Raising a Godly Family When the Culture Is Working Against You

 Every father wants to protect his family, but what happens when the greatest threats aren't outside the home, they're flowing through the culture every single day? In this episode of the True Man Podcast, Mike is talking about what it means to raise a godly family when the world is pulling your marriage, your children, and your faith in the opposite direction. #truemanpodcast 

Contact Mike Van Pelt: 

mike@truemanlifecoaching.com 

https://www.truemanlifecoaching.com 

https://www.americanfamilyrenaissance.org/ 

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https://www.truemanlifecoaching.com/truemantrueways 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the True Man Podcast. This is an invitation to radical reconstruction of a man's masculine heart and soul in a place of safe community where we dare to ask questions deep-seated inside a man and explore ways to help you become a better man, a better son, a better dad, and a better spouse. Well, how's your heart doing today? How's your soul doing today? I hope you are having an exceptional summer so far with family and friends. Is there a better way to spend it? No, my gosh, we are moving closer to America's 250th birthday. How amazing is that? We'll talk more about that next week as we circle that date on our calendar, July 4th. Now, if you'd like to learn more about the work that I'm doing outside of the True Man podcast, head on over to my website at TrueManLifeCoach.com and you're going to be able to catch up on all the latest blogs, summit information. Sign up for the True Man Inner Circle newsletter and get those bite-sized chunks that you need to keep you going on a daily basis. And if you're getting the idea that I'm sending you over to the True Man Life Coaching website for a reason it is. There is a reason. It's kind of the town hall for all information, true man. So get on over there, get connected to the community today and forward it on to a buddy. Why not? Why not? What do you got to lose? Maybe you guys can buy my book and go through it together. How much fun would that be? Now, before we get started here, I want to ask you a question as a husband, a father, or a man who hopes to have a family maybe one day. Do you ever feel like you're trying to lead in a world that keeps moving the goalposts? Oh my goodness, doesn't it feel like that? A world that seems determined to tell your children who they are, what they should believe, and what matters most. Maybe you felt that pressure. Maybe you've wondered if you're doing enough. Maybe you've looked around and realized that raising a family today is very different than it was 20, 30 years ago. If that's you, this is the conversation for you because the question isn't whether culture is influencing your family. It is newsflash, right? The real question is whether your influence as a father is greater than the cultural influence on your children. So let's talk about it. How about that? Let me paint you a picture right off the top. Your son is 14. He's got a phone in his pocket that gives him access to every philosophy, every value system, every image, every voice, good and destructive that exists here on earth. And he's been shaped by it every single day, whether you know it or not. Your daughter's 11. She's watching how women are portrayed, what they uh are told to want, to be, to chase, through a screen that never sleeps, and that screen never stops talking. Your marriage is competing with a culture that says commitment is conditional, that your needs come first, that the moment something gets hard, it might just mean you were chasing wrong. And you, the man standing in the middle of it all, well, you're supposed to hold the line, aren't you? Now that's not an easy assignment at all. But here's what I need you to hear before we go any further. You were not given an easy assignment because you are an ordinary man. No, you were given an assignment because God looked at your family, your specific children, your specific marriage, your specific moment in history, and decided that you, my friend, were the man for it. The man for the job, not a perfect man, the right man for the job. So today we're going to talk about what Christian fatherhood actually looks like when the current current is really running against you and it's running fast, man. You know it. You see it every day. This isn't theory, not inspiration that fades by Tuesday. This is a real grounded picture of how a man leads his family with conviction when the culture is pulling in the opposite direction. So let's build this, huh? Let's get started here. I want to start by being honest about a culture, the cultural moment that we're in. Not an alarmist. We're going to keep it real, not to be political, but because a man who can't accurately assess the terrain he's standing on while he's operating in cannot lead effectively in it. So here's what the culture is currently teaching your children, just in case you weren't aware, not loudly, but consistently. This is what your culture is teaching your children through the water they swim in every day. The truth is personal, that identity is self-constructed, that authority is suspect, that commitment is optional, that the goal of life is self-fulfillment, and the family, the actual God-designed covenant family with a mother and a father leading together is just one option among many. No more valid than any other arrangement. Ouch. Now, I'm not saying every institution is pushing this to your kids with malicious intent, of course. But the cumulative effect of media, social platforms, certain educational philosophies, and a broader cultural drift away from God is real. And if you're not paying attention to it, it is paying attention to your family. Now, I had a conversation with a father a while back, a good man, a present man, who told me he had no idea his teenage son was being consuming content online for two years that was systematically dismantling everything that the his family stood for. Not through one dramatic moment, through a thousand small drips, each one moving the needle just a