INTRO: What we mean by the phrase “God fearing kids”

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INTRO AUDIO:                  

One of the most wonderful and important responsibilities God gives to human beings is that of raising children, man, what an awesome thing. We get to raise human beings to know and love their creator and to contribute to His kingdom purposes in human history. This is God-fearing kids and the parents who raise them.

Carey:                                  

Welcome to God fearing kids and the parents who raised them, I’m Carey Green. And this is my lovely wife,

Mindi:                                  

Mindi Green.

Carey:                                  

And we are recording this after many years of pondering the topics that we’re going to be talking about and having them very close to our hearts, because we raised five kids and tried to do so by a Biblical standard and following God’s instruction. And today is the day the dream of teaching others about this is becoming a reality. How are you feeling about that, Mindi??

Mindi:                                  

I am feeling very excited! I have wanted to pass on the hope and the encouragement that the Holy Spirit has given us through all these years. And that truly is what I’m excited about, to pass on hope.

Carey:                                  

This is the day it’s kind of hard to believe that we’re actually doing this. So I thought we should probably start out with an explanation of the title of this podcast. “God Fearing Kids and the Parents Who Raise Them – It’s kind of a long name, but it has meaning behind every word. So let’s talk first off about the idea of being God fearing. That’s a word or a phrase that may give some people a little bit of trouble when they hear it. Because you know, in our heart of hearts, we don’t want to be afraid of God. We feel like that’s wrong to be afraid of God, because He’s loving and compassionate and all those things. But God Himself encourages us to fear Him. I did a little research this morning before we started recording and the Bible 27 times, at least in the English standard version says the fear of the Lord. And it’s mentioned in a positive connotation that we are to have that as a characteristic or attribute of ourselves, the fear of the Lord. So it’s important that we understand what that means. We’ve got some verses laid out here that we wanna read through and just kind of walk through it. Many. Why don’t you start with Psalm 34 11.

Mindi:                                  

It says, “Come O children. Listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”

Carey:                                  

Okay… So this is, it’s an exhortation from the Lord saying, “Listen to Me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” It’s something that God wants us to know. Proverbs 14:6 also says “In the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence and His children will have a refuge.” Now this is getting a lot closer to home for us in the topics that we are talking about. Mindi, how would you define the fear of the Lord as we think about it in terms of these scriptures,

Mindi:                                  

I would say fearing the Lord means believing who He says, he is believing what He says we are to do. If he tells us to do it, we do it. That means we’re fearing Him. If he says he’s loving kind gracious, then we need to believe that he’s that way because he says it.

Carey:                                  

Yeah, I would agree with that. Sometimes the word respect is used in lieu of the term fear of the Lord, which I think is true, but it also can empty the term of its meaning a little bit because it waters it down a bit respect. Absolutely. We need to respect God, but we also need to kind of shake in our shoes a little bit because he’s God, There’s an issue of authority and position there that we always need to have in mind. And here, when it says in the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence given what you just described. That makes total sense to me. If we are doing what God says, we’re walking in the way he leads. We’re obeying the commands that he gives. There’s every reason to have confidence.

Mindi:                                  

To me, it’s kind of like, I have confidence that I am not gonna be squashed by the cars driving down the highway because I fear that if I walk in the middle of the highway, I’m gonna get squashed. So I’m confident that I’m, that’s probably not gonna happen because I’m not planning on doing that same kind of thing. I’m fearing the Lord. He, he tells me I need to obey Him. He tells me I need to stay away from evil and then I will be blessed. So I have confidence that I’m going to be blessed. I have confidence that I’m not gonna be punished because I am obeying Him and staying away from evil.

Carey:                                  

I love that your cart illustration is very helpful because if we imagine God as the one who’s giving us instruction and saying, if you do X, Y, Z, these bad things will come into your life. It’s like a warning, just like God saying, don’t play in the street. When we fear Him, we respect what he has said as being true and obey it. We do have confidence that, that car’s not gonna hit us. That’s that’s a really good illustration. Now let’s look at this one. Also Proverbs 19:23 says “The fear of the Lord leads to life and whoever has it rests, satisfied. He will not be visited by harm.” Now that sounds like a huge promise. And I believe that it is. But the main point that he’s driving home there is that when we properly view God in His position of authority, that’s gonna lead us to life. It’s gonna lead us to, I would say, abundant life, a great life, a life of blessing and a life of honor

Mindi:                                  

In every way. If we learn to fear the Lord and obey Him and therefore not get involved in evil practices, such as doing drugs, then we’re not gonna be finding ourselves, addicted and strung out and all the consequences that come from using your paycheck to buy drugs and you know, all the spiraling effects, and many times people in that lifestyle have a shorter life. So that practically is the case. If we obey the Lord and we don’t become drunk with wine, then we’re probably not gonna find ourselves drinking and driving, which could cause us to crash in, in our life. So practically, it’s talking about the length of life, but it’s also talking about an abundant life spiritually. If we bath the Lord, then most likely we’re gonna have godly marriages and godly children and have joy filled lives.

