 of a wise man. He said, you know, your greatest accomplishment might not be something you do, but someone you raise. And I believe that's true for us today. I'm Amy Schaefer. I'm here with Tom Hollis. Tom, I almost forgot that great quote, but thank God for the help of the Holy Spirit. That's right. Well, well, for those of us who have children and are now grandchildren, we always want to raise them up to follow Jesus. That's our number one hope, right? That they'll follow Jesus. As Christian values come under attack, though, more and more in our modern world, many parents wonder how can they build the strong spiritual foundation their children need to understand what is truly important in life? Well, award-winning podcaster Leanne Mancini inspires parents and grandparents to teach your children using loving guidance and discipline to become effective disciples who follow Christ and live according to his word. We're going to be talking with her and it's I mean, she's written this amazing book raising kids to follow Christ. It's such an important subject. And you know what? As I get older, it's still an important subject. Well, yeah. And I raised children. I love being a mom. And now I have, you know, a young adult and, you know, a teenager and another teenager. And I still feel extremely 100% engaged in raising those children. Yeah, you know, what's funny for me is when they left the house, when they turned 20, 20, it was like, Oh, I can't control them anymore. I can't, I can't tell them what to do anymore. They just do not that I was real good at it anyway, but, you know, I can't tell that, you know, they're, but you know what? They're never out of your influence. They may be out of your day to day control. So to speak, you know what I mean? Yes. Control sounds bad, but you know what I mean? Yes. The, the, but they're never beyond your influence. That's right. Yeah. And speaking of control, the producers are going to try to stump the host. We have a children of the Bible theme. Here we go. Let's go. Okay. First question. What are the names of the twins born to Isaac and Rebecca? Oh my gosh. Wait a minute. Jacob and Esau, right? No, no, no, they're not twins. No. Yeah. Jacob and Esau. Yeah. Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau. Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. I can't believe it. That was easy. But it felt hard. I'm starting to question our expertise here. All right. I hope you played along with us and here's the next one. When Job had his fortune restored, he was blessed with seven sons and how many daughters? Wasn't it seven sons and seven daughters? You know, that's what I think I'm going to go with. Yes. Let's go with that. Let's go with that final answer. Three daughters. I should have had some. I should have known that because I love everything about the daughters of God in the Bible. All right. Last question. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior, are children born in one's youth? Is this verse found in Proverbs or Psalms? Proverbs. Proverbs. Proverbs. I'm pretty sure it's Proverbs. Okay. Proverbs. We're going to go with Proverbs. It was so. I thought I was right. And you know why I thought I was right? Trust it is the man whose quiver is full of them. Yeah. But here's the deal. I read a Proverbs every day and I've been doing it for years and that doesn't trigger my memory. See that? I used to do that. No, I don't do it anymore. I'm glad we listened to you on that last one. It's not me. Let's move right along here. Well, as a Christian parent, the number one thing that we hope for our children, as I said earlier, is that they grow up learning about Jesus and choosing to follow Him. And in today's secular culture, though, that can be quite a challenge. Podcast host and author Leanne Mancini is our next guest and she's written a book called Raising Kids to Follow Christ. She joins us now to share how we can be a witness to our children and teach them to walk boldly in their faith. Leanne, welcome to Hope Today. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Well, you know, one thing I wanted to start and there's so much to talk about here that I know it's going to be a wonderful time of conversation with you. But let me ask you, you start off with something from Jonathan Edwards of all people going back 300 years. Can you tell me about that? What was an illustration he used, the kind of scared parents? Yes, you know, when I was researching for this book, I researched about two and a half years condensing this wisdom into this book. And I found this quote from Jonathan Edwards, where he actually tried to scare the parents. This was during revival, the great revival. And he asked the parents, how would you feel if you got to heaven and you sat at the heavenly banquet table and you're looking around and you're seeing family members and friends, but you don't see your children? That should affect how you are raising your children. He wanted parents to understand the importance of raising our children to love and to know God. That was paramount over everything else that was going on in their lives. And I thought, wow, I never thought about that. If I get to heaven, I don't see my children, that would be just horrific, horrific. And that's what just made me think, oh my gosh, we better start doing something. We better start doing something fast, doing something fast. Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you about just when, when do children begin to form a worldview? When do they begin to, you know, form their beliefs at what age? Around 15 months, children start to form a worldview. They look around, they see what family members they can trust. They know who's a stranger, who's not a stranger. They start hearing about, hopefully before that time, about Jesus. So it's about 15 months of age where they start forming their worldview. And I say to parents from the womb to age three, we want to prepare that soil to be rich. So from ages four to seven, we print, we plant seeds into rich soil that grow deep roots. That's how you build that foundation. And then from age eight to 13, you build upon that foundation. And at age 13, they pretty much have their worldview solidified pretty much. Well, let me ask you about that then. How do you prepare the soil? What, what does that mean exactly? How do you plant seeds? What does that mean? Well, for example, in my research, and I did a ton of research, one thing you can do is when you're pregnant, go to a Christian daycare center or your nursery at church and volunteer. At 18 weeks, babies can hear sounds in the womb. So let them hear children singing about Jesus. And then, you know, volunteer after they're born and on their first day, that they have to attend, there's going to be no, no tears. Also, you can, when you're feeding your infant, you're having their needs being met. You know, there's, they're screaming, crying, they're hungry, you feed them and they're cooing. Say, Jesus loves you. What you're doing is you're connecting their needs being met with the name of Jesus. Or a six month old laughing as he's looking into the mirror. Say, Jesus loves you, Johnny. Now you're connecting his happy emotions with the name of Jesus. And another thing you can do, there's tons of stuff that I put in there, but another thing you can do is instead of saying, let's take a nap, you say, let's take a Sabbath's rest. Now they don't understand the true meaning of Sabbath, but they know it has something to do with rest. What you're doing is you're building a vocabulary and a category in their mind. So later, when you start teaching them about the true meaning of Sabbath, you're planting seeds into rich soil. Wow. There's just so much we can do. Yeah, that's really good. Let me ask you about as they, as they begin to grow. So I'm going to lay these out for you. Public school, homeschool, Christian school. Where do you come down on that? Well, you know, it's hard. I believe in homeschooling, but 80% of our children attend a public school. There's a lot of families that can't afford it. That's why we have to double down in our parenting at home. I call it, let's be rosy riveters. World War II, the parents rolled up their sleeves so that we could win the war. And that's what we need to do as parents. We need to roll up our sleeves. We need to know God's word thoroughly. We need to live it out, and we need to apply it daily in our lives. That's what Deuteronomy six through four, nine is all about. A lot of families will rely on proverbs, train them up in the way they should go. But you know, that's not a promise. But in Deuteronomy six, God says, when you rise up, when you walk along the path, when you lie down, impress these principles upon your children. And if we do that organically, day by day, lovingly, our kids grow up loving Jesus and knowing he's a part of our family. Is parenting just for a mom and a dad alone and singly? Or is it about a community, a church, neighbors, friends? Do we all have a responsibility in teaching these truths of God to the next generation? Absolutely. And I think we find ourselves living in the times we are because the statistics don't lie. And I recently interviewed George Barna on my podcast, and he wrote Raising Spiritual Champions. And so their recent research shows that 70% of our teens from 13 to 14 years of age, they do not believe that Satan is real or he exists. 84% believe that we're not born into sin and need salvation. And 70% don't believe in absolute truth. Now, these are 13 to 14-year-olds coming from Christian families. And also, the church pastors, that, those statistics were alarming as well. I actually cried when I was reading these statistics. 53% of children, Christian pastors, believe in reincarnation. And 50% believe that Jesus possibly sinned while he was on earth. So, you know, as a church, as a body of Christ, we're called to raise up our children together because they're our future. You talked about the Bible verse, arrows in our quiver. That's what children are. They're arrows in our quiver. Those arrows are precise. They're made perfectly to point. And what do we do with them? We shoot them at the devil. And so our children are the ones that are going to be in academia, the church, media, you know, the government, the four pillars of society. We need to raise up strong Christian counterculture warriors and have them go out into the world to make a difference. And we can do it. There's things we can do because we have God on our side. We have His word. If we live out His word, if we apply these principles daily to our life organically, our children will have a Christian worldview and not a man's worldview. You know, probably a couple of generations ago, parents didn't really have too much trouble disciplining their kids. It was just understood to be part of what to do. But it seems to be a lot harder nowadays to discipline kids. How can we discipline correctly? How can we move, as you say in the book, from disciplining to discipling? Well, I have a lot of parents that like number one problem I think parents are looking for solutions for is disciplining. And I believe we have to understand that and it's mostly around the teenagers when they really start having or preteen teenage. And I tell the parents, you know, your children don't have rights. Now, listen, hear me out. They have rights to food, shelter, clothing, but they have privileges outside of that. Everything is a privilege. It's a privilege to have a phone. It's a privilege to have keys to the car. It's a privilege to be on your computer or go to a friend's house. So you need to sit with your children. If you haven't done it and you say, look, we haven't done these things in the past, or we're going to have a family mission statement, or we're going to have a contract, a family contract, that's going to lay out what's the responsibility of the parents, what are the responsibility of the children and have your children involved because if they're involved, they're more likely to adhere to whatever the stipulations are. And the three things kids cannot argue with when you're putting this