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HEART CHECK: True spiritual life for busy parents : Introducing a resource that changed our lives

INTRO AUDIO:

Hey friends, what you’re going to be listening to today is another heart check episode, Mindi. And I try to remind you that Christian parenting, that leads children to be God fearing is where the parents are focusing on their own vibrant relationship with Christ. Today, we’re going to introduce you to a curriculum and a topic that had been one of the most transformational in our lives. This is God bringing kids and the parents who raise them. Hello friends. Welcome back to another heart check episode. I’m Carrie

MINDI:

And I’m

CAREY:

Mindi. And these heart check episodes are really our attempts to remind you of the basics of Christian parenting really begin with you. This is about your spiritual life as a parent. And today we want to introduce you to a resource that we came across early in our married life that truly changed our lives. We don’t typically say that about things outside the Bible, that it changed our life, but this resource so thoroughly steeped in scripture and kind of a forgotten truth of the gospel really transformed the way we lived and therefore the way we parented and the way we built the environment of our home. So MI, why don’t you take us back to 19 89, 19 90. We were newly married and tell us how this resource came into our lives.

MINDI:

Well, I think it was introduced to us through my sister. It was a cassette tape series called Victoria’s Christian life by bill and Annabel Gillum who are both in heaven right now. Yeah. And we started listing through those tapes and a very foundational truth of our reality is Christians just came alive.

CAREY:

Many people would refer to this truth just in general, as the exchanged life. Now, what they’re getting at is when we place our faith in Jesus, we exchange our life for his. He takes our sinful broken identity. He takes it to the cross and kills it and gives us a new identity, which is based on his life in us. And we’re going to look at some passages here that are essential. Galatians two 20. Do you want to read that one? Mindi.

MINDI:

I’ve been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me in the life. I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

CAREY:

So you see, there is a transformation that’s happened in Paul’s life. I no longer live Christ lives in me. It’s a transformation. Not only in the reality of where his strength for living comes from, but also in his mindset. He’s recognizing I’m dead. Jesus is alive and he he’s changing the way he thinks. Second Corinthians five 17 says, therefore, if anyone’s in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come again. Paul describing this mindset that we have to get into as believers in Christ, because something about us has changed. How about Roman six, 11 Mindi. So

MINDI:

You also must consider yourselves dead to sin in a alive to God in Christ. Jesus.

CAREY:

Paul is just, his writings are replete with this. You see this theme throughout. Once you notice it, it just pops up everywhere. It’s kind of like when you get a new car and you start seeing that new car everywhere, this is the same thing. When you see this truth and you understand the ramification of it, you start seeing it everywhere in scripture, you know, many. How would you describe the difference that these truths made in our lives as an early young married couple,

MINDI:

It made every difference in the world. When you’re newly married, a lot of unknown irritations, come out, your flesh patterns come out. You’re struggling to learn how to live a peaceful life together with your new spouse. And it was so helpful learning these truths, that if I was feeling irritated with you, and I wanted to act out of that, the verse that says, you must consider yourself dead to sin. Well, acting out of my irritation would have been sinning. And so for me to be reminded, no, I’m dead to that, but I’m alive to Christ. So what would Christ do? He would be loving. He would say a kind word to my husband instead of snapping at you. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> just because I’m feeling irritated for some reason. So those kinds of things, as we learn to change our habits of living because of the truth of our new life was amazing was such a blessing.

CAREY:

Yeah. I remember feeling when we first came across the resource and began listening to the cassettes, it just felt like why didn’t someone teach me this earlier in my Christian life and you’re shaking your head and rolling your eye. You felt the same way.

MINDI:

Yeah. I, and actually is a sad thing to me that most Christians don’t grow up learning their reality. I mean, it it’s our reality. We are a new life in Christ. We are not a sinful creature. We are a redeemed creature. And if we think that way, we’re going to be that way.

CAREY:

Yeah. We have a power source beyond ourselves in the person of Jesus Christ who lives in us through this holy spirit. And that power source truly can enable us to live as we should live. And this resource that we’re going to recommend to you is one that was developed out of the cassette tapes that we originally listened to. It’s a DVD series back in the day that we discovered that bill and Annabel Gillum had produced and it was recorded in the eighties. And it’s them sitting in a small group context in a living room teaching these truths and it’s called the life and their ministry, which they established before they passed away. And their son now is president of, is called lifetime guarantee and they provide this curriculum now for free. There’s a PDF copy of the workbook. You can download all the exercises included in it and all the teaching is available for free. So we want to encourage you as parents to keep in mind, you have got to learn the reality and the power of Christ in you for yourself so that you can then pass that on to your children. I mean, we’ve gone through this series with our children as they’ve gotten older numerous times, I don’t even remember how many times

MINDI:

And with their spouses, their new spouses, we went through them and we’ve actually gone through this with almost every church that you’ve led and almost every small group that we’ve been a part of. So it’s, it’s been ingrained in our minds and it is a mess I would say for every believer.

CAREY:

Yeah. So we’ve set up a very easy to remember link that you can go to, to get this resource it’s at God fearing kids.com/the life. God fearing kids.com/the life. It’ll take you right to the lifetime guarantee website. You’ll see all the videos there. You can download the workbook and friends do not skip this. This resource will transform your life.

MINDI:

As we have seen our children grow up in the relationship with the Lord, I would say that the practices and the habits that we learned from those life videos that we learned ourselves and that we taught our children is very foundational as to why our children are still walking with the Lord mm-hmm <affirmative>. And there’s, I there’s so much more I could say to that, but I just hope that you would take that to heart you parents that are listening.

CAREY:

Yeah. They recognize their life is not their own Jesus is their life, right? And so that adds so much connection to the Lord and accountability in life that your heart really would brick to turn from the Lord because he is your life. And so we encourage you get on that lake. It’ll be in the description and you’ll find yourself just thriving. As you learn to understand and apply the truths that you learned there. Lord God, thank you so much for this resource that you gave us. Thank you for bill and Anna bill Gillum. I just look forward to seeing them in heaven, giving them a big hug and thanking them for being so faithful and expressing through their story and through their experience. The truth of your word that just transformed so many people and Lord, it’s nothing special to them. It’s special to you. You are our life and the apostle Paul’s made it so clear. We pray that you would guide these parents in understanding these truths in a way that transforms the way they live and the way they parent so that their families can grow in the, the knowledge of Jesus as their life. We pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

CAREY:

You can join us in making an eternal difference in the lives of other Christian families, but financially supporting this podcast, visit God fearing kids.com/support to see all the options. Monthly supporters will receive our partners only bonus podcast, digging as our thank you gift.