus might owe Philemon. And—over the course of the entire letter—Paul shows us how Christians need to be engaged in “useful” relationships.

Now, it’s important to keep in mind that Paul did not write this letter as a doctrinal treatise or 12-step pamphlet. It was a personal letter—I believe it’s the most personal letter in the Bible. And Paul’s beliefs about God are evident in it. All of this practical application flows from the truths Paul had learned and been teaching his whole converted life.

Therefore, it’s important for us to be looking carefully for these truths because there won’t be a bullet point, flashy powerpoint slide or neon letters surrounding these lessons.

So, today’s episode is about the nature of the people within useful family relationships. And it’s interesting to note how Paul describes himself and the other Christians in his life. 

Let’s look at four different passages in order to identify how Paul saw himself and other Christians, and then let’s apply that to our lives.

1. According to verses 1, 9 and 23, what word does Paul use to describe Christians?

Let’s read the verses. I’ll be reading out of the Legacy Standard Bible for this whole study. 

Verse 1 reads, “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus.” In verse 9 we see, “I am such a person as Paul, the aged, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus.” And in verse 23 we read, “Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you.”

Now, hopefully you remember that I said earlier that Paul was under house arrest when he wrote this letter, but I don’t believe Paul is simply trying to remind Philemon that he was incarcerated. Paul uses this same description of himself in Ephesians 3:1, and in Ephesians 4:1 we see, “prisoner in the Lord.” And there are other uses peppered throughout the New Testament.

Why would Paul refer to himself like this? Why would he use this imagery for himself and other believers? Hopefully, you’re curious about this, and hopefully you have some thoughts as to why it’s important.

I’ll say this for now, Paul is viewing his imprisonment in Christ and for Christ and of Christ as something far more than simply being in chains because of his loyalty to Jesus.

2.  According to verses 1 and 24, what other word does Paul use to describe Christians?

Verse 1 refers to Philemon as a “fellow worker.” And then again in verse 24 Paul mentions, “Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow workers.”

What was the key modifier Paul used to describe these people? They were workers.

Paul and John use this same description of Christians in Romans 16:3, 9, 21; I Corinthians 3:9; II Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 2:25, 4:3; Colossians 4:11; I Thessalonians 3:2; and III John 1:8.

What do you think this imagery is designed to communicate to us? Why would we see it all over the New Testament to describe God’s people?

What implications are there for Christians being workers?

Again, I hope you’re at least curious about the answer. The Bible never wastes words. Every one of them is important and designed to work together with the others to teach us something about God, other people, and ourselves.

But we’ll get to the answer shortly. First, we must consider the another description Paul uses of God’s children.

3.  According to verse 2 how does Paul describe Archippus?

Verse 2 reads, “to Archippus our fellow soldier.”

Paul uses this same imagery in Philippians 2:25, “But I regarded it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger and minister to my need.”

In II Timothy 2:3 we read, "Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”

That’s a very interesting way to describe Christians. Was Paul a soldier in an army? Are we supposed to join the military? Why would Paul use the word soldier to describe Epaphroditus? Why did he use any of these words to describe these men and women?

But Paul’s not done yet with the figurative descriptions.

4.  According to verses  2, 3, 7, 10, 16, and 20, Paul uses various terms to describe Christians, but all these words are similar in that they describe a common relational unit. What is that unit?

I won’t take the time to read each verse, but I’ll point you to the words I want you to see. In those verses we read about people being referred to as “sister, father, brother, and child.”

Those are all descriptions of family. 

All throughout the Bible God uses the exact same imagery. He even explains our salvation in terms of adoption into His family. 

Alright, so stop and consider. Why did Paul use the terms prisoner, worker, soldier, and family to describe all of the Christians he mentioned in this letter?

What’s the point? Is it no big deal, or are there larger lessons to be learned?

5. Application for Your Family

Each of those descriptions has something in common. Can you see what it is? Now, since you can’t truly provide meaningful feedback in a podcast, I’m going to answer the question for you, but—in the future—feel free (as a family) to pause the recording when a question is asked in order to illicit feedback from everyone as they have ideas.

Okay, so the prisoner, the worker, the soldier, and children—in particular—all have expectations put on them from authority figures. 

Prisoners are only allowed to do what the warden allows. Workers are responsible to accomplish what the employer expects. Soldiers are required to fulfill the general’s commands. And children are expected to submit to and obey their parents.

Christians have a unique identity. Though the world is constantly fighting to have their uniqueness and specialness and freedom and authority and self-autonomy recognized, we find all throughout the Scriptures that children of God have a very different identity.

By using this imagery Paul is helping us understand that we—as Christians—are supposed to live our lives in submission to our ultimate Authority. Our nature is one of submission and obedience and setting aside our desires to pursue another’s.

Now, you might be new to the Scriptures, and you might think I’m making a pretty huge leap with just a handful of descriptive words from a single short letter. But what you’ll find when you read the rest of the Bible is that Paul is simply writing from his comprehensive understanding of God’s will for our lives.

Jesus tells us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him. He explains that the greatest commands are to love God and others above ourselves. He says that if we love Him, we’ll keep His commandments. We’re taught to be humble and selfless and obedient and submissive. Time and time again we realize that to be a Christian is to have a new nature, a new identify given to us, and that identity is one that is more consumed with God and His glory than it is our own. We realize that we are here to fulfill His will, in His way, for His reasons, in His power. 

He deserves our worship. He deserves our lives placed on the altar as a living sacrifice.

Paul knew that Philemon and Onesimus needed this lesson because Onesimus had not submitted to God in the past, and they both were going to be tempted not to submit to God in the future . . . especially when it came to being useful to each other.

So, how does this apply to us? What changes do these truths need to work in our lives?

Well, as you look around the room at your parents, siblings, children, or spouse, please know this . . . in order to have useful, valuable, beneficial relationships with them, you need to start with the correct understanding of who you are.

A. God wants you to have a relationship with Him. 

Paul was born again. The Bible goes into a lot of detail about how Paul came to Christ. We know that Philemon was a Christian, and we know that Paul lead Onesimus to salvation by grace alone through faith alone. 

Onesimus was previously not useful to Philemon as he should have been. But once he submitted to Jesus, he had the ability to be infinitely more useful than he could have been before. 

If you aren’t a child of God. If you’re not a Christian. If you haven’t been saved by the blood of Christ and born again into new life, then you can never truly be useful to the people around you. You can’t relate to them the way you were created to relate.

Now, we just recently did another family devotional series. It’s called Biblical Families, and in that series we work through I John to help us all better understand how to become children of God and grow in Him. I would strongly encourage working through that material if there are any questions about what it is to be truly, biblically born again.

So, that’s the first necessary step to have useful family relationships. You need to be saved.

B. God wants you to submit to His will for your life.

This is where the imagery of being a prisoner, a worker, a soldier, and a family member comes in. You’re not pushing everyone aside as you run selfishly toward your own desires. You recognize that you have been placed on this earth to glorify God and love others. 

This means that how you relate to the people in your family isn’t dictated by your feelings or by what society says. God gets to decide how you function in your family. He gets to define useful family relationships.

Now, I don’t want to make these episodes any longer than they have to be, and I don’t want to take the idea of a prisoner, worker, soldier, and family member and extrapolate out all the other implications of those terms. 

There is plenty of Scripture that digs deeper into these concepts, and each of those words are truly packed with meaning. But the point of today’s LifeWork assignment is to help us better understand our nature in Christ and to recognize that our identity is children to a parent, workers for a master, soldiers for a king, and prisoners to a Lord.

As we view ourselves that way and seek to live accordingly, everything else we’re going to learn from the book of Philemon (and from the Bible as a whole) will be much easier to understand and submit to.

Now, it’s very likely that you’re listening to this and want nothing to do with it. You don’t want to be a prisoner of Christ. You don’t like working. You don’t want to be a soldier, and you don’t like the implications of useful family members.

If that’s the case, allow me to suggest that you probably don’t have a saving relationship with God. That’s likely your biggest need of the moment. I say this because when you truly understand Who God is and who you are, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by the beauty of the fact that He is the Creator and you are the creation. You can appreciate why His glory is so much more important than your own. And you begin to understand how true joy is found in serving others.

As we conclude today, I encourage you to give careful consideration to how being in Christ and understanding your new nature could drastically change your relationship with everyone in your home. Meditate on what it would look like for you to set aside your wishes for this family and instead seek after God’s will.

And it’s only after we understand our identity in Christ and our families that we see our desperate need for the resources God promises.

