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Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture

Paul (2): 0:07

This is Raising Joyful Children in an Angry World. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. I want to get into part two, the battle for the body today. It's subtitled Preserving Divine Design. The power of nature. God's creation. The power of scripture

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In our introduction, we talked about four fronts that we wanted to capture. And in this episode, I want to focus on the power of nature, God's creation and the power of scripture, which is God's story and how these two connect and why we need to plant the banner of truth in our children's heart regarding these two fronts.

Paul (2): 0:48

There's a couple of interesting books I would encourage you to take a look at. One is called The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Lauve and the other by Robert Ramirez of Casting Forward. Both of these books share with us the value of the body. If you remember when we talked about the battle for the body, of being able to identify our gender, our masculinity, our femininity, our human sexuality, and the Christian family. I want you to take a look at these books, especially Last Child in the Woods. I don't know that these authors would agree with the Christian worldview. But Laufe makes a very interesting point when he talks about, modern children having what he calls nature deficit disorder. In other words, he describes the children's sensory perception development. What they see, what they hear, what they touch. What they experience and even a worldview, I think, for a Christian kid is underdeveloped if a child has spent most of their time inside playing with screens. See, introducing kids to the power of nature, however, without the creator of nature, I don't want to deify nature, so I want to be very careful here. But when you read these studies and you listen to what these men have to say about the healing power and the influence of nature on our sensory perceptions, And you look at those books next to books like Hooked, which is all about writing apps and developing websites that get people hooked on your product. Or you look at the book called The Anxious Generation, which is warning people about too much screen time. And you compare them, I think you're going to find that you really want to spend some time in nature, and you want to tie that to the scripture. Because when your child stands near the vastness of the ocean, or they see this massive mountain range, a raging river, a large forest, the smallness of who we are as human beings, and the largeness of nature and its creator. It encourages you to want to understand the nature as well as its creator who is God. When you sit with a smart device in your hand and a search engine, the machine does the opposite. It wants to learn about you and it makes you Nature, Romans 1 tells us, reveals the glory of God and it testifies to who God is. It shows me God's greatness and it humbles me. It makes the term lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways. acknowledge God, it makes sense because God made all of that and it allows me to start to take confidence in, in who God has made me, both my body and my talents, not because of this body that I have or my talents alone, but that the God who created the world gave them to me. And this is a a nuance. for the Christian family. Now, I never want to say that this is one of those things where if you do this, you know, God is going to do that. God doesn't work that way. God always initiates. But this is about helping our kids be in position of developing what they see and hear and experience. Rather than what technology is doing, which is adding to the blindness, the sin nature, and the pride. Instead, we want to, diminish that, and we want to invest in what God is saying in his word, and how that connects to God's creation. Nature gives the family a very special opportunity to allow creation to testify. So that when God says to me, He says to me as a son or to a daughter, I have what it takes to become a man in the kingdom of heaven. I have what it takes to become a woman in the kingdom of God because God has given me what it takes. This is going to require us to attach our affirmation to gratitude. to the God that created all that we see. Machines tend to feed our own glory, and they often encourage us to teach the machine what we want. And God is showing us who we really are. See, once we see the vastness, The divinity of design and the gift we can then use nature to teach about gender and sexuality. See, nature's going to show our kids the secret to life itself. When you see a female salmon laying her eggs and the male salmon fertilizing them. when you see all this stuff about the sea turtle, the female sea turtle has gone out and mated with the male sea turtle. The mommy and the daddy, the daddy's, uh, fertilizer and, and seed is now there for the egg to be fertilized long before she brings it to the beach to bury it in the sand. Even the palm tree, the male palm tree is going to propagate. The female palm with his pollen to give life to a new palm, the patterns of plants, the sounds of birds, the smell of flowers, all these things work together to inform our sensory intelligence of the world we live in and the patterns show us how it works. The person without this exposure must be presumed to have underdeveloped sensory perceptions and it's going to be a stretch to believe that such people exist. Are not vulnerable to all those messages that are contrary to the natural order. You're gonna be more easily confused by this chaotic rhetoric that's going around. See, we're gonna be vulnerable to this. You are your own king message and, and we can miss. God made me a boy to become a man in his kingdom. God made me a girl to be a woman in his kingdom, and that men and women compliment each other in the kingdom. I've seen it in nature. That's how he created it, and that's how he created me. But without that exposure,, it becomes more difficult that some of the blinders are still on. It's not that the message isn't there, but we can't see it because we have been blinded by our pride. It is possible that adolescent curiosity that's not been informed by nature, but instead has been influenced by the messages of technology that are selling alternatives to the natural order. In a society that's filled with over affirmation of self, minus any gratitude to God, that adolescent is likely to be vulnerable to the confusion of lots of things that may include their own nature. Especially in a society that can profit from a soul that is trapped in this confusion. Jesus call the devil the father of all lies, he sows seeds of chaos and confusion. This is the plan, once you have been exposed to nature, then when the scripture says in Romans that there were people who exchanged the natural for the unnatural affection, how is a child supposed to understand what that means? In a culture that's constantly sending him or her messages that said there is no such distinguishment. And particularly when movies, sporting events, institutions in America continually Promote this message that's the opposite of what God's creative order has demonstrated. It aligns with his word. How can kids be expected to differentiate what the Bible and nature have to say about their body and their sexuality and the Christian family if they have so little exposure to nature and the scripture, but are just soaking in the culture of the world and its ideas. How does a child learn to think biblically if they've been tutored and disciplined into believing it is the machines, the smartphone, the search engine that holds all the knowledge? How does a child. Hooked on affirmation, or even worse, so over affirmed that the words become meaningless. How do they hear the message from God? See, the gift of our hands is another one. How do we learn if all our hands are for is to swipe a screen or to click a keyboard? Maybe play a sport. Where do children comprehend the fundamental purpose of the body It seems that as we look at men in the Bible, we often discover God is initiating them into manhood in the wilderness. King David living in the wild with his sheep, Elijah being fed by the ravens, John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, the Lord himself spending 40 days in the desert. Ruth spending time in the agricultural community. The Bible uses God's creation as a teaching tool, especially as we read through Psalms and Proverbs and the parables that the Lord shares. I really hope that you can grasp this, uh, because it puts us in a place where we can bring God and nature and the Word into a perspective for our family and that our children When, when kids see that God made the world, when they see his patterns reveal truth, that his creation aligns with his scripture and his word and his story, we're going to start to see the power of God, both in the nature and in the scripture. This is a difficult mission of giving our children, this sort of knowledge as well as confidence in their manhood and in their womanhood. but they can get it when they see that they are a child of God. Not having confidence in themselves without gratitude to God. Or worse even, not having any confidence. But this becomes our map. This is what exposes them to the power of God, who created them and have gifted them. Expose your kids to nature. Then show them what God says in his word about that nature. And then show them what he says about them. And you will be raising your kids. Children who understand godly masculinity, godly femininity, and that they have gifted to them what it means and what it takes to be a man in the kingdom of heaven and a woman in the kingdom of heaven, and that those things complement each other as a family in the kingdom of heaven. The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.