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Building a House of Faith: How to Teach Your Children About God {Episode 204}
611 Plays2 years ago
When your faith is important to you, it's only natural to want to share it with your children and see them create a framework of their own faith.
Today we're talking about 4 ways to create a house of faith where your family can find peace and joy away from the fear and frustration of the world.
We're talking about:
1. WHAT a house of faith is
2. WHY you would want to create one
3. HOW to build a house of faith and
4. WHAT TO DO when things don't go according to plan.
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
listening to our number the podcast episode 204 building a house of faith today we're getting a little vulnerable with you guys and talking about our belief system and how we are trying to teach our kids how we're trying to instill hope and courage and faith and belief in the people that we love the most we are breaking it down to into a couple of different sections we're going to be talking about what we mean by house of faith why we're teaching our children and our loved ones this way how to do it and then how to approach those times when things go different than we expected so we hope you love it let's dive in
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Setting the Stage for a House of Faith
00:01:03
Speaker
Hello friends, welcome back to the podcast. We today are going to be talking about some fun stuff and some really important stuff about creating a house of faith. But first I wanted to start off with a funny story. Let me just set the stage here for a second. When I was in my twenties, I went on a church mission and so we were teaching people about Jesus and we had this term that we use sometimes. Sometimes you'd start talking to people about religion and they would get really upset and start like,
00:01:31
Speaker
arguing with you, right? And we were kind of instructed to just very gently back down and end the conversation, right? And we came to know these conversations as Bible bashing. That's what they were called when they would like throw scripture at us and just get very contentious, right? So we were told, you know, make sure you're not doing any Bible bashing, right? Well, on another note,
00:01:53
Speaker
One time my kids and I were trying to read the Bible and it was not going very well and my children were fighting and we hadn't even gotten started but I didn't realize that I had a Bible in my hand and someone was doing something really naughty and I reached over and just swatted them with it and I realized, well that's a different use of the term Bible bashing. I'm literally striking my children.
00:02:14
Speaker
With no word of God. I'm so sorry. I have I had to do some apologizing for that one. But I thought it was humorous. And I thought any of you who have tried to teach your children anything serious when they are not participating would probably enjoy that story. So there you go.
Significance of Faith in Parenting
00:02:33
Speaker
Oh my goodness. We are going to be talking about things today that concern religion. Um, today's world, it's full of, um, things that go against the grain of those of us who are very strong Christians. It's full of tons of sorrow, hatred, misery. Like you can't even focus on it very long because it just starts dragging you down. But we're, we want to talk about working on faith, enjoy in our own homes.
00:03:01
Speaker
It's the best way to, well, first of all, it's the only thing we can control. We can't control what everybody else is doing out there in the world, but we can control what is happening in our own home. And it's a start, right? So once we have spread our belief, our faith to others, then we can pass that out into the world through them. So we can't control what's out there. We can only control those who are in our sphere of influence.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, and that's why Audrey and I believe that motherhood is such an important calling because we get to have that influence the strongest in our own homes, right? Even if we can control nothing outside of our own homes, we get to control our own homes and have a large influence on our children. We can't control them, unfortunately, even though sometimes we think we should, but we can control to a certain amount the influence in our homes.
00:03:56
Speaker
So you probably know from listening to the podcast already that Audrey and I both consider ourselves faithful Christians. And to us, our belief systems are of utmost importance. And we also really believe that it is our God-given responsibility to teach our children these things. So that's where we're coming from today. Yep. And we're going to break this topic down, the goal of building faith in a house, in our house in the following way. We're going to talk about the what, the why, the how, and then when things go differently.
00:04:26
Speaker
then we had hoped they would go. That's right, right? Because it never goes as expected, especially when dealing with other human beings that again, we can't control, right? Okay, so first of all, let's talk about what this is. So for us, everybody has a different definition of what they might call a house of faith or developing
00:04:43
Speaker
a house full of faith. For me personally and my husband, for us, that just means that our home is focused on God, right? That that's of the utmost importance. We use, as a family, we try to use our faith as a basis for making decisions about everything else, for how we treat each other, for how we spend our time, and for many other things. So for us, it's just a matter of priorities, where we put God on that ladder of priorities.