together is simply say to them, I have to adhere to God to what He has called me to do as your parent. And I have to do what He's told me to do. I love you. That's another reason we're doing this. And the other, the third reason is because I want to keep you safe. Kids cannot push back upon that. And then I say, don't forget, no, when kids are babies, you can do behavior modification, like give them a treat for going to the potty. But as they get older, behavior modification doesn't work because you can't give them enough to have them want to behave. So it has to be a heart transformation. And in the book, I have a lot of ways to help you as parents, grandparents, ministry leaders, change your children's hearts so they want to behave. They want to love the Lord first and foremost and become strong Christians. And that lasts a lifetime. Let's talk about the emotions of children and teenagers as you're raising them, with a small child at me like, give me a blow pop in line at the grocery store. But when they're teenagers, you try to take away their phone. They're not allowed to drive. I mean, talk about those same emotions. They're just times a thousand. How do parents navigate those emotions so that they have godly actions behind it? Well, if you start early, you know, if you do these things you're supposed to do early, it makes teenage era so much easier to walk through. But teenagers can be just bigger toddlers and they get upset and they get mad and they pout and they whine when they don't get their way. The best thing to do again is just to simply, when things calm down, have a conversation with them and say, look, you know, you're a young adult. I want to treat you like a young adult, not like a little child anymore. So how can we work through this situation? What can we do? So this doesn't happen. Remember, I'm your parent. I love you. I want to protect you and I have to answer to God how I'm raising you. So help me to do this so that your life and my life we can coexist and love each other as a tight family. And I think if you not lecture your children because they don't want to be lectured, but have an open conversation, I think it works so much better that way. There's just so much we can do if we just start doing it and realizing we're the parent and they are the children and we have a responsibility to raise them properly, according to God's word. So I noticed that in the book you have answers to difficult questions. You know, like, who is God? Who made God? What is God like? Things like that, things that kids are going to ask. You know, I had a couple of professors in college say that they questioned in Sunday school and the person said, well, it's in the Bible. You just have to believe it. And I always tried not to say that to my kids because I've kind of discouraged them because they weren't, you know, their natural inquisitiveness was not fulfilled. So what about that? How do we handle those things? Not everybody's a theologian. How do they handle questions about, you know, God? Well, I like to say, okay, let's back up and let's look. What does Paul, Jeremiah, Timothy, Daniel, Sammy, what do they have in common? They were taught from infancy. So we can teach our children very young about absolute truth. Just take them out in nature. The sun rises, the grass is green. Start teaching your children early about absolute truth. And as they get older, they, your worldview, their worldview can be formed to become a biblical worldview when they understand questions like the four, the four questions a worldview must answer is origin. Where do I come from? Well, God made me and God made everything. Morality, how do I know, determine good from evil? Well, God's word says what is good and what is evil. In fact, answers, I mean, Genesis one through 11 answers all of those questions that we're fighting with today with the secular world, marriage, creation, you know, everything. There's so much. It's all in Genesis one through 11. Another worldview question must answer his purpose. Why am I here? God's word answers that and destiny. What happens when we die? Well, God's word is the only worldview with his word that answers those questions. So look for opportunities to answer those four questions while you're raising your children. And that's how you start to build that foundation and then practice with them role play. So they're not deer and headlights when someone asks them a question. In the book, I talk about a little boy who his mother, he came home crying from school. And he said, mom, you know, Johnny said that I hope little kids are listening to the show because I don't want to blow anything for the parents. But mom, Johnny said, God's not real. He couldn't have created everything in the world. And and I bet your mom told you that Santa Claus is real too. Well, when the little boy ran home, he was really upset because his mom had just told him about Santa Claus. And now he was wondering everything about Jesus was real. So you have to prepare them early for these questions because they're getting them earlier. They're facing pushback and not opposition in elementary school. The book is called Raising Kids to Follow Christ by Leanne Mancini. Leanne, would you pray for parents out there? Would you pray for the parents and grandparents that are watching right now and are saying, yeah, I need to, I need to do this. I need to know how to do this. Would you just lift them up? Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus, we just come before you. You have chosen us for such a time as this to raise these counterculture, beautiful children who are going to fight the battle of evil. We know it's about the salvation of our children and the preservation of our faith. So we ask that you will guide these parents. We ask that there'll be no mommy and daddy guilt or no guilt for ministry leaders if they haven't done what they need to do because we're all learning, Lord. So we ask that you will just bless us. You will equip us and you will guide us and you will protect us so that our generation, this next generation, will be strong warriors for Christ and they will be connected to the truth of God and His word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Raising kids to follow Christ and stealing a lifelong trust in God by Leanne Mancini. Leanne, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate that. Well, when we come back, we're going to have a scripture and some ministry just for you. We'll be right back. Jesus' two greatest commandments are love God and love others. Learning how to love better is a lifelong journey. This month, with your best gift of cornerstone television, we'd like to send you Love Like That, five relationship secrets from Jesus by Dr. Les Parrot. Discover how to truly love those in your life with this revolutionary guide. Blending the latest research in psychology and sociology with biblical insights, Parrot shares five practices, being mindful, approachable, gracious, vulnerable, and empathetic to help you forge meaningful, fulfilling connections with others. Love Like That will revolutionize every relationship in your life. Ask for your copy of Love Like That, five relationship secrets from Jesus by Dr. Les Parrot when you give this month to support Christian television through Cornerstone Network. Give online at ctvn.org slash donate or call us at 888-665-4483. Hope happens here. Thank you for being such a huge part of our world and our family and our partners. We truly think about you and consider you all the time. And thanks for tuning in for the entire program. You are truly the best. Let's go to our scripture right now in Deuteronomy chapter six, verse five and seven. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you get up. Tom, this is not a great suggestion. This isn't like we recommend that you do this in the Bible. This is like, this is the Lord speaking to us. He's given us the blueprint. He said, here's how you build a great foundation for a family, for righteous kids, for a righteous family. Here's what I need you to do. Now just do it. Talk about it. When you're sitting down, when you're rising, when you're eating, teach and press them on your children. Notice how it's all based around the home. It's not, I mean, you're a pastor, you have a great church, I go to a great church, but it's not about the church doing all that. That's good. The church needs to reinforce what you're sharing at home. It's where it happens. It happens in reality at home day by day, moment by moment. First of all, parents and grandparents, you living out that truth and that relationship with Christ every day consistently. And yes, we all are fragile people. We make mistakes and that's okay. That's part of it too, actually. We learn how forgiveness is given and asked for and given. So yes, those are important things. But it's that home time of them learning. And it doesn't even say have a special Bible study. It says when you rise up, when you sit down, it's just like all the time you're living that out. Honestly, I think there is such an anointing right now for families and on the family. And I believe on your family today. As the scripture says, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be when the coming of the Son of Man. Well, as it was in the days of Noah, God used a family to save his race, his people. So I believe that God wants to use your family. God is going to use your family. Don't give up. I mean, I'm thinking about some parents, you just feel like giving it up because raising a family is hardcore. It is tough. It is, you've got to, it's like boots on the ground. It's like you're in the army. There are, it's spiritual warfare. Satan wants to take out your kids, your family, your marriage, your home. But you know what? We stand boldly and we stand confidently because our foundation is not on sand. It's not shifty. It is on a stable foundation of the scripture and the Bible and God is faithful to his promise. So what he promised for you and your family can and will come to pass in your life. I mean, you got to hang on to it, Tom. Don't just let go of the reins and let the world raise your kids. Let the cell phone raise your kids. Let culture raise your kids. Let tick tock. I mean, you've got to take back your family. Absolutely. You know, that's interesting that you brought up that about as it was in the days of Noah because quite often what I've seen is people say, well, it's terrible, horrible sin in the days of Noah and it's terrible, horrible sin now. That's not exactly what it says. It says they were marrying. They were giving him marriage. They were just doing the normal stuff without God. And that's what we see in our nation now, in our culture, in our world. People are just going through day to day life, even good families without God. And I'm here to say that you and me and Amy and everyone around here, not just the preacher on Sunday morning, but everyone can affect those people around, around our communities, our neighborhoods, the organizations were part of Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Soccer Club, whatever. You can be that influence of a family living for Christ, not just kind of going, going the way, going the way kind of stupidly off to not serving God, you know. You know, we have family dinners together every Monday night. And I can't tell you how vigorous these conversations are, how passionate these conversations are, how opinionated these conversations are, and how biblical these conversations are. I pray the most vigorous, vibrant, biblical family right now in your home, in your children's home, that we will impress them on our children. Our children will impress them to their children and so on. And guess what? The kingdom of heaven is built. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. See you tomorrow. On Tomorrow's Hope Today, explore who Jesus truly is and learn about his promises. Author Rick Beckwith takes an in-depth look at the life of Jesus and answers some challenging questions we have in regards to the promises he made. Don't miss Tomorrow's Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.