But if you or a family member doesn’t truly understand or want to be under the authority of God, they don’t want to submit to His plan for their lives, then I encourage you to email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894. Our biblical counselors would love to serve you by teaching and reproving and correcting and training your family.

And please share this episode so that other Christian families can better understand what it takes to have useful relationships in their home.

And join us next time as we look at the amazing resources God provides so that we can have valuable relationships in our families.

I’ll see you then.

Season 35 has reached its end, and so we embark on Season 36. Welcome to today’s teaser of our upcoming content.

I don’t know how useful these short synopses are for you, but I find them helpful as we set our sights on the next phase of our year. There’s a lot of Scripture that talks about seeing, looking ahead, being attentive, planning, discernment, and care, so I view this as a way to prepare ourselves for what we’re going to learn.

So, let’s do that.

I don’t want to sound dour, but this season will end in September with a celebration of our 10th anniversary. On one hand, that sounds exciting. On the other, it may be our last. As many of you know, we’re trying to raise $100,000 so that this ministry can become sustainable and continue serving families.

However—in all transparency—though we’ve received a handful of precious donations, we are nowhere near our goal. Come September, the board and I will have to have the uncomfortable conversation about whether or not this ministry can afford to continue.

Again, I don’t want to sound negative in any way. I’ve already said that I completely trust God to know what’s best and to provide the wisdom He promises. I desperately want to do this full time. I want to continue counseling families, writing books, and creating this free podcast content, but I don’t want to pursue anything the Lord isn’t in. 

For quite a while now, I’ve been working 12 to 14 hour days trying to keep TLP up and running while also desperately trying to make the money to care for my family. At the moment, TLP pays me about $10,000 a year. I think it would be great if TLP were able to provide a living wage so that I could throw myself full time into ministering to families. 

So, we’re definitely not giving up hope. We’re going to continue asking all of you to partner with us by becoming monthly donors. We’re going to continue directing you to TruthLoveParent.com/donate. Every little bit does help and will add up, and—by the grace of God—could easily reach $100,000 and more if He wills.

By the way, please understand that the $100,000 mark is not for me. It’s for the ministry. TLP would pay me from that, but I’m just one of many different financial obligations the ministry has. The board would ultimately decide if they can raise my salary and how much I would receive. 

Anyway, we still have time. We could still reach our goal . . . but if this does end up being our last season of podcasting, I wanted to end on a hight note.

And that’s why I shared all that information with you just now. I want you to understand that though I’m hopeful that we can reach our goal of raising $100,000, if we have to close our doors, I want to make sure we redeem the time and make this potential last season count.

So, as I was going through all of my notes about potential episodes and series, I wasn’t seeing anything that stuck out to me. So, I asked my wife what topics she would include if this were our last season. As we talked, the Lord lit the lightbulb above my head, and I instantly knew where to look.

In counseling, I’ve found that I return to many of the same topics with my counselees. Our struggles and issues always feel unique to us, but Solomon says there’s nothing new under the sun, and we so often come to realize that we’re not alone in our difficulty. 

And not only that, but the biblical truth we need to glorify God in our struggles and mature in Him is frequently exactly what other people need to hear in their struggles.

So, I opened my counseling notes. I went through all of the studies and LifeWork I’ve collected over the years to which I find myself returning time and again. To be honest, there are so many . . . too many for this season of content. 

For example, I find myself frequently talking about what the Bible has to say about strong emotions like fear and anger and depression, conflict resolution, biblical decision making, addictions, suffering, biblical love, obedience, repentance, self-harm, and how to become more like Christ. By the way, if any of those topics cause you to think, “I or my family really need help with that,” I’d be honored to work with your family and show you from God’s Word the promises and help He offers.

But I identified 4 of the most common biblical concepts to which I return time and again with the individuals and families I counsel. 

So, what we’re going to do is work through the LifeWork I give my counselees in our sessions. For those of you who don’t know, LifeWork is what I call the homework assignments my counselees work on in-between sessions. I don’t call it homework because no one likes homework, but we all want to have a better life. So, it’s LifeWork.

Anyway, I’m going to make the LifeWork pages available to you to use as you work through the sessions with your family or as you might benefit from them with your family in the future. However, I do ask that you don’t post these online or give them to friends. If you find these resources and can use them in your family, please do, but don’t seek to distribute them . . . unless—of course—you’re pointing people to Season 36. These documents reflect years of intensive study designed to minister to the families I serve. 

And that reminds me, each of the episodes for Season 36 are designed to be listened to by the whole family. It’s not just about dads and moms. I would be honored to speak directly to the whole family as we work through these biblical topics. So, invite the kids. Print out the LifeWork, and work through it as a family. This might provide a great family devotional time for you. 

So, you’re probably wondering what we’ll be discussing.

Here it is. The first four episodes of the season are going to be about . . .

1. Useful Family Relationships

Now, some of you have likely heard me use that term “useful” to refer to families. If you’ve never heard it before, that might sound super blah. “Useful? That’s not what I imagine when I think of my family being who we’re supposed to be.”

I get it. But the Bible actually has some very important things to say about that word. In English, the word refers to being valuable and productive. It references something that fulfills its purpose in this world. Though it might not sound romantic or overly spiritual, I’m sure you can understand how God created us for a purpose, and only when we submit to that purpose are we being a valuable influence to the world and being productive in the Lord’s will.

So, we’re going to take four episodes to discuss the nature of useful family relationships, the resources to achieve this level of usefulness, and then we’re going to spend the last two episodes getting super practical as to what a biblically useful family relationship needs to be in the home.

We’ll lay out the expectations, our identity, our resources, and get super practical in our application.

Then the next two episodes will be about . . .

2. Humility in Confession

Listen, friends, our biggest need, each of our greatest problems is our pride, arrogance, selfishness, and self worship. 

All throughout the Scriptures we’re commanded to be humble. We see countless examples—the greatest of which is Jesus Christ Himself Who humbled Himself to take on humanity and die a common criminal’s death just to purchase our salvation.

And you’ve probably heard it said that an alcoholic will never seek help unless he first realizes that’s he’s an alcoholic. As long as she doesn’t think she has a problem, why would she seek help? 

So the reason many of our families are stuck in destructive cycles and deteriorating before our eyes is that we pridefully don’t see our need. We think we’re fine. When people tell us we need to change, we ignore their reproof. That’s pride. That’s arrogance. 

Everyone in your family, and everyone in my family needs to learn how to humbly confess our sins and pursue repentance. 

So, the first of these two episodes is going to lay the biblical foundation, and then the second episode is going to seek to be as practical in our application as possible.

Now, the next short series on this season might surprise you. We’re going to discuss . . .

3. Sleep & Your Family

I tell you what, when I meet with an individual (regardless of their age) or I meet with a family, I always take inventory of their overall physical health. One’s physical health can be a huge burden on their spiritual health, and it oftentimes introduces very unnecessary and powerful temptations. Now, that’s not to say that our physical health gives us permission to sin. That’s untrue. God always gives His children a way to escape temptation and glorify Him. But I would be remiss if I try to counsel the spirit without also addressing any ungodly habits we have in our health.

And, let me tell you, years of podcast content could be focused on this one topic alone. We Americans—in particular—are so bad when it comes to stewarding our health for the glory of God.

So often my counselees are eating poorly, over stimulated with various energy boosters (including coffee), not exercising, not taking advantage of the natural rhythms and processes God infused into His creation to keep us well, and overly drugged with medications that are tearing apart their systems.

But other than self-control in eating, the most destructive life habit I regularly encounter is bad sleep habits. Namely—not getting enough of it. This is especially true of our kids. And when we’re exhausted, it’s so hard to be who God wants us to be. It’s never impossible, but we set ourselves up for failure.

So, we’re going to take an episode to look at your body’s needs. This is going to predominately be an episode all about the sleep sciences. This isn’t to say that God’s Word doesn’t speak into the topic, but the Lord has allowed sleep experts to identify what our bodies really need to perform well. They’ve seen what God created into our systems, and they haven’t been quiet about their findings.

In the second episode in this series, we’re going to then open God’s Word to see what expectations God has for our sleep.

And the third episode is going to provide you necessary tools for creating more physically and spiritually healthy sleep cycles for you and your family. It’s not an easy thing to change, so we need to understand how best to work through it lest we make things worse.

And then our final short series of the season is going to be about . . .

4. God’s Plan for Your Family

We’re going to open the Scriptures to identify a comprehensive understanding of what you shouldn’t do, what you should do, and what you must be.