00:05:08
Speaker
We take our definition of faith from Hebrews where it says, faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Isn't that really what we want for our families? We're looking at this future goal and this future plan and faith is what we have inside of us that makes us believe that what we don't see yet in our kids will be there someday or in ourself.
00:05:34
Speaker
what we want to be there, the substance that we want, we want to have the innocence not there yet. But we're working toward that. And so that's, that's like where where faith is it, it allows us to keep trying keep going on.
00:05:48
Speaker
So faith, religious faith, is similar to what we want in our family.
Defining a House of Faith
00:05:53
Speaker
We have tons of episodes on teaching our kids good manners. Well, our kids don't have good manners, but we're working toward that. We have faith that someday they'll have good manners. So we turn that and we apply that to all things spiritual and religious in our life. We don't yet have the perfection of God's love in us, but we're keeping on going, trying, because that's our goal.
00:06:17
Speaker
For us, we're looking to a higher power for help with all of our decisions, all of our thoughts, and all of our feelings. Yes, I love that definition. That's beautiful. And isn't that interesting? What you're saying about hope and faith is that's really the essence of raising a family, right? Why would we put so much time and effort into our children if we didn't have hope and faith in a better future, right? That's why I spend time
00:06:43
Speaker
on teaching my children, helping them improve and helping them see the value of the things that I deem most important so that they can then go out and make the world a better place. So it all comes full circle. It's also okay for your definition of a house of faith to look different from ours.
00:06:59
Speaker
It should be a version of something that inspires you and your family to do hard things like show up in a specific way, especially when things don't go as expected or when things get really hard for you. So whatever that looks like, create that ideal in your mind and then you work from there. You take some of these tips to create the home that you want most. So let's move on to the why. Why would we want to create a house of faith?
00:07:28
Speaker
Well, this is like the, those of us who have a house of faith and are working to build our, our, the faith in our household stronger. It's, it's kind of obvious, but it all comes back to like, for me, it's personal success. So when I have faith, when I use faith in my interactions with others in my daily life, in my thoughts, in my feelings, then I have success. And if I'm out there trying to run it on my own without faith,
00:07:58
Speaker
That's when I do not have success. You know, if you have a home where everybody is striving to do better, be better, that makes for a really beautiful home. Nobody's perfect. Not one of us is perfect, but we're all improving because that's our goal. We're trying to improve and we make some terrific mistakes. Yes. Yes. We do make
Faith Through Challenges and Growth
00:08:18
Speaker
some terrible mistakes, but we're still pointing in the direction of faith, of spiritual perfection, of
00:08:28
Speaker
heavenly love that we really, really want to have in ourselves and encourage our kids to have it in themselves.
00:08:35
Speaker
Oh, I love that. You know what it reminds me of is that when we exercise or do anything that strengthens our muscles, the reason they get stronger is because we're actually creating a tiny bit of damage inside our muscle. We're actually creating tiny micro tears and then the muscle rebuilds itself by healing those tiny tears. So isn't that kind of an interesting analogy for life that as we go along stumbling along, it's not that, well, we're supposed to be perfect and every time we screw up, let's get down on ourselves and mess up or and beat ourselves up.
00:09:05
Speaker
but rather oh here's one of these micro tears that we're learning about where someone screams at each other or someone hits somebody or somebody gets upset about one thing or another this is all part of the plan of learning how to treat each other the way we we know is right or this is all part of um growing and strengthening ourselves in this this faith that we that we believe is the right way of living so i just it's just such a great reminder that
00:09:31
Speaker
things aren't going wrong when we mess up. It's just a learning experience. I love that. Okay. So my number one reason, and again, my family's, I just say mind, but I think we're all on the same page. At least my husband and I are. I don't know about these kids, but we're trying to teach them. My number one reason is that for me personally, building and developing my faith has brought me more joy and peace in my life than anything else I've done, hands down.