fraction. But that's all that needs to happen. And by the time the father realized what was happening, the distance between him and his son was enormous. It was a Grand Canyon, right? And here's what broke my heart about the conversation. The son didn't go looking for the voices because he was rebellious. He went looking because he was hungry. Hungry for a vision of himself as a man, hungry for answers to questions he didn't know how to bring to his father. And that hunger is not the enemy. That hunger is the doorway, it's the entry point. And the question every Christian father needs to ask himself is this Am I feeding my children's hunger for identity, for truth, for a vision of who they are created to be? Or am I leaving the table empty and letting the cultural see it and set it for themselves? Because nature creates this vacuum. And so do teenage boys and girls who go searching for it. So here's the thing about our cultural voices that is competing for your children's attention. And whoa, it is competing. Those voices are loud, they are sophisticated, they are relentless, they're ruthless. And they are offering your offering your kids something real. They're offering your kids community, identity, belonging, and purpose. They just can't deliver on the offer. Because what the culture is selling is a version of those things that has no foundation beneath it. It's community without covenant, it's identity without a creator, it's belonging without truth, and it's purpose without God. And I've seen what that produces, not in theory, but in the man who eventually sits across from me in coaching. You see, men in their 30s and 40s who consumed everything the culture handed them and arrived at a place, they've arrived at a place of just profound emptiness, just looking around with a blank stare, wondering if this is all life has to offer. Successful by every measurable standard, hollow in every way that actually matters. They got what the culture promised, and it wasn't enough because it was never designed to be enough. Now, here's what only a Christian father can give his family that the culture cannot replicate an anchor, something fixed, something that doesn't shift with the mood of the moment or the direction of cultural wind, the word of God, a covenant marriage, a family identity rooted in something older and truer than any trend. How about a model? Not a perfect one, a real one, a man who gets it wrong, owns it, gets back up, and keeps going, and does all of that in front of his children so they can see what it looks like to live with integrity under pressure. How about a blessing? I mean, I mean this in a very biblical sense. A spoken, intentional declaration with your children who are there and who they're called to be, teaching them this. You see, the culture will tell your son he needs to prove himself. You get to tell him he's already known, already loved, already called before he earns a single thing. It's critically important to their development. How about a mission? You know, a family that knows what it stands for is a family that can withstand pressure. And that pressure, it's coming, it's constant. You see, when your children know they belong to something, a faith, a name, a set of convictions that your family has chosen to live by, well, they have something to come back to when the world pulls them sideways. And oh my goodness, how hard the world is trying to do that. What does your family stand for? Not in a vague general way. Specifically, if your children were asked, what does your family believe and how do you live it? What would they say? I mean, if the answer isn't clear, there you go. That's your first assignment. Now I want to get specific here because the cultural pressure on your family isn't just one thing, it's coming from multiple directions at once. It feels like a complete barrage, doesn't it? One thing coming at you, then another. And a man who tries to fight every battle simultaneously, that guy ends up losing them all. So let me name the three that matter the most, the ones I see consistently in men I work with, and give you something concrete for each one. Battle one, the battle for your children's identity. This is the deepest battle. And it's being fought every day on screens in your home, those gone smartphones, the tablets, the computers. The culture has a very specific answer to the question, who am I? And it locates the answer entirely inside the individual. You are whoever you feel yourself to be. You define yourself, you construct yourself. The biblical answer is the opposite. You are who God says you are. Identity is received before it is expressed. You were known before you were formed. A Christian father's job is to speak the biblical answer louder and more consistently more consistently than the cultural one. Not by restricting your children from all outside voices that produce rebellion. That's what they produce, not conviction, but by so you thoroughly ground them in who God says they are when these cultural voices come, and they will come. Your children have something to measure them against, and that's where you come in. You need to be their light. Speak identity over your children by name. Do this regularly, specifically. Tell your son and your daughter what you see in them. Tell your daughter what God put in her that the world needs. Don't wait for a special occasion. Do it at dinner. Do it at the dinner table. Do it in the car. Do it when they least expect it. Battle two, the battle for your marriage. You see, your marriage is not just your marriage. It is your first and most powerful theology that your children will ever receive about love, commitment, sacrifice, and covenant. When your children watch you pursue your wife, when they see you apologize first, serve without keeping score, stay in the hard conversation instead of walking away. They are receiving a graduate education in what love actually requires. And I got news for you. They ain't gonna get that at college. And when your marriage is struggling, which every marriage does at some point, the most important thing you can do for your children is fight for it. Not perform