TLP 404: Rebellion, Racism, Reason, and Rules

Who gets to decide what’s good and bad? What happens when we try to define it for ourselves? Can God’s definition of words really help us defeat racism and make the government work better? Take a step back to see the big ideas of the Season as AMBrewster reviews Season 16 and previews Season 17.

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Discover the following episodes by clicking the titles or navigating to the episode in your app:
“TLP 391: A Parent’s Final Words"
“TLP 392: The Reality of Rebellion"
“TLP 393: What Happens When Your Family Does What’s Right in Its Own Eyes?"
“TLP 394: What Does It Mean to Teach Your Children to Think?"
“TLP 395: God’s Truth, Satan’s Lies | and how to parent out of death into life"
“TLP 396: Three Desires and Your Parenting | Dave Bender Interview"
“TLP 397: How Children Understand Justice and Injustice | and how to teach them to think biblically about it"
“TLP 398: What Makes Children Naturally Not Racist"
“TLP 399: What Makes Children Naturally Racist"
“TLP 400: Teach Your Children What the Bible Says about Racism"
“TLP 401: Help Your Children Celebrate Biblical Diversity and Unity"
“TLP 402: How Your Children Should Think about the Government”
“TLP 403: Teach Your Children to Discern by Teaching Them to Divide”

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Transcript

Introduction

Today’s episode is the last of Season 16; I hope you’re looking forward to the Season of Grace and starting a new focus for both Truth.Love.Parent. and The Celebration of God.

By the way, I know many of you are subscribed to The Celebration of God, and all of you really should. The Celebration of God was created as a free resource for parents, and all of the COG episodes were part of the normal TLP podcast.

But I realized that The Celebration of God discipleship experience is valuable for all Christians whether they have children or not, so the COG episodes were given their own podcast. I recommend that all Truth.Love.Parent. subscribers also listen to The Celebration of God for a well-rounded approach to biblical parenting.

Well, recently I made an admission on the COG that I wanted to share with you today. 

Recently I subscribed to Daily Wire. If you’ve ever heard of Ben Shapiro, then you know about what I’m talking. Anyway, I subscribed to Daily Wire because I deeply respect what they’re doing, but I also found that they have accepted a reality that I have — up until today — really struggled to get. 

Daily Wire produces amazing content, but they’re supported solely by ads and subscriptions. That’s it. And they have done a really good job of balancing what they give for free and what they charge for, and they communicate their needs well.

And this is what I’ve been struggling to really acknowledge. In our modern age of online everything, if a person really believes in the work someone is doing, that person is going to do four things. First, they will follow the organization on social media. Second, they will subscribe to the organization’s free resources whether that be online articles or podcasts. Third, they will rate, review, and recommend the organization. And fourth, people who really believe in an organization are going to financially support the organization.

Now, listen, I have never wanted Truth.Love.Parent. to be about me. This has never been about self-promotion, getting famous, rich, or even vaguely popular. Our mission is simply to take the majestic and glorious, living Word of our amazing God and get it into as many families as possible. This is about being a city set on a digital hill. This is about helping parents become who God wants them to be.

But, in today’s technological age, a ministry needs two things to survive: First, they need their audience to follow, subscribe, like, share, review, discuss, rate, recommend, and promote. They need audience interaction. 

Why is that? Well, there are so many talking heads out there. There are so many people claiming to speak Truth, but there are so few people actually dividing the Word of God correctly. People need their trusted friends to introduce them to the ministries that aren’t going to lead them astray.

And that’s where passionate followers come in. People like you who are fired up about a cause are going to talk about what’s important to them.

That’s the first thing ministries need today.

Second, for a ministry like this to thrive, it needs financial resources. Whether it be for salaries, bills, or the ability to upgrade our tech to offer more resources or reach a bigger audience, it won’t happen without money.

And I’ve always been hesitant to talk about those things because — well, for lots of reasons that I’m realizing aren’t important or Christ-honoring. And anyone who’s been with the show for long knows this. I’ve always hated asking for money.

But here’s the thing. Evermind Ministries, the umbrella ministry of Truth.Love.Parent., AMBrewster, and The Celebration of God genuinely needs your help to reach people with the Truth of God’s Word. We can’t do it by ourselves, and God doesn’t intend for us to do it by ourselves.

So, with all of that said, will you — yes, you — will you please subscribe to this show so you won’t miss an episode? But don’t stop there. Will you not only follow us on social media, but will you also interact with our posts? And will you seriously, prayerfully consider how you may bless this ministry by supporting us financially.

It’s true that 99% of our resources are completely free. Yes, you and anyone else can take advantage of them at no cost. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need support to continue producing all of this free content.

To be honest, that’s why we embraced the 501(c)(3) model. We didn’t want to sell people things. We wanted to give God’s Word away to whoever needs it, and we wanted to be able to rely on God to use His people to support the ministry. 

As we’re coming to the end of the fiscal year and approaching Giving Tuesday, I’d like to ask you to consider becoming a TLP Friend. TLP Friends are the individuals who give on a monthly basis so that we can continue creating these free biblical parenting resources.

Please click on the “Become a TLP Friend” link in the description of this episode. Even if you can only give one dollar a month, that’s twelve more dollars a year that we can use to get God’s Truth into the eyes, ears, and minds of families all over the globe.

And, while you’re there, you can access today’s free episodes notes and transcript.