00:09:58
Speaker
So it seems kind of silly why I wouldn't want to pass on lasting joy and peace to my children, right? If it's something that I feel that strongly about that has brought me that much happiness, it only makes sense that I would want to share that with the people that I love. So our family believes, like I mentioned before, that we will actually be accountable to God for what we do and don't teach our children. That if we just kind of send them out into the world unprepared, that that's going to come back on us because they're too young to understand, you know,
00:10:26
Speaker
the right from wrong and all that out there and they need us to guide them. And so that's part of our our responsibility as well. That brings to mind something that my husband has been talking about teaching us lately. And that's the connection between responsibility and accountability. So everybody he says everybody wants responsibility, but nobody wants the accountability that comes with it. And so that's where we are as parents as well. We know we're going to be answering
00:10:56
Speaker
for what we have been the responsibility that we've given our kids. And so we're going to be held accountable for the way that we have raised them and tried to raise them.
00:11:08
Speaker
you know, just wanting the best, like the best. So, you know, when we talk about on this podcast, when we talk about our physical health and ways to take care of ourself physically, we're looking for health, right? We're looking for great health. And then we talk about, you know, mental stuff and we talk about our mindset and those kind of things. And we're looking for mental health and all the things that we talk about on this podcast. This is just another, this is just another way we're trying to be healthy that, and I would say that in my life it's been,
00:11:38
Speaker
If I'm not healthy spiritually and in my faith, then it affects my health in every single other area. So this is the one that I have to put first. And I encourage that in my children as well, because I have seen so much health come from spiritual healthiness. And then so much, I don't know what's the opposite of sickness. So much sickness and weakness come from a lack of spiritual health, just personally in my life.
00:12:07
Speaker
Oh, I love that.
Spiritual Health and Well-being
00:12:08
Speaker
Such a great reminder that we are these very holistic beings and every part of ourselves has some interplay with another part. And think of a time in your life when maybe you weren't as responsible for your physical health, say, for example, because that's a very obvious example. When we don't take care of ourselves physically, we can pretend to ignore it for a long time.
00:12:28
Speaker
But eventually, it catches up to us. And I think that there are way too many people in the world these days that are just ignoring or pretending their spirituality doesn't even exist. They just kind of think, well, I'm exercising and I'm reading books and I'm taking care of myself in all these other realms. But the spirituality aspect is real. And if we're not being aware of how real that is and caring for it, then it
00:12:50
Speaker
We're going to see the effects of it eventually and I love that analogy that it's just as important as drinking your water and eating your vegetables and getting sleep and everything else that we do for our physical bodies. Okay, so number three, we're talking about how to create this house of faith. Again, this is going to look different for every person and very different at different phases of your life as well, right? Depending on if you have a bunch of little kids running around or not.
00:13:13
Speaker
But to start off with the painful part, the painful truth is that our example will have the biggest impact on our children and the atmosphere of our homes. So if we are caring for our spiritual side, if we are
00:13:29
Speaker
having integrity and doing the actions that we believe are the right ones, you know, being accountable to our beliefs of honesty, for example, and showing your children in that way, of studying scripture and other inspiring works, then our children will also see that example and want to be similar. So for me, this looks like having a strong commitment to the religion that we've chosen.
00:13:54
Speaker
For us, it includes attending worship services. We have a temple that we attend. We read scripture by ourselves, as well as with our children, as well as words of church leaders. And we try to make our actions be in keeping with those teachings. So that's what it looks like for us.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah. So what it looks like for us, how we create faith in our house. So we attend our regular worship services. We never, if there's a conflict, we always choose fellowship over friendship or activities or obligations or anything else. It's always our worship first. We begin and end the day in prayer on our knees in a
00:14:38
Speaker
in a private communication with God. We pray before our meals. We have a Bible study with our kids. In the morning, we take our kids to a Bible study in the middle of the week. We prioritize people who we meet with in fellowship. And we, in our own home, treat each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. I was just talking with my kids about it today.
