Our kids are growing up in a culture that is less friendly to the Christian faith than ever before. As moms we have a choice to parent from fear or to bravely engage with our kids and make time and space to have hard conversations.
My guest Vicki Courtney walks us through why it’s worth it to help our kids wrestle with their questions about faith, culture and learning to trust God. She shares about her experience raising three kids of her own as a newer believer and the power of parenting with humility and love.
We are going to have to learn as parents to have conversations in such a way that we teach our children to walk in truth, but we need to lead with love. In past generations as parents, we could teach our children, ‘Well, here’s the truth. And the Bible says this, so you need to live this way.’ And a lot of times we forgot about the love part.
While we may tend to look at culture and our children’s generation and feel hopeless, Vicki reminds us that Jesus is the hope the world is looking for and keeping an open, loving line of communication with our kids can make all the difference in how they own their faith.
Now nothing is different about this generation in the sense that they are chasing after something to feel the void. We all have that void, right? We all have chased after things along the way and that nothing will fill that void other than the love of Christ and his Gospel. And so for our children, they are going to feel an awareness of that void sooner. But the hope is we have the answer and the hope is I feel like we are ripe for massive revival out there.
For more on the Must Have Conversations to have with your kids, check out Vicki’s books.
What we chat about:
- How Vicki came to know Jesus and God’s direction to her ministry
- Her books 5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter and 5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Son
- The culture our kids are growing up in isn’t friendly to the Christian faith
- As we have conversations with them about God’s truth, we need to lead with love
- Making room for these important conversations by giving your family margin
- Avoiding triggers that make you as mom feel like you aren’t doing enough
- It’s ok if your kid doesn’t do all the activities like sports and music
- If it’s God’s plan for your child to be gifted in an area, it will happen for them regardless of our actions
- Letting our kids have room to fail and learn from failure
- Parenting from an place of humility and not shaming or finger wagging
- Staying open to our kids and helping them feel comfortable sharing anything with you
- The different mentalities of the prodigal son and the older brother from the parable of the Prodigal Son in the Bible and how both see God’s grace from the wrong perspective
- Viewing God’s grace rightly and understanding the fear of God helps us lead with love
- How to help your kids wrestle with the idea of “hipster Jesus” and losing the idea that God should be feared/awed
Connect with Vicki:
- Website https://vickicourtney.com
- Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vjcourtney
- Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vickicourtney
- Twitter https://twitter.com/vicki_courtney
Links Mentioned:
- BOOKS: 5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter ** and 5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Son**
- Episodes with Mary Flo Ridley covering when to talk to your kids about sex
- BOOK: The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Timothy Keller **
- Revolutionary Parenting**by George Barna
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Thank you so much for today’s Episode with Vicki Courtney! It was refreshing as much convicting and encouraging! And most of thank you for your sweet prayer at the end! That to me was the most precious part of it all and I thank you for taking time to do it!