I’m very much looking forward to that three part series.

And then the final stand alone episode of the season will be . . .

5. Graduation Day

By God’s grace, there comes a time when counseling should end. Discipleship, counseling, parenting, and one-anothering is necessary to help those who can’t or aren’t doing right to turn around. However, once the individual is in consistent and beneficial habits of spiritually change, once they start doing for themselves what the parent or counselor of discipler or friend originally had to do for them, they’re ready to graduate.

Now, this doesn’t mean that they don’t need help in other areas. It’s doesn’t mean they won’t fall back into the same sin. But when the counselee starts counseling themselves exactly as the counselor was counseling them, and when they’re submitting to God’s Word, they’re right where God wants them.

Of course, I will say that none of us should imagine graduating from biblical discipleship. That should never stop. However, parenting is designed to come to an end and transition into the discipleship we see amongst all God’s people. Biblical counseling, especially when there’s a fee associated with it, is appropriate to end if the counselee is living in the light of truth. But even then, the former counselee should continue in regular biblical discipleship. 

Anyway, when my counselees have shown progress in their knowledge, understanding, and—most importantly—their wise application of truth and submission to it, it’s time to graduate them.

On that final episode of Season 36, I’m going to give your family the exact same encouragements and warnings I give all my counselees who reach that place.

Of course, these encouragements and warnings are going to come directly from the Bible because you don’t need my opinions, we all need God’s perfect and sufficient Word.

If—in God’s perfect plan—that’s the last podcast I ever do. I think that’s the perfect place to end. However, if the Lord wills that Truth.Love.Family. will continue to exist and continue serving families all over the world, that Graduation Day episode will beautifully set the stage for every episode and series that’s to follow. As we follow the encouragements and heed the warnings, we will continue to learn about God, seek to understand His Word through diligent study, and continue to wisely apply His truth to our lives in practical ways.

And that’s it. We’re going to pursue useful family relationships, humility in confession, Christ-honoring sleep patterns, and God’s glorious plan for our families. And we’ll end off the season preparing to continue seeing the Lord and growing in Him.

I hope you’re as excited about this season as I am. I hope you’ll tune in for every episode. I hope your family will join you. And I hope you’ll share this episode with your friends, pastors, and extended families.

I also hope you’ll strongly consider becoming a monthly donor so that we can enter our 11th year of ministry financially equipped to glorify the Lord. Please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to learn more. 

And—don’t forget—you can always email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if you would like to participate in biblical counseling with me.

Lord willing, I’ll see you next week.

Click the link below to download the PDF.

I’m your host AMBrewster, and I welcome you back to Truth.Love.Parent. TLP is a podcast of Truth.Love.Family., and we’re a non-profit seeking to equip families to glorify God by applying His Word to their lives.

We have a book called Quit: How to Stop Family Strife for Good, we counsel families in person and virtually, and we do conferences and workshops all with the goal of glorify God by teaching families how to worship Him better.

Of course, this podcast is nearing it’s 10th anniversary . . .  which is very exciting. And though this episode will likely only be about 20 minutes long, you’ll find free episode notes, a transcript, and links to related resources in the description of this episode. If you follow those links, you’ll be guided through a curated study of the topics we discuss today.

And all of it is free to you because we love you and your family and want to see you all glorifying God. 

The title for today’s episode is “The Only Way to Fight the World’s Culture in Your Home,” and—let’s be painfully honest—that’s a huge topic to cram into 20 minutes. But, never fear, the points we’ll discuss today are foundational, and the extra content in the description will take you much further as you learn to fight the influences of Satan, the World, and the Flesh in your home.

Before we continue, though, it’s important to identify what we mean by “the World’s culture.” In the Scriptures, the World (a word I like to capitalize when I’m not talking about the globe on which we live) is a system of beliefs and the people who follow them. Being worldly is living by that sinful worldview.

Satan is the one influencing the unregenerate World to believe wrong things about God, His Word, and themselves. Because of this, they have desires that run contrary to the Lord’s will, and therefore their words, actions, and feelings don’t please the Lord either.

If you would like to know more about how our beliefs are the bedrock of our desires, emotions, actions, and words, then listen to The Merest Christianity Series. 

Either way, the World’s culture is all the traditions and behaviors and fads and styles and ideas that grow from their godless worldview.

And we Christians can’t help but be confronted by the World’s culture. Even though we are not to be of the World, we do live in the world. In fact, in I Corinthians 5:9-10 Paul makes the very pointed observation when he wrote “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people; 10 I did not at all mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the greedy and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.”

He then clarifies that the Lord doesn’t want us associating with the professing Christians with sinful lifestyles. The point is, Paul beautifully makes the observation that it’s impossible to stop associating with sinners. And Jesus illustrates that since He came to seek and save the lost, He needed to spend time with the publicans and sinners in order to share the gospel with them.

So, your family is absolutely going to see the World, hear their beliefs, and potentially be tempted to believe the same things. Therefore, we must be diligent to prepare ourselves and our kids to reject the lies of the World and embrace God’s truth.

But before we go any further today, I want to remind you of what I said earlier. Truth.Love.Family. is a non-profit ministry dedicated to equipping families to glorify God. This is such a necessary ministry in this day and age, but the World’s culture hates organizations like ours, and so much of the culture has permeated the church that even professing Christians are less and less interested in hearing truth. For this reason, we find ourselves in severe need of donations if we’re going to be able to continue ministering to families all over the globe like we have for nearly 10 years.

If you would like to help us, please go to TruthLoveParent.com/donate to become a monthly donor. All of your giving is tax-deductible, and it will allow this ministry to continue spreading the Gospel.

It doesn’t matter how much you can give every month, all that matters is that you are giving. So check out TruthLoveParent.com/donate to become a monthly supporter of a ministry doing its best to strengthen your family.

Alright, in order to fight the World’s culture in your home, you must first . . .

1. Identify the lies.

In order to build out our two points for today, we’re going to spend our time in II Timothy 4:3-5. Verses 3 and 4 read, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”

I talked about influence earlier. Influence is something that comes up often on this podcast because God has expectations for how we’re to be influencing our kids and how they’re to be influencing others. He also talks a lot about influence, how we’re affected by it, and how important it is when it’s good.

The two verses we just read identify influencers and the people who want to be influenced by them. These influencers reject sound doctrine. They want to say things that people will like to hear. They want to create an echo chamber of selfish thinking. They reject truth and instead to to myths . . . lies.

The most important step we need to take is to help our kids identify the lies. If you pulled a scene from a movie or a line from a song or a page from a book, would your kids be able to identify the lies? I’m not talking about the flagrant ones that atheists spew. I’m talking about the subtle ones, the ones that look like truth, but whose foundation is falsehood.

The unfortunate reality is that our kids are absolutely not equipped to identify those lies, and the reason for this is that we parents can’t spot them either. I’m sure that everyone listening would definitely point out lies to their children if they saw someone leading them astray. But if we’re just as deceived as our kids, we’ll both be led astray.

So, again, we don’t have time to identify the most prevalent lies in our culture, but we can pull some indicators out of these verses.

The World’s lies are . . .

A. Undoctrinal

A doctrine is a teaching of Scripture. That’s all it is. When God’s reveals Himself, that’s part of Theology, the doctrine of God. When God talks about disobedience, that’s what we call Hamartiology, the doctrine of sin.

Everything in the Bible is doctrinal. People who say, “We don’t talk about doctrine” can only be telling the truth if they don’t talk about the Bible.

Talking to the young pastor, Timothy, in I Timothy 4:6, Paul writes, “In pointing out these things to the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following.”

The World’s lies can be identified by the fact that the don’t agree with the Scriptures.

Paul says these lies turn from the truth and chase after myths. 

But that’s not the only way to identify the culture’s lies.

B. Comfortable

I thought a good long time about what one word would best sum up this point. Paul describes the World’s lies as being something that tickles our ears and stokes our desires. And, you know what, that feels good. The echo chamber of self-affirmation is the most comfortable place to be. We love being told we’re right and awesome and perfect and enough.

But the truth is so often uncomfortable. Proverbs 27:6 compares biblical reproof to wounds. Psalm 141:5 reads, “Let the righteous smite me in lovingkindness and reprove me.”

In Matthew 5, Jesus compares spiritual maturity to amputation when He tells us to cut off the sin in our lives. 

In Romans 8:13 we read, “for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the practices of the body, you will live.”