Teaching Faith by Example
00:15:01
Speaker
So you're not treating each other like brothers and sisters in Christ. You're treating each other. Think about,
00:15:05
Speaker
And they were like, well, yes, we are. How can we say that? I was like, well, OK, think about if instead of if it was your brother, if it was your brother's friend who we also worship with, like, how would you be treating them? How would you interact with them and with your sister who you're having a hard time when she tells you gives you an instruction to do something? How would you take it if it was your sister's friend telling you this? So just encourage, you know, thinking bigger, broader. I think the most important
00:15:35
Speaker
way that we encourage faith in our own home is to teach our children to have a personal relationship with God. And this, yes, starts by an example, but it also goes a lot deeper than that. You can't just be the right example and hope they pick up on it.
00:15:57
Speaker
You have to talk about your relationship with God and how to, I remember several of my kids, when they come to a certain age, an age of knowing or an age of accountability, they're like, but how do you pray? Like what do you say? How do you pray? And how do you talk to God? And how does God talk to you? Have you ever heard God's voice? And what does it sound like? Or if it's not an audible voice, what do you hear? And just like these amazing conversations that we get to have
00:16:27
Speaker
our kids when we're sharing in a very vulnerable way about what our relationship with God looks like so that we can show them because you know God is it's hard to teach somebody how to have a relationship with somebody you can't see with somebody that's you know unseen and so we we
00:16:52
Speaker
It's that personal relationship with God. It's the thing that we teach our kids is the most important relationship of all. Yes, I love that. And that's why I started with our own example, because if we don't have a personal relationship with God, it's very hard to teach someone else to how to get one. And as we know, children are the ultimate seekers of maybe not seekers, they're like hypocrisy meters, right? They said they can feel out hypocrisy like nobody else. And so if we are not
00:17:21
Speaker
being true to what we are trying to teach them, they will see it and they will lose respect for us. But yeah, you're totally right, Audrey. Once you've developed your own relationship with God and you understand even just a little bit about what you want that to look like, then we teach our children how to do that ourselves.
00:17:37
Speaker
So we do similar to Audrey. We pray together as a family. We read scripture together. We teach them the stories. So even if they're too young to actually read it with us, we'll teach them the stories. We help them make hard decisions within that context of faith, right? So let's say they have
00:17:55
Speaker
something happening with a friend that is making them feel uncomfortable. We sit down with them and we say, how does that make you feel? How would you like to show up? How would a disciple of Christ show up? What does that look like? And then finally, we help support them in their own faith journey. And like we mentioned before, there are going to be times when people make decisions
00:18:13
Speaker
Our loved ones make decisions that we would not make. So our children's faith journeys are going to look much different from ours. Some might be the same, some might be very different, some we might not love. But in the end, it's our job to teach them and then to love them through their own journey. And that's one of the harder parts of being a parent. All right, this leads us to the last point that we want to address.
Navigating Children's Faith Journeys
00:18:38
Speaker
Um, what if things go different than you're hoping? So this is kind of a matter of life because as we said at the beginning, we're not in control. So it's not when, it's not if things go different than we want or expect. It's when things go different than we want or expect. Like what do we do then?
00:19:05
Speaker
Yes, yes. And this is just a reality of life in general. If you haven't yet experienced this part of life, then you must be very lucky. But we don't get to tell other people how to behave, not even our children. We get to try to teach them the right way as we see it, but it doesn't always work that way. So a few examples. Sometimes our children will choose not to believe what we believe, or our spouse might make choices that we do not agree with and that cause us pain.