happiness for them. Fight for it. Get help. Do the work. Show them that that covenant is not canceled by difficulty. When did you last pursue your wife? Not out of obligation, but out of genuine intentional love. And if it's been a while, what has been in the way? Here's the third battle. We need to talk about the battle for your own soul. This is one that most men don't see coming. You cannot give your family what you are not receiving yourself. A man who is spiritually dry, emotionally isolated, physically depleted, and relationally disconnected cannot lead his family to wholeness. You will lead them to where you are. You don't want to take them down that dark hole. The enemy of the Christian family does not always attack the family directly. He attacks the father. He isolates him, he depletes him, he convinces him that he doesn't have time for the things that replenish him. The word, the prayer, the brotherhood, the rest. A depleted man is a diminished leader. Where are you being depleted right now? And what is one thing you could do this week to begin replenishing that specific area? I want to give you a picture here. Not an ideal, a real livable picture of what a counter-cultural Christian father looks like in ordinary in the ordinary fabric of his days. He's not a man who has figured everything out. He is a man who has decided something. He has decided that his family will not drift. You see, that drift is not a neutral thing, it's a direction and it's downstream. Every family that drifts ends up somewhere its father never intended. The countercultural father decides deliberately and repeatedly that he's going to paddle. He creates rhythms, not rigid rules, rhythms, a family dinner where phones are not part of the conversation, and real conversations going on, eyeball to eyeball. A time in the word, however, imperfect that grounds the weak right there. A regular moment with each child that belongs to just the two of them. A marriage that gets intentional investment, not just coexisting roommates. He is present in pain. When his kids are struggling, when the culture press pressure lands on them and they feel it, he doesn't fix it, he doesn't try to minimize it. He sits in it with them. He says, I see what you're carrying, and I'm not going anywhere. That presence in pain is one of the most counter-cultural things a father can offer because the world's answer to pain is always distraction or escape. He asks for help without shame. He is in community with other men, men who know his real life, who call him forward, who pray for his marriage by name, who understand that isolation is not strength. It is the condition the enemy needs to do his best work. And he talks about God as if God is real, not a theological concept, as a living presence in the life of the family. He prays out loud, he references scripture not as the rule book, but as a living word that has something to say about what his family is actually going through. That man is not superhuman. He's simply surrendered. And surrender? Real daily, costly surrender to what God is asking of him? Well, that is the most powerful thing that a father can model for the next generation. Of everything I just described, the rhythms, the presence in pain, the community, the open faith. Which one is the most absent in your home right now? And what would it look like to begin building it in this week? So let me bring this podcast home here for a minute. You are raising your family in a moment that is genuinely hard. It's difficult. I know. I've raised two. The cultural current is real. It is really coming at you. I get it. The pressure on your children is real. The battle for your marriage, for your kids' identity, for your own soul, all of it is real. And none of it disqualifies you. Know that. In fact, and I want you to hear this. The difficulty of this moment is part of the call. God did not place your family in a simple, uncomplicated cultural moment by accident. He placed you here in this decade with these children in this marriage because he knew what kind of man would be needed. And he looked at you and said, That one. Not because you have it all together, because you are willing to be formed into the man the moment requires, right? You see, that formation is not comfortable. It asks things of you. It asks you to lead when you don't feel like a leader. To stay when leaving would be easier. To speak life when you're not sure you believe it's your you're yourself yet. To ask for help, but everything in you says you should be able to handle it alone. But on the other side of that formation is something the culture cannot manufacture and cannot take away from you. And that is a family that knows who it belongs to. Children who carry something into the world that outlasts you. A legacy that answers the question: what kind of man was he? With something worth saying. That is what's at stake. Not just your family, the families that come after yours. Build well, man. Build well, men. The next generation is watching. Now, if this if this podcast today stirred something with you, share it. With a father, with a brother, with a grandfather, with another man who's in the middle of the fight right now. He needs to know he's not alone. And he needs you to walk alongside him. Man, if you enjoyed this podcast today, if you know of another man that needs you to hear, you're probably listening to this on your phone right now, is my guest. Just grab that phone and forward this on to that man. Not for me, for you. So when you do that, that that other man is going to see that you care. You cared enough to share a message that could help them. If you want to learn more, reach out to me at Mike at TruManLifoaching.com. My calendar is up on my website. You can always go out there. Um I'm always open for a phone call. Just let me know what you want to talk about. And if you enjoyed this episode of the True Man Podcast, I sure certainly hope you did. I enjoyed bringing it to you. Just leave me a great review on your favorite podcast channel. And until next week, God bless you. Thank you for listening and go out and make this your very best day ever.