This is uncomfortable. Our prideful hearts don’t want to be told we’re wrong. We don’t want to do hard things. We don’t want to walk difficult paths. In John Bunyan’s Christian classic, Pilgrim’s Progress, he shows Christian getting tired of walking the hard path and choosing instead to walk the fields of ease. And the consequences that awaited him there were dire.

My point is this, if what the World is teaching strokes our egos, encourages our selfish desires, and seeks only to make us happy, then it’s a lie.

Now, this is not to say that nothing in the Bible is glorious and wonderful and uplifting and encouraging. That’s not true at all. But the Bible’s comfortable encouragement always includes two things. First, it’s completely consumed with God. It’s deliberately and unashamedly centered on the glory of God. And this first reality is what causes the second, it really doesn’t have that much to do with us. 

Yes, believers will one day walk the streets of gold, but that’s not really that big of a deal compared to spending all that time with our Savior. And if it hadn’t been for my rebellion and inability in the first place, Jesus wouldn’t have had to die to cleanse my sins. 

You see, if I make the streets of gold all about me, it’s misses the point of heaven and the realities of my sin.

Now, again, I’m not suggesting that Christians will never be comfortable, and life is never fun or enjoyable, I’m not saying that we should only ever be dour and angsty all the time. What I’m saying is that God’s truth has weight. Yes, Jesus’ burden is light, but not because it has no weight. It’s light because the Holy Spirit empowers us to carry it. The World looks at the burden of God’s truth and throw up their hands. “It’s too much,” they say. But we Christians can mount up on wings as eagles in the most difficult of circumstance.

We can—and must—have peace and joy even when the world is dark around us. 

Christians should be the most content and thankful people on the planet because we reject the lies of self-soothing, and when we humble ourselves and turn our selfish eyes onto Christ through the power of the Spirit, then these truths that are very uncomfortable to our sinful flesh are a joy to our redeemed spirits.

So, teach your kids to identify the lies of the World by recognizing if it disagrees with God and agrees with our own sinful desires.

But, as we all know, you will never learn to spot counterfeits by staring only at counterfeits. That’s why Paul included the next verse.

2. Pursue the truth.

II Timothy 4:5 commands, “But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

How can we know if what’s being said is true or not? It must be . . .

A. Biblical

Though II Timothy 4:5 doesn’t specifically mention it, time in the Bible is absolutely necessary for us, our kids, and our families. 

If we back up just two verses from where we started, we’ll read this: “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and teaching.”

If we back up to the end of the previous chapter, we read, “continue in the things you learned and became convinced of, knowing from whom you learned them, 15 and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

Paul didn’t just assume we’d be reading the Bible, he—under the inspiration of God Himself—commands it.

And it’s only as we’re reading and studying and meditating and memorizing and applying the Scriptures to our lives that we’ll be able to do what we were commanded in verse 5: “But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

We could turn to so many more passages to unpack the importance of saturating ourselves with God’s Word and submitting to it. That’s what this entire ministry is about. We have an abundance of episodes where we talk about the importance of the Scriptures in our lives, where we seek to compel us all to care about the Bible more, where we work to convince us to dive into the beautiful depths of the Word of God.

And yet, if you’re anything like I am, it’s so easy to neglect His Word. I just returned from vacation, and I am ashamed to say that I spent very little time reading the Scriptures. And I didn’t do it on purpose. There were simply other things to be done that distracted me. 

Let’s just all agree right now that none of us pursue the truth as we should. An hour at church once a week isn’t good enough. Even if your church still meets on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening, that’s not enough. The sheer multitude of Worldly thinking that’s being jackhammered into our eyes and ears all day long easily distracts us from the 5 minutes of Bible reading we had that morning.

Now, it does’t have to be that way, but in order to make our time in the Word really count, we can’t just be reading it. We need to be studying it, meditating on it, and memorizing it. We need to be intentionally applying it to our lives and seeking to live in submission to it. If we turn our brains off, it’ll be lost in the avalanche of Worldly thinking.

Are you and your kids doing that? Well, if you want to successfully fight off the World’s culture invading your home . . . you need to.

But we also need to be aware that just because someone talks about God or quotes a verse, that doesn’t mean that what they’re saying is true. The “He gets us” campaign during the the Super Bowl a few years ago suggested a number of things about Jesus that don’t conform to the Bible. A homosexual woman masquerading as a pastor tried to convince her people that Psalm 121:8 which reads, “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in From now until forever” meant that God would protect her as she “came out” as being gay.

This is why knowing the whole of Scripture and studying it and understanding how Scripture interprets Scriptures is so necessary. One of Satan’s greatest tools is convincing believers to accept watered down, inaccurate, and patently false conclusions that look and sound biblical.

So, we can easily identify truth when we see that it doesn’t just come from the Bible, but is consistent and honest with the totality of God’s revealed will in His Word. But truth is also . . .

B. Self-Controlled

The Greek word “sober” isn’t talking about not being drunk. It’s describing someone who is self-controlled and uses self-restraint.

I Thessalonians 5:8 reads, “But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.” It takes self-control to have faith, be loving, and live righteously. 

I Peter 1:13-16 says, “Therefore, having girded your minds for action, being sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, not being conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct; 16 because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”

We cannot be holy as God is holy without self-control. We need to gird our minds for action, anchor our hope, be obedient, reject the former worldly lusts, and pursue Christlikeness.

The World’s culture doesn’t encourage self-control, and when it does, it only does so in a self-centered way. We feel better about ourselves when we’re self-controlled. We’ll save ourselves from disaster when we exercise self-restraint.

But the Bible’s discussion about sobriety deals with a fixation on Christ and a rejection of my personal desires.

But the truth of God is not just biblical and self-controlled. It’s . . .

C. Empowering

Understanding what Timothy had to endure, but also understanding the supernatural tools at his disposal, Paul tells Timothy to endure hardship.

How could he do that? Was he to pick himself up, dust himself off, and trudge on? No! This too is tied to the truth of God.

As we already discussed, it’s the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word that causes us to mount up on wings as eagles as we pursue God’s glory.

As we say no to the flesh and yes to God, we can only do so in His strength. 

If the World is pointing you and your family to self-sufficiency, it’s lying to you. If it wants you to believe that you’re enough or perfect the way you are or all you need . . . you’ve found a lie.

Our greatest empowerment doesn’t come through empty self-actualizing mantras, it comes through the truth of God. Only as we know and humbly submit to His Word will we have the power to carry on even when life gets hard.

This is why Jesus could say, "Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

He knew that we could only accomplish this in His power for His glory.

So, truth is biblical, sober, empowering through Christ, and . . .

D. Gospel

Paul told Timothy to “do the work of an evangelist.” The Greek word translated evangelist refers to a proclaimer of good news. Most of you already know that the word “Gospel” means good news.

But the Gospel isn’t just about the past one time act of justification whereby we’re saved into Christ. It also refers to the progressive sanctification by which we’re transformed into the image of Christ and the future hope of glorification when we’re stripped of our selfish, sinful lusts.

The Gospel isn’t just about bringing people to Christ, it’s about us persevering in Christ.

The work of an evangelist isn’t just for pastors. In Matthew 5, Jesus teaches that we’re all to be light on hills and salty salt. We’re all to live in such a way that people see our good works and glorify our Father Who’s in heaven.

We absolutely need to be sharing the Gospel and discipling people in Christ. That’s the Great Commission at the end of Matthew.

The World rejects the Gospel. They create their own gospels. They want to replace the saving and sanctifying work of Christ.

We know that the influence of the culture around us is a lie when it says and does anything that contradicts the Christ-centered Gospel of the Bible. But we need be discerning. Gospel-contradicting lies can be as simple as anything that promotes self-sufficiency, a rejection of authority, or the subtle dismissal of God by never speaking of Him.

I did an episode called “The Most Destructive Thing about Your Entertainment is Not What You’d Think.” You’ll find it and a bunch of other resources linked in the description. In that episode I show how something as simple and seemingly innocuous as My Little Pony convinces our kids of a horrendous falsehood—not by inserting a lie, but by omitting the truth.

And finally, God’s truth will always agree with the totality of Scripture, be self-restrained, gives us the strength we need to do the hard things, be gospel-centered, and have another important focus . . .

E. Ministry 

This Greek word speaks of service. One of my favorite uses of this word in Scripture is II Corinthians 5:18-19, “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.”

Ephesians 4:11-12 teaches us that God gave us great gifts (pastors and evangelists for example) “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” That “work of service” is later described as the discipleship in which the Lord would have us all participate. We need to be speaking truth in love and building each other up into Christ.