00:19:32
Speaker
In fact, maybe even we ourselves might get to a point where we struggle with a faith that we used to believe very strongly, right? Life throws all kinds of curve balls at us and we get to try to adapt and figure them out. I wanted to share one little thing that I have been thinking about lately. There's a great book called Atomic Habits. If you haven't read it yet, you need to go read it. But in it, he tells a story about a cycling team. The coach was a man named Dave Brailsford. And in this story, he uses a term called
00:20:01
Speaker
the aggregation of marginal gains. And that term really hit me when he explained it. Basically, you try to improve 1% at a time, just 1% each day, which seems really negligible and not even that big of a deal. But when you aggregate those gains, little by little, by little, by little, it turns into this snowball effect, right? And that is how we improve in any area of our life. So when I learned this, I wrote it down on a sticky note and stuck it on my computer. It's been there for almost a year.
00:20:30
Speaker
And underneath I wrote, persistence and patience. And that is how I choose to look at our family's faith journey and that of teaching my children the things that are of the most value and importance to me. Persistence and patience, it doesn't always look pretty. In fact, I don't know that it's ever looked pretty.
00:20:46
Speaker
every time we sit down to have a lesson or, I mean, sometimes it is beautiful in its own chaotic way, but it requires persistence and patience and hope and faith. So I don't know if that makes sense to tie that in right there, but that is how I see our faith journey as a family and trying to teach all my children the things that are the most important to me. Right. Right. So in all those instances you mentioned, a child, a spouse, ourselves,
00:21:12
Speaker
Um, we can't let's address the others first. We can't control others. We can only control our response to others. Faith or lack of faith and the actions that come out of it in their life. Um, so we can control ourselves. We have to control ourselves. We keep showing up as the person that we want to be that we're not there yet, but we want to be that person. Um, even when it becomes difficult for us. So like I would say.
00:21:42
Speaker
One way that I know my faith is real is because it is tested so often. No, if it wasn't, um, if it wasn't real, if it wasn't substantial, if it wasn't a threat to the devil for me to have faith, then he wouldn't be attacking it so hard. Um, and so that's one, one way, one thing that I can tell myself in when I'm like really having
00:22:09
Speaker
A crisis is that it's real. This is real because it's being attacked. This is definitely real. And then when, um, you know, when we think about others and, and their faith or their journey of faith, we can't control them. We can influence them. But that kind of, that kind of leaves me feeling.
00:22:32
Speaker
like a little hopeless. But here's the here's the resolution in that for me is I cannot control others, but God can. And so that is where faith comes in. If if I truly, truly believe that
00:22:51
Speaker
If I truly believe in my faith, then I use that in prayer. When I see someone else in their faith journey is not what I thought it would be or what I expected it to be or what I hoped it would be. It would be a lack of faith if I didn't pray for somebody else when I see their faith wavering. It would definitely be a lack or I'm having trouble coming up with the word, but it would be me not believing in my own faith if I didn't
00:23:20
Speaker
Um, pray for somebody when I see lack in their faith, because, because isn't that what faith is believing in the higher power who has the power to work things that are impossible for us to do or other people to do. That's the substance of things hoped for. It's like we're hoping for it because we're not there. We don't feel like we can do it. Um, and so that, that's like one of the strongest tools that I have in my faith toolbox, if you want to call it that is prayer.
00:23:50
Speaker
because that is not only a manifestation of faith when I pray, but it is turning it over into the hands of somebody who can do something about it. Oh, I love that. That's beautiful.
00:24:02
Speaker
I also like, you know, on the flip side, when it comes to trying to control the people that you love, which we all do in some sense or another, even if we think we're not, I really believe that God honors our power to choose, right? That He allows us to choose whatever we want, even if it's going to make us miserable. And that we can follow that example by honoring the choices of our loved ones. And it doesn't mean that we don't teach our children.
