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

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It seems these days that everyone has a fight club, and I want to talk to you today about the Christian fight club. This is raising joyful children in an angry world. I'm your host, Paul Osborne, teaching your children to fight. Let's take a look at that in Exodus 17. it's been my experience at times in my life, and I think this is true for many Christians. We go to church, we get our forgiveness card, has this nice eternal life stamp on it. We share it with our family. I've been working on a pyramid about the Christian life and there's three triangles on it. And one of the triangles is the Christian life is learning to love well, fight well, and follow well. And our kids, I believe, desperately need to learn how to fight. And I'm talking about something more than a self defense course, so that may be necessary. I believe if you don't learn to fight as a Christian, if you don't understand war, spiritual war, you don't understand the tactics of the enemy, your kids are going to struggle in their freedom, their joy to find their gifts in the kingdom. And you, as a parent, you're going to get baited into a bunch of stuff by not recognizing sometimes Wow, this is a war going on. My, my child's been infected with some sort of mind disease and how to deal with that instead of trying to argue back, which is what, you know, we largely do. Let's just be honest. We, see that and we're like, wait a minute. So today I want to talk about this. It was interesting. William Hague, he is the former secretary of state. He had A little piece in the Sunday Times, and he was suggesting that the future of war between America and Western Europe, what we call the West, and Russia and China will be a cognitive war. In other words, he says, look, there's the physical war. That's the battle on the land. The ocean and the air. And then there's the communication battle, right? Logistically, and how do we get our messages back and forth? And then there's the cognitive, that's the battle in the mind. And it's interesting, he says that the cognitive war, the reason it's becoming such a battle is because it is designed to break down trust in the institutions that we are serving. And it is exactly the same goal in spiritual warfare. The enemy strategy is to break down the trust. And then when the trust is broken to rob us of our peace. And I want to show you how this works and then what to do about it. As we look at Exodus 17, how do we recognize the state of the the mind? What is the battle? What are the communications? What's the goal of the war of the enemy and what is our goal? And so to me, you've got to understand that one of the, one of the goals of the enemy is to break down trust in you, the parents who are the chain of command, which is also to break down trust in God. And the goal is to lose your confidence in your Christian identity, the things and the institutions that serve you. And, and the outcome when this happens is it leaves people struggling to find their promised land. In other words, what are my gifts? What are my talents? What has God given to me? And we get lost on the pilgrimage to the promised land in our youth. And so it's important that you learn how to fight. When you look at the battle between Moses with the Israelites and the Amalekites, it takes place in Exodus 17, you're going to see God's chosen people and a nomadic, sorcering, envious guerrilla war group called the Amalekites. And so the first thing that I think you've got to recognize. Regarding the state of mind and the influence of the enemy takes place in what's called the desert of sin, right? They have left and they're on their pilgrimage to the promised land and they reach the place of desert and I believe sin is really More of a geographic location, but the deserts where the temptation takes place That's where the Lord was tempted by the devil or the devil tried to tempt the Lord I should say And our situational awareness, there's no water in the desert, starts to play mind games and you'll notice it in the questions they ask. The way you ask and the words that you speak reflect the mind. And the people asked Moses in the very beginning of this chapter, Have you brought us out of Egypt to kill us, our children and livestock with thirst? You see the question? They're questioning the motive. of Moses and of God. And then this, this sort of attack, it spreads into the leadership. Then Moses goes to God. Oh, these people are practically going to kill me. What have you done here? They're asking the question, is God with us or not? You see, words that we speak and the way we ask and the hyperbole and the exaggeration, when our children come to us, well, the temptation is to kind of, I'm going to put you in your place, but what we have to do really is to help them restore their trust in God. And so you'll notice how God works in this story. First, he tells Moses, Hey, you go strike the rock and the, and the water comes out. God is reminding them and he does it with his staff. God is reminding them of his power and his promises that he is trustworthy. And then Moses, is then given some instruction, like how are we going to do this? How are we going to restore the confidence? And this is where the fight club, where you really see it because you and I and our kids, we We are at our weakest moment when we begin to let go of the promise of God and we don't recall. We don't recall that he's forgiven us of our sins. We don't recall that he's given us his name in baptism and has made us heirs in the kingdom. We forget about the promises in the Bible. And for whatever reason, our situation, our friends, the world, what's popular, we start to lose our grip on the promise. So then you