We were not saved for comfort and recreation. We were saved for work and service. We’re to be active in this world with the Gospel, doing the work of an evangelist. The World is always lying to us, we need to counter that with the loving truth of the Bible.

Listen, my friends, we know that the World’s culture is undoctrinal and feeds to our most base, selfish desires. They’re lies that must be rejected in their most abhorrent and subtle forms.

The only way we can fight that in our homes is by teaching our kids to read, study, meditate on, memorize, and apply God’s Word. We also need to be self-controlled, denying our flesh, taking up our crosses, and following Christ. We need to do all of this and more in the power of the Holy Spirit that comes through submission to the Scriptures. We need to be Gospel minded. We need to know the beautiful truths of salvation that it influence everything we do and say. And all of that put together is going to look like biblical ministry—serving each other in discipleship and truth.

That, my friends, is the only way you’ll be able to fight the World’s culture in your home.

As always, please share this episode so that other families can be equipped to fight the lies of the world, and check out the description of this episode to continue and deepen your study.

And if you need personalized biblical counsel to navigate this season of life, please email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894.

And then join us next week as we get a sneak peek into the topics for Season 36!

I’ll see you then.

Click the link below to download the PDF.

We are just a few weeks away from the end of Season 35, and I’m so very excited about our topics for Season 36. But we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves, because there’re still really important things to talk about now.

If you’re brand new to the show, I pray we draw you closer to God today. To that end, we have free episode notes, a transcript, and related resources linked for you in the description of today’s episode. Those items are there to help you further your study of today’s topic.

And—speaking of today’s topic, let’s dive right in.

Parenting can be a scary thing. We parents can be tempted to be afraid of Satan and his forces, our culture, our government, our children’s influences, our own inadequacies, and—quite often—we’re tempted to be afraid of our children.

But the most oft repeated command in the whole of Scripture is “fear not.” Perfect love drives out fear, and God has not given us a spirit of fear. Therefore, we need to pursue courage. That’s what we need. We need to be courageous parents.

And that’s what we’re going to discuss today. We’re going to lay the groundwork for courageous parenting, and then we’re going to include a lot of amazing resources in the description so you can study the other necessary facets of this conversation like the nature of fear, peace in your parenting, and the like.

But before we move any further along in this conversation, I’d like to share with you that our goal for 2026 is to become a sustainable ministry so that we can continue serving families for years to come. We’re at the place where—in order to care for my own family—we need to raise more money for this non-profit, or I need to pursue a different job. 

Honestly, forming those words is so difficult. I love this ministry with a fervent passion. I want so badly to continue opening God’s Word to help dads and moms better worship God with their parenting. I want to equip families to be unified and strong. I desire to create more and more resources that will point people to God’s will for their lives.

But without consistent annual giving, we’re going to have to close our doors. But you can help us. All you need to do is wisely and prayerfully commit to being a monthly donor. Listen, it doesn’t need to be a lot. Whatever your family can justifiably set aside each month can be added to what others can do. And it will ultimately be God Who gives the increase.

So, please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to learn how you can give tax-exempt gifts to our 501(c)(3) nonprofit. 

And—just so you know—we’re striving to be courageous over here. We trust the Lord and know that whatever He ordains for our lives is best. 

And—speaking of being courageous—let’s read Joshua 1:1-9. It’ll seem like a longer passage, and it will be easy to not pay close attention, but of everything you’re going to hear today, God’s inscripturated Word is the most important.

 “Now it came about after the death of Moses the servant of Yahweh, that Yahweh spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ attendant, saying, 2 “Moses My servant is dead; so now arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel. 3 Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory. 5 No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous to be careful to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn aside from it to the right or to the left, so that you may be prosperous wherever you go. 8 This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way successful, and then you will be prosperous. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not be in dread or be dismayed, for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go.””

For starters, when we read passages like this, we need to consider . . .

1. The Historical Context

A. God’s promises to specific people cannot be applied to other people unless additional biblical passages explain or illustrate that application.

We modern audiences are not to cross the river Jordan and drive out the Canaanites. God is not promising that any of us (if we’re not Jews) will inherit the Promised Land. God is not telling us that no man will be able to stand against us. God is not promising to be with any of us like He was with Moses. 

Things are different in the New Testament dispensation. God interacts with us differently, and He has different promises for us.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the Old Testament has no value for us. It has tremendous value as a revelation of Who God is. Jesus Himself is a revelation of the Father, and the Old Testament is a gorgeous revelation of the Godhead that helps us better love Him and understand the New Testament.

However, when God promised that Mary would give birth to the Messiah, none of us should think that we can clam that promise for ourselves. In the same way, there are many, many, many promises made to many people all throughout the Bible, and we need to be careful claiming them for ourselves.

This passage promises Joshua that if He obeyed the Lord, he would be prosperous wherever he went. And the Old Testament frequently sets the material terms of that prosperity. That material prosperity is not for us. The prosperity gospel, the health-and-wealth preachers are lying when they say that God wants us to be rich and materially prosperous. They will quote passages like this and lead well-meaning, but biblical ignorant people astray into materialism—all the while padding their own pockets.

This is why it’s mandatory that we modern Christians understand . . .

B. God’s promises to the New Testament believers are not tangible, but spiritual.

God does promise us great and precious things. He does promise to make us prosper, but nowhere in the New Testament do we see promises of tangible, material blessing. Instead, we see promises of tribulation and persecution and trials and distresses and hatred. 

It happened to Jesus, it will happen to us. God has never promised you that you will be physically healthy or rich if you follow Him. He tells you that you will be hated by the same people who hate Him.

However, God does promise us spiritual wealth, spiritual health, spiritual bounty, and spiritual prosperity. He promises us grace, strength, mercy, salvation, sanctification, peace, joy, contentment, gratitude, righteousness, and a slough of other spiritual blessings like the Fruit of the Spirit and the evidences of spiritual life in II Peter.

It’s important for us to recognize that God commanded Joshua to do certain things in order to attain the promises the Lord had given him. And we know from other passages of Scriptures that—though the promises to us may be different—God expects us to do the exact same things Joshua was supposed to do.

Joshua received his promises by obeying God, and we will receive our promises by obeying God.

So, what are the Lord’s expectations for us and what is He promising us New Testament parents if we obey Him?

2. The Modern Application

Let’s start by first looking at . . .

A. The Promises

First, God promises to be with us.

In verses 5 and 9 of this passage, the Lord promises to be with Joshua. He said, “I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.” And we have similar promises extended to us.

I Corinthians 3:16 tells us that the Holy Spirit dwells within His people. That’s a glorious reality the Old Testament believers didn’t have the same way we do.

Quoting from the Old Testament and applying it to us, the author of Hebrews writes “I will never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5-6).

Philippians 4:9 tells us that when we obey Him, the God of peace will be with us. 

And James 4 commands us to draw near to God so that He will draw near to us.

And I could keep going. 

We New Testament believers should definitely grasp hold of God’s promises to be with us because we absolutely need that and are called to have it. We cannot parent to His glory without His power and proximity. 

The second promise we see in this passage is what I’m calling Personal Parental Prosperity.

Verses 7 and 8 talk about prosperity and success, and though the New Testament offers zero promises of material prosperity for believers, we see abundantly greater promises offered to us.

As a small example, John 15:4-5 is the famous passage that tells us that we can only bear fruit in Christ if we are in Him.

The Philippians 4 passage as well as Romans 8:5-6 promise peace.

II Peter urges believers to add virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love to their lives through the knowledge of God.

The Scriptures promise to show us God’s will, give us grace, mercy, joy, and contentment. We’re promised that we can be thankful in all things. We know that we have the power of God to pursue the will of God. We have the promise of answered prayer that aligns with God’s plan for us. The Lord promises spiritual growth, a greater understanding of God’s truth, deeper fellowship with believers, and so many other glorious truths.

And each of these promises has direct application to our parenting. God is promising me and you that if we follow His expectations for our lives, we can always escape temptation to fear and anger in our parenting.

We can always be patient and wise. We can always know what Scriptures to bring to bear in our kids’ lives. We can always have the spiritual strength to do the things we need to do even when we feel like we can’t take another step.

This is the Personal Parental Prosperity. It’s personal because nowhere in the Scriptures does God promise that my actions will cause my kids to “turn out right.” My actions invite God’s personal promises to me. I can be at peace when my kids are off the rails. I can be loving when my kids are being hateful.