00:24:27
Speaker
And it doesn't mean that we allow them to act in a way that is not in keeping with our family rules, right? We still have standards and we require obedience. But in the end, there is no way to force another human, like you said. So instead, we just love and we pray. And we have faith that it will all work out in the end. That's what I choose to believe. What's the phrase? It'll all be okay in the end. And if it's not okay, it's not the end.
00:24:56
Speaker
tattooed on my forehead but we all have different journeys and what's so beautiful is all the things that we're learning you know I think about some of the things that I've gone through and I'm sure my parents wouldn't have wanted me to go through them I'm sure they would have wanted to save me some of the suffering that came from my poor choices but they couldn't and I'm grateful for that because my poor choices have taught me a lot of things and I truly believe I'm a better person today than before I made those mistakes and the bad choices of other people have also
00:25:25
Speaker
helped me to learn and grow and become a much better person than before I went through that painful experience as well.
Lessons from Biblical Figures
00:25:33
Speaker
Well, I have some final thoughts here. We just in our local Bible study finished up a study of faith and some of those people in
00:25:44
Speaker
Hebrews 12, where it specifically talks about them and about their faith and what it looked like, how it manifested in them. And then we would go, so we'd study one person like Daniel, and then we'd go read about him and how his, the things that he went through and how faith actually moved in his life. And so, um, I have a kind of a recent
00:26:06
Speaker
recently renewed appreciation for faith. Faith moves me to try to be a better person, to keep on trying to be a better person. It moves me to help me to my husband and help him where I can.
00:26:23
Speaker
with his faith. It motivates me to teach my children what I believe and encourage them to develop their own relationship with God once they're old enough to do that. So what it looks like is before they're old enough to develop a relationship with God, that is my responsibility to
00:26:40
Speaker
have them in the worship services and all the things that I do to develop my own faith to encourage them to do that and then after they're old enough to begin on their own journey of a relationship with God then then I become like a sister to them and helping them along helping them develop that relationship and encouraging them and I just like
00:27:04
Speaker
I don't really know how to wrap it up because my faith is such a ongoing thing. Like it's not complete. I don't have a huge conclusion about it. It's just a work in progress. And I want that for, for my family and, and maybe even for everybody listening too. Yes.
Respecting Diverse Beliefs
00:27:21
Speaker
Going back to the analogy of our spiritual health with that of our physical health, there are a lot of things about our physical health we still don't understand. We don't fully understand all the chemistry behind how our food is used as fuel in our body. We don't fully understand the pathology behind cancer and some of these
00:27:37
Speaker
horrible diseases that we go through, but we know some basics and we keep learning and growing each day, right? We keep putting in the good things and trying to exercise and I think the same goes for our spiritual health as well. We don't understand everything and we probably never will while we're here on earth, but we know enough. We know enough to bring us that joy and peace that we are looking for and that can make our lives so much better than they are without it.
00:28:02
Speaker
My final thought is that of working and fellowshiping with those who believe differently from us. We live in this world where everybody's canceling everybody and just hating on anyone who doesn't believe the same way. And I firmly believe that that is not the way God wants us to treat each other. I believe that everyone has the right to worship and believe as they choose, even if they choose to believe nothing, that is their right. And one thing that I really hope to instill in my kids after teaching them
00:28:31
Speaker
my belief system that has brought me a lot of joint peace is to teach them love and respect for others who do not believe the same way. And one great example I can give them is Audrey and I. Audrey and I have a lot of really similar beliefs, but they are not all the same. We are both Christians, but we both belong to different denominations and have some very fundamental beliefs that are different. And I love the respectful conversations and things that we've been able to learn from each other as we share what's most important to us and have respect for the other person's beliefs as well.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:29:02
Speaker
Well, we hope something that we've said today has been helpful for you or encouraged you to keep working on your journey of faith and bringing more faith into your home. And we just encourage you because it's a worthy endeavor and as one that we're working on as well. We'll talk to you next week. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. And we're outnumbered.
00:29:25
Speaker
Thanks for listening friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.