see where the attack comes. And so we, one more thing about the enemy. So verse eight, right? The strategies to break trust in verse eight, they're at Rephidim, a place of rest. Remember all you are burdened and heavy laden. Come to me and I will give you rest. That's a promise from God. It's the same promise that's in the Sabbath keeping. It means to be at peace with who you are and your relationship with God. And these envious Amalekites, right? The plan is now that we've weakened some trust, we're going to attack you because in envy, I want to destroy what you have. I can't have it, so now I'm going to destroy it. And so one of the things that you have to learn from this one is how do we recognize enemies? Well, when people in our life begin to attack our faith in the promises of God, they are under the influence of the enemy and they may very often be envious. And there are people in your kids lives. who are going to be envious of them, their faith and their family. And so here comes the communication. Moses goes to Joshua and he says, I want you to choose some men to go out and fight the Amalekites because tomorrow I'm going to stand up at the top of the hill so everybody can see me. And I'm going to hold that staff, the part of the Red Sea and brought water out of the rock, which is indication. It's a symbol of the promise of God. And I'm going to hold it up. And if you know the story, while Moses is holding up the staff there, the Israelites are winning. And when the arms come down, they're not. And eventually Aaron and her go up to the hill and they hold up the, the hands of, of Moses and the staff and the promise of God and the power of God is being fought on the battle to restore that confidence. And so one of the things we've got to have for our kids Joshua had some guys that hadn't broken or hadn't lost their confidence in the trust and they go out and fight and they see the promise of God as Moses is on the hill and the trust is being restored from the battle. Youth groups and youth leaders who will fight for your kids and fight with your kids is critical in the Christian world understanding of the fight club. And then you see the purpose of the battle itself, right? God is seeing the battle to restore and strengthen their trust in him. So One of the things we've got to do when our kids come with these accusing hyperboles of asking us something that, that we haven't done or need to do. And it, and it's attacking your character and God's character and your integrity. You've got to see the battle sometimes as a way to strengthen their trust back with you and your family and in their relationship with God. It's like the, the butterfly trying to fight out of the cocoon. Sometimes they've got to fight their way out as you remind them of the promises in order to strengthen that trust in God. If you create a world, and this is very difficult, when to be an advocate, when to fight for them, when to let them fight for themselves. But if you create a world in which they never have to fight for themselves, when you never understand the situation of the battle, your kids are going to struggle in those times when they need to trust God through difficulty. They've got to understand that God is working this out for their good. Now, The last thing I want to say, a couple of things I want to say one of the things we have to do in the battle is in verse 14. God says in verse 14 to Moses, write this for memorial, recount it. I will utterly blot out the remembrance of the Amalekites. In other words, you've got to recall the victories because there's another battle in the future for your kids. And so getting them to understand and recall like the Psalmist has done in 77 and many other Psalms, recalling the victories is, is teaching your children how to fight. Recall the victories that God has given you and you will fight. The last thing is their motive in the fight. That also has to be addressed. You go to first Samuel chapter 15 and God has had his fill with the Amalekites and their attacks. Tell Saul, I want you to go out and I want you to destroy the Amalekites. Saul goes out, he has the fight, he's winning, but he spares the King of the Amalekites and he keeps their best livestock. For himself. Man, There's this old saying among Christian Knights in the battle. Non nobis dominion, non nobis, not to us, not to us, but to your name be the glory. You got to teach your kids that when you're in the battle and you win the battle, you got to write it down. And you got to write it down to glorify God because we have to fear the Lord, your God, as it says in Deuteronomy, hold fast to him, take your oaths in his name. He's the one to praise. He is your God who performed for you those great and awesome wonders that you saw those victories in these battles that you experienced. Don't do it for your own self gain. Do it for the glory of God. And when you have that ability to, to fight, well, you've got something. I'm not, as I've said in this podcast, I'm not a psychologist. I don't understand all of the mental health things, and there are great people that understand it better. But I think when you see how the enemy is trying to break trust and remove peace, it has something to do. with the fact that the second leading cause of death among young men in America is suicide. Clearly that's a loss of peace, an extreme loss of peace. It's a sadness. And I'm not saying that, that every, that this learning to fight, you know, necessarily cures all mental health. It doesn't, but boy, it is a reflection of the society. It is something that It has to cause us to say, wait a minute, we've got to teach our kids how to fight in this kingdom. And Exodus 17 is a great story that teaches us exactly how to do it. 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.