It’s prosperity in my spiritual life and maturity. I might not always have a big paycheck, but I will always have access to all the spiritual vitality that I will ever need.

And it’s parental because—as was mentioned before—each of God’s promises has equal application to my parenting as it does every other facet of my life.

So, those are the promises for us. God will be with us and prosper us. But, like the majority of the promises all throughout the Bible, these promises are contingent on something. They are conditioned on the fact that we will do our part. 

So, let’s turn our eyes to . . .

B. The Expectations

Now, here’s something interesting. Most of us came to this podcast episode expecting to learn how we can be courageous in our parenting. Let’s face it . . . that’s literally the name of the episode. But some of you were expecting that courage was going to be one of the promises God had for us. It’s something that must be given to us if we’re ever going to have it. But it’s not.

Interestingly enough, being a courageous parent is actually the very first command.

1. Be strong and courageous. 

Verse 6 says, “Be strong and courageous,” verse 7 reads, “Only be strong and very courageous,” and verse 9 tells us, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous!”

The Hebrew word translated courageous in each of these instances refers to being strong, bold, or superior. It’s translated many things including hardened, encouraged, instilled with exceeding power, made hast, being too strong, strengthened, and even “made his heart obstinate.”

Now, that might confuse us because the Hebrew word right before this word also is translated strong. In fact, nearly all of the translations of this word include the words strong or strength. 

I’m no scholar, but the uniqueness of the words seems to be that the first one translated “strong” most basically refers to what we think about when we’re told that someone is strong. They’re firm, have big muscles, or have hard muscles.

The word translated “courageous” is a different kind of interior strength that—among other things—can produce courage.

Merriam-Webster defines courage as “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.”

But where does courage come from? What produces it? From where do we derive the strength? Just for fun, I submitted this for an AI overview: “From where do people get the strength to be courageous.” The AI Overview replied, “People find the strength to be courageous by connecting deeply with what they value most. Whether standing up for others, surviving personal adversity, or pursuing a challenging goal, courage is fueled by a sense of purpose, supportive relationships, and small, repeated acts of bravery that build emotional stamina over time.”

Do you see how “individual-focused” that answer is. Of course it is. In a world where everything boils down to biological causes, obviously we find the answer inside of ourselves.

However, biblically speaking, we’re going to find that the strength to be courageous is not something that’s found in us.

Yahweh Himself is speaking directly to Joshua. The Lord very simply commands him to be strong and courageous. That’s an exciting thing about God. He is so powerful and infinite and majestic and perfect and loving and all-knowing that when He looks at you and matter-of-factly tells you to do something . . . there is no arguing with Him.

I Corinthians 16:13 says, "Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong."

Ephesians 6:10-13 tells us, "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might."

Hebrews talks often of the confidence we’re to have.

In John 16:33, Jesus tells His disciples, "In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."

Just like Joshua, we can see that our courage needs to be rooted in the very God Who demands it of us.

Courage is a choice to take God at face value. He says I shouldn’t fear, then I won’t. God commands me to be courageous, then I will do so in the power He provides.

What’s interesting is that we’re to be courageous in the following expectations the Lord has for us, but it’s also in the doing of the other expectations that we grow in courage.

AI’s answer concerning courage wasn’t all bad. It talked of value; we speak of trusting God. It spoke of repeated acts of bravery that build emotional stamina over time; we talk of perseverance in Christ.

The second command is tied to the first . . . only be strong and very courageous to . . . 

2. Obey God’s commands.

Don’t turn to the right or the left. Be careful to do according to all the law of Moses.

In John 14:15, Jesus says, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”

Philippians 2:12, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

I John 2:3-4 reads, "By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments."

Ephesians 5:1-2 tells us to imitate God. We’re told to be holy as the Lord is holy. 

Philippians 4:9 says, “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

And on and on and on.

It’s very interesting to me how little Christians think about obedience. That is—of course—unless we’re thinking about how others need to obey us . . . you know . . . like our kids.

Otherwise, I swear we give little to thought to our intentional obedience to Christ unless we’re simply assuming that we do it.

But the Lord commands that we keep His law, that we be holy, that we keep the commandments, that we submit, obey, and follow. 

We can’t be courageous if we’re disobeying God. Why? Well, if He’s not worth obeying, then we really don’t trust in Him do we? 

One of the key indicators that you’re not trusting in the Lord is your sin . . . whether it’s what you’re doing or how you’re doing it or why you’re doing it. It’s impossible to be trusting Him wile disobeying Him because faith, belief, and trust demand obedience. 

If this is a foreign concept to you, if you thought that faith was simply some churchy word that describes how we feel about God, then please listen to The Merest Christianity series. I’ll link it in the description. 

And if God isn’t trustworthy, how on earth can we have courage in and from Him? 

My fellow parent, if you’re not feeling courageous, it’s because you’re not trusting God. If you’re not trusting God, my friend, you’re not glorifying Him. You’re either sinning in what your doing, how you’re doing it, or—more often than not—why you’re doing it.

Okay, so how do we obey God’s commands? Well, the answer was partially given in the verse we read.

3. Meditate on God’s Word.

How do we know Who God is? How do we know His expectations for us? Well, unlike when Yahweh spoke directly to Joshua, in this day and age, God has seen fit to give us His Word.

Now, I know that those of you who have listened to these episodes since the beginning, it can be easy for you to think something like, “I know this already, Aaron. You say this all the time.” But here’s the thing. The people who are daily in the Bible, hear this truth, rejoice in it, and continue courageously obeying God.

The ones who go, “Yeah, I know, ‘read the Bible,’ but what else?” Those are the people who aren’t courageous in their parenting. They don’t trust God, they’re not in His Word, and they’re not really obeying even if they seem pretty good when they compare themselves with the World.

Now, if you’ve never heard that obedience requires the right what, how, and why to be true, Christ-honoring obedience, then please listen to our Teach Your Children to Obey series.

God told Joshua, “Do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you.” He then said, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.”

What do we need to do in order to be careful to obey all that’s written in the Bible? We need to to meditate on it. Our communication needs to be filled with it.

If it’s in our heart, it will be on our tongues, and it will be in our lives. That kind of living produces increasing courage.

Do you have a steady diet of attending to the Scriptures in personal Bible study? Are you committing it to memory? Are you meditating on it? Does it consume your speech? 

If you want to be a courageous parent, you need to be a biblical parent. 

And it’s this king of parenting that allows us to keep this final command.

4. Don’t be afraid.

Again, this isn’t the promise. We’re not to do something in order to escape fear. We’re to reject fear in order to obey God so that we can be spiritually profitable and with the Lord.

Verse 9 ends with, “Do not be in dread or be dismayed.”

And, again, the ability to obey this command is tied to what we believe about God. The very next words in the verse were, “for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go.”

God is with us. He’s trustworthy. He knows what’s best. He’s promised to give us everything we need to please Him in our parenting. It’s for these reasons and more that He can command us to be courageous and strong and obedient and studious with His Word and reject fear.

Do you want to be a courageous parent? Obey God. Fill yourself with His Word, swim in it’s depths, submit to all of His expectations, flee from Satan, draw near to Him, reject sin, embrace holiness, and you will be a perpetually courageous parent . . . God has promised it.

And—in conclusion—please note that it has nothing to do with you, the world around you, or your kids. You can be courageous even when you know all your own weaknesses, the World wants to destroy your family, and your kids couldn’t care less. You can be courageous because your courage is founded in God, His promises, and His ability to bring them to pass.

Please share this episode with anyone who you think might want to be a courageous parent. And if you’re still struggling, please email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 so we can open the Scriptures to help you better know and trust the Lord and practically live it out in your life.

And be sure to join us next time as we discuss “The Only Way to Fight the World’s Culture in Your Home.”

I’ll see you then.

Click the link below to download the PDF.

Welcome to the tail end of Season 35. We’re quickly winding down and preparing for Season 36, and let me tell you, I just outlined the content for it, and I’m so excited. I don’t know why I didn’t have this idea for a season of content before. 

Anyway, we’re not there yet; we’re here, and isn’t that just like our parenting. We’re frequently tempted to always be looking ahead to some perceived “better days” in the future, but what we need to be doing is focusing on where we are now and how God would have us worship Him by parenting our kids for His glory.

So, that’s why we’re going to talk about how to convince your kids. That’s what parenting is. If it’s not convincing our kids to eat their vegetables and finish their homework, it must include convincing our kids that God is amazing and that He deserves our submission.