Topic

Truth.Love.Parent. is in an exciting time of growth. Come January, I will have been working on TLP full-time for a full year. And the Board of Directors, the Advisory Board, and I are working on some really cool ideas for the future.

Here’s just one example: I’d love to raise the funds so we can represent TLP at the March for Life in Washington this year. Regardless of who ends up in office, supporting that movement will be extremely important.

And there are so many other things in the pipeline.

But today’s show is about stepping back and seeing the overarching themes we’ve been studying during the Season of Mercy.

By the way, if you don’t know what the Season of Mercy is, you really need to subscribe to The Celebration of God.

Anyway, we try hard to schedule our seasons so that you don’t have a bunch of random content being thrown your way. We like there to be a thematic flow so that not only does each episode strengthen and equip you in your daily parenting, but all of the episodes work together to sharpen each other episode.

The title for this season is “Rebellion, Racism, Reason, and Rules.”

Allow me to pick that apart so we can appreciate the bigger picture.

Let’s start with Rules.

One of the strongest points I tried to make this season — in nearly every episode — was that fact that someone has to decide what the rules are. There is no reality in the universe that exists without rules. 

And mankind’s propensity is to want to be the person who gets to decide what those rules are. You do it. Your kids do it. Your government does it. And the rules don’t just encompass what you’re allowed to do, they also cover the meanings of words.

But, my friends, God has the simpler and better way. Instead of mankind squabbling with each other over the definition of good and bad, truth and lies, God — Who created the world and knows best how to run it — has told us exactly what is good and what is bad — what is truth and what are lies. 

He has perfectly communicated those realities in His Word, and that’s why our first episode, A Parent’s Final Words, showed us that the most important thing we can ever tell our kids is to ground their lives on the Scriptures.

Like Jesus’ parable of the wise man and the fool, we must build our house on the rock that is Jesus Christ and His Truth.

We also talked about What Does It Mean to Teach Your Children to Think? because it’s not good enough to know the Truth if we don’t understand it and if we can’t use it. 

Episode 395 fit this line of thinking as we talked about God’s Truth, Satan’s Lies | and how to parent out of death into life. Again, there is Truth, and Truth is the only thing that will lead to life.

Our last episode built on this concept when talked about how to Teach Your Children to Discern by Teaching Them to Divide. Once again, success is only going to be found in knowing the Bible, understanding it, and being able to apply it to our moment-by-moment experience.

But, like I said before, mankind wants to make the rules for itself. They’re not happy to let God do His job.

This is why our second episode of the season was about The Reality of Rebellion. We took a long hard look at man’s natural drive to reject all forms of authority.

Our next episode talked about What Happens When Your Family Does What’s Right in Its Own Eyes? We looked at many of the consequences of Sin. God has warned us over and over. It’s all there in His Word. 

I think those two episodes also dovetailed well with The Celebration of God focus on the Day of Atonement and Halloween. We and our families need to dwell on the reality of our sin and the consequences it brings.

And then we took all of these concepts and applied them to specific cultural realities.

In each of those episodes we opened the Bible to discover God’s definition and expectations concerning justice and injustice, racism, diversity, unity, and the government.

The World’s thinking concerning those issues is so perverted. It’s not based in reality. It’s nonsensical and ridiculous, but because we and our families are surrounded by that kind of thinking, it’s extremely easy for us to be influenced by it.

We need a steady diet of Scripture in order to be able to identify and reject failure philosophies and lies.

I pray that each of those episodes deepened your knowledge and understanding and helps you teach your children to think God’s thoughts after Him.

Now, as we look to Season 17, it’s my plan to focus on the unavoidable parenting challenges you will face this year.

I appeared on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with Chris Arnzen to discuss the challenges of Christian parenting today. In preparation for that interview, I produced enough notes to talk for about two hours uninterrupted

However, on the day of the show I ended up answering questions from listeners, and I didn’t get to any of my notes! 

Of course, it wasn’t a problem, it was a joy to answer those questions, but I realized I had a lot of really great material already created.

So, during Season 17 — which will run from December through February — I plan to work through a 9-part series concerning the biggest parenting challenges we all will face.

I’ll take a break halfway through to look at some Parenting Trends for 2021 — those episodes are always very popular, but then I’ll drop right back into the series.

We will look at each parenting challenge as a distinct unit, but we’ll also see how they interact with and affect each other.

Now, I know that listenership tends to drop during the holidays. But I don’t really understand it, myself. For example, I find that I have more time to catch up on my podcast listening over the break. 
I’ve wondered if the December downturn in stats is due to the fact that every podcast ends up taking a break or playing reruns. Maybe that’s why the stats drop. I don’t know.

But — for now — it’s my plan to post a new episode every Tuesday to help you become a more biblical parent.

Conclusion

If this season was a blessing to you, please rate and review the show. Follow us on social media, but make sure you interact with us there as well. TeamTLP and I would love to talk with you.

And — most importantly — please consider giving a one-time gift, or — better yet — becoming a TLP Friend by giving on a monthly basis.

The Board of Directors and the Advisory Board just had a meeting, and I’m so excited to see what the future of TLP will be.

And I hope you’ll be there with us.

Remember, my friends, if we want our children to grow up into Christ, we must parent in truth and love — God’s Truth in God’s love, according to His plan for His honor and glory.

To that end, join us next time as we look at the Season of Grace!

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