Carey:                                  

Yeah. And that is part of that second phrase where it says, and whoever has it, the fear of the Lord rests, satisfied. There’s this piece and a calm that comes when you know, you’re living your life, according to the way God desires. Now, here’s why we’ve chosen the podcasting the way we have we all as Christian parents, according to the definition that we’ve just given and the fear of the Lord want our kids to fear the Lord. We want them to see Him rightly to see Him in all His glory and majesty and reverence Him and respect Him as they should, because we know all these benefits we’ve talked about will come about, but the problem is kids don’t come out of the womb, understanding and applying this concept. Parents have to teach it to them. They’re not gonna get it by osmosis. They’re not gonna get it necessarily by being sent to AWANAs or Sunday school.

Carey:                                  

This happens day after day second, by second in a Christian home, as mom and dad are instructing and guiding and discussing these things. And that’s why this podcast exists. We want to help you as a parent, think through this issue, the fear of the Lord, and how do you instill it in your kids, not in a heavy-handed domineering way, but in a loving, gracious way. Let God instills it in us so that your kids can grow up experiencing and knowing the fear of the Lord that leads to life and be able to rest satisfied as proverb, 1923 says,

Mindi:                                  

And I’m looking at Proverbs 22:6, which is a very common verse… “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” So that is what we’re talking about because children do not come out of the womb already, knowing what they need to know in every way, spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, God is telling us we need to train them up. We need to teach them in every way. Not only spiritually, not only physically or emotionally, but in every way so that when they become older, they have the tools to be able to live the kind of life that God wants them to.

Carey:                                  

Yeah. That is an excellent point. And that leads us to the topic of our next episode. “Godly parenting begins with you.” It begins with you as the parent, and we’re gonna get into that in the next episode. But before we wrap up this episode, let’s just tell the listeners a little bit about who we are. I think in a nutshell, we are in our mid fifties, at the moment we have raised five kids, they’re all 18 or older and are all out living their lives. Some are married, have kids of their own, and they’re raising their families. Some do not yet have kids. Some are not married. And so we’ve got all these adult kids in various stages of adult life that have been raised in our home. And at this point by God’s, grace are all walking with the Lord, faithfully. They have their own relationship with Him. They pursue Him diligently. They’re seeking to be guided by Him each day. And we find that to be just one of the greatest blessings of life. We very much resonate with what John says in the book of 1 John, “I have no greater joy than to know that my children are walking in truth.” And that is what we want for you as listeners, we wanna transmit to you everything we can about what God has taught us as parents.

Mindi:                                  

Yes. I very much feel the same way and something Carey didn’t mention is that we also have five grand boys at this point, three of them they’re old enough. They also know Jesus and their parents are doing a very good job at training them up. And they’re already having a relationship with Jesus at this stage. And we expect the other two will be soon. They’re still babies right now, but there’s great joy in that. And it’s all because of God’s amazing grace and His work in our lives. And it is possible for anyone and everyone, no matter what stage of parenting that you are at, if you’re beginning or if you haven’t begun yet, or if your children are grade school, high school, there’s always hope for you as a parent to start teaching your child in the way they should go.

Carey:                                  

Absolutely. And we are eager to bring you more and more content as the weeks progress and are thankful that you’re here. You can expect the up episodes will be probably about as long as this one has been and perhaps a little longer, it will. Most of the time probably be a conversation just like this, where the two of us are talking about some parenting topic, but we hope in time to have some interviews with our kids. So you can hear their side of the story and you can understand how the concepts were teaching, landed on them and took root in their hearts and how it developed by God’s grace into an adult who is embracing and following after the Lord in the spirit of the fear of war. So we’re grateful that you’re here and we’re grateful that you found us stick around for the journey. That’s gonna be great.