So, to that end, we have free episode notes, a transcript, and related resources linked for you in the description of this episode to help you become a more convincing parent.

“I need to ‘convince’ my kid better?” Okay, fine, I know it doesn’t sound very touch-feely or even spiritual. Use whatever word you want—persuade, influence, assure, prompt, urge. The key is, if we’re only ever providing information, but we’re not doing it in a convincing way, why would our kids need or want to take our advice?

Too much parenting is presented as a negotiable. “It’s what I do, but it may not be what you do.” And that’s fair. There are a lot of things I do and wear and eat that my kids don’t have to do and wear and eat in order to glorify God. Christian liberty is a thing. 

But there many more non-negotiables God expects us to present to our kids as the only option for life and godliness. So, if were going to rear them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, if we’re going to talk about the things of God when we’re rising and walking and sitting and lying down, then shouldn’t we do so in a way that convinces our kids they actually need this information?

I think so, and so does God. That’s why the writers of the Scripture weren’t just providing us information. They were urging and explaining all with the hopes that we would believe and act on what they were teaching us.

One of the best examples of this is John 20:30-31, “Many other signs Jesus also did in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”

John absolutely wanted to convince us the things of which he testified were true and worthy of life-altering change.

But before we dive any deeper into this process, it’s really important that I remind you of our current initiative. We’re trying to raise more annual support by September of 2026. That will be our 10th anniversary of podcasting, and we’re praying that our non-profit can finally become financially sustainable. 

You can visit truthloveparent.com/donate to learn more, but we’re hoping that you’ll partner with us to equip families all over the globe to better worship and glorify God. It may be $10 or $20 or even $100 dollars a month. We’re not really asking much. But when a bunch of God’s people come together and give, we’ll be able to teach more people, create more content, and counsel more families in more persuasive ways. 

So please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to learn more. 

Alright, why do your kids do what they do? They do what they do and say what they say and feel what they feel because they want what they want. And they want what they want because they believe what they believe about God, His Word, and themselves.

God boils this truth down and illustrates the negative reality of it in Proverbs 16:2 and 25. Proverbs 16:2 says, “All the ways of a man are pure in his own sight, But Yahweh weighs the motives.” And Proverbs 16:25 tells us, “There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.”

We did an episode all about what happens when your family does what’s right in its own eyes because when we’re truly convinced of something (for the good or for the bad) it will direct the course of our lives.

The point I’m making is that your kids are absolutely convinced they’re right. They believe their way is pure. It seems totally right to them. But here we are trying to convince them that something else is better. They’re convinced they’re right, but we’re telling them something that looks wrong to them is better than what they think is best. 

Faced with this extremely difficult task, there are two not-so-great ways most parents approach their calling, and one we all need to start using more.

1. Leave your child to figure it out on their own.

These parents will say things like “Since there’s no way I’m going to convince them, I’ll just trust they’ll come to the truth in their own time and way.”

I have family members who take this approach to talking to their kids about God. They don’t want to “force God on them,” so they’re just sitting back and hoping their kids somehow get it by osmosis. Of course, if I’m being honest, those family members don’t have a very good understanding of Who God is to begin with.

But this is not the way. In Proverbs 29:15 the Lord teaches  "The rod and reproof give wisdom, But a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.”

Whether it’s by your help or the assistance of someone else, no one comes to God on their own. We all need to be persuaded by someone. The Holy Spirit is pleased to use God’s people to be salt and light in the world to bring people to God . . . to convince them through His truth and His power that they need Him. Left to themselves, children will only bring shame to a godly mother and father.

This is why Proverbs 22:6 commands, "Train up a child according to his way, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Episode 94 is an oft-overlooked stand alone episode, but it’s so important. It’s called “How to Train Your Child to Stay with God” and it picks apart this verse to help us better understand God’s plan for how we train our kids.

The point is, they need to be convinced. They need to be persuaded so that they’ll participate in the Christ-honoring training.

Biblical parenting is never passive. It’s an active endeavor. Therefore, we should never leave our kids to just figure these important truths out on their own. They need to be shown from the pages of Scripture Who God is and how He would have us worship Him with our lives.

Because of this reality, other parents will . . .

2. Tell your kids how to live.

Even though I don’t agree with him on all of his biblical takes, Nick Freitas is a man I respect. I recently saw a video in which he discussed how a lot of Christian parents think their parenting style is teaching their kids biblical truth when—in actuality—it’s just creating an authority structure in which the kids are to live.

And it’s when that authority structure changes when the child goes to college or on the job or in marriage that the parents realize their kids were never convinced by all the telling and legislating and authority structures they created. How do the parents figure that out? Well, the kids end up following the new authority in their lives even though it contradicted the authority structure the had growing up. Since the child had no real foundation of truth they believed, if the next authority sounds convincing, why wouldn’t they just go along with them?

The New Testament illustrates many individuals who are easily swayed by falsehood. They’re described as having no foundation, being blind, and being like a leaf on the wind. They go wherever the wind blows. 

But a person has to be convinced in order to stand against the raging tide and go against the current. They have to be so persuaded that they will sprint hard against the crowd when the entire world is running the opposite direction. They have to firmly believe the truth for them to want to fight the daily spiritual warfare raging right now in your home.

If they’re not convinced, if they simply exist within the current authority context because they want to avoid consequences or conflict, then they’re going to continue living just like that when they get out into the world. They’re going to continue to want to avoid consequences and conflict, only now they’ll have to go along with worldly belief systems. 

This is exactly what happened with the children of Israel. They had a theocratic government, but the influence of the nations around them pulled them away from God. The same thing happened to Judas.

So, don’t leave your child to figure it out on their own, but also don’t just tell them what to do. Telling isn’t convincing. Teaching isn’t inherently persuasive.

I’ve been a professional educator since 2007, and I’ve studied education since the 80’s. We’re fools if we think that just because I have a nice personalty and stand up in a room and speak truth that people will be absolutely convinced of that truth.

Some will. The soft hearts will. But the hard hearts can’t even understand what they’re hearing, the rocky hearts will accept the authoritative construct until they don’t have to any more, and the thorny hearts will embrace it until they don’t want to anymore. 

Listen, there’s a place for lecturing, haranguing, soap-boxing, teaching, and other forms of knowledge-impartation. But it’s not good enough. 

As we learned in the Biblical Parenting Essentials, it’s not until our kids actually participate in our teaching that we can move from the teaching and reproof stages of parenting into the correction and training stages. But our kids are absolutely not going to participate in those stages unless they are convinced it’s best. They’re only going to do what’s right in their own eyes. 

Now, even though that phrase is most often used to describe destructive thinking, what if your children were convinced that God’s way was best? What if following Him was right in their eyes?

And that’s what we need to do. We need to . . .

3. Help your children choose truth for themselves.

Now, please notice that despite my call to be convincing, this third point wasn’t, “We need to convince our kids.” I didn’t say that for a couple reasons. The first is that we don’t have any ultimate control over whether or not they choose to believe what we present them . . . even if we’re the most convincing person on the planet. Jesus was perfect. He performed miracles. There was no human more convincing than Jesus, but so many weren’t convinced.

The second reason is that we need to understand how to be more convincing. We don’t simply need an inspirational call to be more convincing, we need steps. So—generally speaking—we need to focus our parenting toward helping our kids choose truth for themselves. 

Imagine if Proverbs 16:2 said, “All the ways of your child are pure in his sight because Yahweh is his motivation.” And imagine if Proverbs 16:25 read, “There is a way which seems right to your child, because its end is the way of life.”

Instead of waiting for your spiritually dead or immature child to wander into the truth of God and hopefully embrace it for their own, instead of constraining your child to outwardly walk God’s path even though they don’t truly believe it, how about we help our children to know, understand, embrace, and choose to for themselves?

And—listen—before I go on, I know that many Christian parents believe that’s what they’re already doing. We believe that by teaching and reproving our kids, we’re helping them choose God for themselves, but—as was said before—far too often our kids are simply going along with what we told them because they want to avoid consequences or they’re Rocky-Hearted and merely mentally assent to the lifestyle.

And I know this kind of convincing parenting is daunting. It requires more of us. It’ll take more time. It will sometimes feel like we have less control (which is fine because we never really had any control at all in the first place).

So, let’s consider one Old Testament and one New Testament version of this kind of parenting and end our time with a four step formula for being more convincing by the grace of God.

In I Samuel 3:8-10, we learn about young Samuel hearing the voice of the Lord at night. Samuel went to Eli thinking that Eli had called him. Eli sent him back to bed because Eli had no idea about what Samuel was talking. After the third time, Eli—likely more awake now than he was the first two times—finally discerned that God was calling Samuel and said, “Go lie down, and it shall be if He calls you, that you shall say, ‘Speak, Yahweh, for Your slave is listening.’”

Eli didn’t choose to handle the situation himself. He didn’t even have to be there with Samuel. He simply instructed Samuel and went back to sleep.

In the short letter to Philemon, we read how Paul was encouraging Philemon to forgive and restore his former slave, Onesimus. In verse 8 we read, “Therefore, though I have much boldness in Christ to command you to do what is proper, 9 yet for love’s sake I rather plead with you.”

In verses 12-14 we read, “I have sent him back to you in person, that is, my very heart, 13 whom I intended to keep with me, so that on your behalf he might minister to me in my chains for the gospel, 14 but without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but voluntary.”

And in verse 21 we read, “Having confidence in your obedience, I write to you, since I know that you will do even more than what I say.”

At least three times in this letter we hear Paul saying, “You know what’s right. I don’t need to tell you what to do—though I could. I trust you’ll please the Lord.”

Now, again, it’s easy to think that our usual teaching and reproof is setting our child up for success, and—I want to be fair—sometimes it is. By God’s grace and the prompting of the Holy Spirit, our children truly submit to the teaching and reproof with a genuine love for God.

But even in those cases, they will mature faster and become stronger as we follow these steps.

A. We need to know the truth.

We can’t convince our children of God’s truth if we don’t know it or understand it correctly. And I need to say this clearly—none of us know and understand as much as we think. All of us need to continue learning and understanding and believing and growing. 

Too many parents think they’re okay or they know enough. But none of us do. We absolutely must continue learning so we can teach better and be more convincing.

B. We need to teach how children what is right and wrong and reprove them when they do wrong.

We need to teach accurately. We need to teach passionately. We need to teach consistently, and we need to teach persuasively. 

In addition, we absolutely need to model the teaching of our mouths in our daily lives because “Do as I say, not as I do,” is wicked and dangerous.

Of course, we have so many episodes about teaching and reproving including The Biblical Parenting Essentials Series. It’s going to involve teaching their knowledge, teaching their understanding, and teaching their application. 

Now, don’t be confused, I’ve never suggested that we stop teaching and reproving. We simply need to do it differently.

And those different steps are next.

C. Ask your child to connect the current situation to God’s will.

This can be as simple as, “So, we’ve decided that we’re going to take our family vacation to the grandparents’ house in Indiana. Can you give me some reasons this may or may not glorify God?”

The child isn’t making the decision, but they will have to give at least one biblical example of how the Lord might be pleased or displeased by this course of action or facets of it.

Another example may be, “Can you think of some biblical principles or commands or character traits of God that support your current bedtime?”

Before I go on, you might be thinking, “Aaron, I can’t even begin to imagine anything the Bible says that would affect my child’s bedtime!” If you’re feeling that way, trust me, I understand. However, since the Bible gives us everything we need for life and godliness, our being ill-prepared to connect God’s Word to our lives is evidence that there’s more learning we need to do.

By the way, how can we teach our kids to make Christ-honoring choices for Christ-honoring reasons when we’re making our decisions for any and every reason other than God?

You can also ask your children to connect God’s truth to the family’s media. You can pause the movie to ask your kids what God’s Word has to say about the scene you just watched.

This is the spiritual equivalent of word problems in math. It invites the child to step away from mere verse memorization and see how the truths of Scripture have to connect and impact our daily lives.

If your child presents a biblically accurate observation, you know they’re growing wiser. If, however, they’re off on their theology or application, you know they still need more teaching in this area—or the spiritual life necessary to discern the Scriptures.

Normally, these are the things we’d want to simply tell our kids. We might stop a movie to tell the kids that what is being portrayed is wrong. Your kids may hear your admonishment (or not) and register it (or not) waiting for the movie to be back on, but they weren’t exercising their own spiritual muscles. It’s like watching someone else lift weights—boring and unproductive for me.

And you can parent like this in literally any area. It can revolve around future choices, good choices, money choices, past choices, bad choices, relationship choices, hypothetical choices, and so many more.

And when your kids have shown a pattern of knowing, understanding, trusting, and applying God’s Word accurately and consistently to life . . .

D. Give your child practice making their own Christ-honoring choices.

Now, listen carefully. Yes, I am suggesting that you stop making every single decision for your kids. I’m not saying that you won’t make any of them, I’m simply saying you need to stop making all of them.

Your kids absolutely need to make more and more decisions as soon as possible. They have to exercise this muscle before they’re out from under your authority. Remember we’re trying to help them internalize God’s will so that they’ll pursue it—it’ll be right in their eyes—regardless of who their authority is or what their influences expect of them.

You cannot wait until their 18 to say, “Well, okay I’m not going to make any of your decisions for you anymore. You have to do it all yourself.”

That is so hateful and dangerous! If they haven’t had copious teaching and reproving and correcting and training and testing and practice making the right choices their whole life . . . they’re absolutely going to fail because they don’t know what they’re doing!

Sure, by God’s grace, some will flourish, but most won’t. And I know. I counsel the ones who don’t and rarely hear about the ones who do.

So, what does this kind of parenting sound like? Here’s just one example: “I know you had a bad dream, but how does God want you to respond to it? Does He say you can’t sleep unless you’re in my bed? Does He give you any guidance for this decision? What do you think?”

“Listen, Aaron, I think you’ve finally gone too far. Do you really expect a child who’s young enough to still want to sleep in my bed if they had a bad dream to know what God has to say on the subject?”

Well, if you don’t know and you haven’t taught them and you haven’t given them opportunities to connect God’s Word to real life, then absolutely not. They won’t be able to do this.

However, I know for certain that children who’ve been taught and reproved and tested absolutely can make the mature decision when we relinquish it to them. I’ve seen it happen over and over.

Now, you might wonder what we need to do if they make the wrong or foolish decision. Well, it depends on the situation. It may be something that we can safely let them fail in order for them to recognize the consequences of their bad choice. Consequences are a very important part of the convincing process. But this will depend completely on the child, the decision, and the consequences of their actions. It’s one thing to teach, it’s another to be negligent.

But let’s consider some examples for older children before we finish.

“Does God want you to eat all the food on your plate? How do you know? What does His Word say?”

“You’re going to need to make a decision about how much time to allot for playing video games. What would the Lord have you do, and can you support it from the Scripture?”

“Would God be glorified by you starting this book series? How might you know for sure?”

“What are the biblical commands and principles you have to consider before accepting or declining that job offer?

“Do you believe it will please the Lord for you to be romantically involved with that person? What does the Bible say about such relationships?”

When was the last time you asked your child a question like this? I’m guessing, if you’re anything like I am, you’ve either never done it, or it’s been a while. It’s so much easier and faster to just tell our kids what to do. But though we might be setting up an appropriate expectation for behavior or creating a sound authoritative framework for their lives, we’re not teaching our kids to understand the truth and apply it for themselves because they believe it to be right.

Eli could trust Samuel to make the right choice because he’d been teaching and observing and assessing Samuel his whole life.

Paul could confidently trust Philemon to make the right decision in regard to Onesimus because—I guarantee you—this was not the first time Paul lead Philemon to make the Christ-honoring decision or watched him choose to glorify God all on his own.

Now, before we conclude, let me be clear. There are still going to be so many decisions you need to make for your kids. Which ones are they? You need to make the ones that failing to make correctly will irreparably hurt them physically or spiritually. All the rest, you need to be turning over to them as soon as possible.

In conclusion, if you want to convince your kids to follow the Lord, you need to do four things.

First, you need to know what it is to follow the Lord.

Second, you need to teach your kids how to follow the Lord.

But don’t stop there.

Third, give them opportunities to connect the truth of God to actual life.

And fourth, relinquish appropriate decision making to them as soon as they’ve consistency shown they’re able to connect God’s Word biblically to life.

We need to know, teach, connect, and relinquish.

This process will be far more convincing than merely telling them what to do. And—Lord willing—what seems right to our kids will be the truth they’ve seen and understood and put to use in their lives.

Please share this episode with your friends, and email us at Counselor@TruthLoveParent.com or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if we can assist you in the amazing task that is your parenting.

And then join us next time as we discuss How to Be a Courageous Parent.

I’ll see you then.