• [00:10:58]
  • Scripture references: 
    • Psalm 127:3

• [00:12:28]
  • Scripture references: 
    • Proverbs 22:6

• [00:15:51]
  • Recommended resource: 
    • Fierce Parenting Podcast

Ryan: This episode is a little bit different. And it’s different because we have a very exciting announcement for you, our Fierce Marriage listeners. And it has to do with family. So the first episode in this series was the identity of marriage itself. We kind of looked at scripture and said, “What is marriage as a structure, as an institution that is designed by God?” It’s not an arbitrary thing. It is His design.

Then we looked at our shared or our collective identity as a married couple. Right?

Selena: Yeah.

Ryan: And then we dove into a two week miniseries within this series. [Selena chuckles] And what did we talk about there?

Selena: We talked about roles, both of wives and husbands, and what the purposes of those are, and kind of dove into scripture and looked at the historical context, primarily in the home. So we did not dive into church leadership roles there, because that’s a whole nother podcast. [chuckles]

Ryan: We did look at scripture and some of the key scriptures that teach us kind of the underlying principles that have to do with complementarianism is the word. Then we spend another episode talking through this specific outworking of that. And this fifth identity episode is so apt, it’s so appropriate [laughs] because now we’re talking about our identity as a family.

So you may listen to this, you may be listening to this and you don’t have kids yet, but you’re still a family. One day, it’s our prayer, and if you have the desire, we pray that you have the desire that you would want the blessing that is children.

And for that reason—this is the big announcement—we have just launched the Fierce Parenting Podcast in the sense that there is a trailer available for you to listen to, as well as kind of a what to expect. It’s actually all one episode… There’s a trailer, then what to expect pieces in there with it.

Selena: Nice.

Ryan: And then we’re dropping three episodes all at once. Which if you’re listening to this episode of the Fierce Marriage podcast the day it releases, that means that tomorrow, on Wednesday, you’ll be able to listen to all three of those Fierce Parenting.

Selena: What?

Ryan: Here’s the thing about Fierce Parenting. We’re going to play the trailer for you here, so you don’t have to go over there and find it. Although I will ask that you go and follow the Fierce Parenting podcast, if that’s something you want to get, go ahead and leave a preemptive rating and review. You know, just help us out. Help brother and a sister out. [Selena laughs]

But the thing about the Fierce Parenting podcast is we’re trying to keep the length down. We’re trying to keep it very specific. We’re also going to bring in more guests.

Anyway, as you listen to this trailer, our prayer is that it would enliven you to the purposes of God and to the structures that God has put in place for your identity as a family. That’s the first objective. That that would enliven your heart to desire and to obey God’s design for family because it is the best design and it’s the design that’s there for our flourishing and for the good of society.

It’s also our mission and our desire, as you’ll tell from the trailer of the Fierce Parenting Podcast, it’s our hope to kind of open your eyes a little bit to what’s happening around the world, what’s happening in the culture. The family is under attack. And I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic. I don’t think I’m exaggerating in that. I feel like the family structure is being deconstructed.

So I think now more than ever, in history, and that’s… people say that all the time, but I feel like that’s an apt phrase. Now more than ever, we need to be, as Christians, living the specific missional mandates of God for marriage, for family. And we need to push back against some of the cultural tide that is encroaching on God’s design.

So the Fierce Parenting Podcast is part of that effort. So, again, to enliven your hearts to the purposes and designs of God. And then to open your eyes so that you can see and be aware of. And then the third piece is to then fight back. And not fight back in any sort of literal way. But more than how you live your life in ideological way, in a spiritual way, we’re fighting back in how we raise our children.

So with that said, here comes the Fierce Parenting Podcast trailer, and then a short little intro, what to expect piece. This will actually conclude this episode of the Fierce Marriage Podcast.

And we just ask that as you’re listening to it, (a), that you would pray for it, pray for the families of the world that might be helped by it. And (b), if you already are on board, we would love it and would be honored if you’d go find us on your podcasting app, namely, in Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts and leave a quick rating and a review preemptively. You can trust that we will stick to the Gospel..

Selena: Bring it.

Ryan: …and we will bring it. Anyway, I’ll leave all that for the next piece that we’re going to play here. And with that said, do you have anything else you want to add real quick?

Selena: No, you just said it’s going to conclude the Fierce Marriage Podcast. So I was-

Ryan: No, no, no.

Selena: I was like, “Oh, goodbye. We’re going over to parenting.”

Ryan: I mean just this episode. [Selena laughs] We’re not going to go any further on this specific episode. You guys, instead of talking about our identity as a family in one episode, we’re actually giving you an entire new podcast.

Selena: Yeah. yeah.

Ryan: With that said, without further ado, here comes the Fierce Parenting Podcast.

[00:05:12] <interlude>

A lot of people will say, hey, the family is kind of up for grabs. Like the nuclear family, this idea that there has to be one man, one woman in a marriage with kids, that’s all up for grabs. And we’re here to say, you know what? God has designed for this stuff, and it’s not arbitrary.

Selena: We are imperfect, and we are broken by sin, and it doesn’t diminish God’s Word or the power that it has. I think it just invites us into His presence and allows us to try to embrace His commands and His instructions as best as we can.

Ryan: Why do you live in such a way that it seems like it’s-

Selena: Costing your family.

Ryan: …you would rather have a nice house than a healthy home? That’ll tweet. [both laughs] The point is, if you are on the fence about this idea, it will affect every aspect of your parenting. There are spiritual forces of darkness at work.

Selena: Yes. Yes.

Ryan: And you know, if I’m going to tear down the church, I will start in the home. We start by-

Selena: Dealing with the enemy.

Ryan: …dividing the parents, I go after marriages, and then go after the family itself.

Selena: The society is already on downturn. I don’t know how far it’s going to go. You know, God’s in control, and He’s sovereign. But without healthy families, which is what we’re here today to say that it’s God’s idea, and the ways that you fight for it are not necessarily out with picket signs or posting stuff on social media, but truly focusing on your family, being in the word, understanding the truths of Scripture, and living those out.

Those are the ways that we are battling against this cultural norm that it’s all about the individual. No, it’s about a family. It’s about us working together, being the body of Christ. Jesus is the way the truth and the life. This is what it looks like when it comes to family.

We don’t need to just live in a striving and barely making it by every day. Oh, we just barely survive. We can live from a place of abundance by recognizing that God has called us into this. Our role as parents is discipleship. We are making disciples that make disciples.

Ryan: And we just promised to be as faithful to the Bible as we possibly can and remind you of the gospel, and then give you tangible ways to live it out as parents. We’re here to address Christian homes and to submit ourselves alongside you to the Christian vision. By Christian I mean, the Word of God. To submit ourselves to that so that we don’t live our lives in a lie, and then wake up one day and realize that we’ve missed it.

[00:08:10] <interlude>

Selena, I can’t believe it. Here we are. Fierce Parenting Podcast.

Selena: Woooo!

Ryan: Finally, we are starting this thing that was birthed in our hearts over a year ago. So ladies and gentlemen, listeners, this is our very first introduction episode of the Fierce Marriage… Whoa, there it is. [both laughs] Fierce Parenting Podcast. That was a slip because we do have the Fierce Marriage Podcast.

This is the parent team counterpart to what we’ve been doing for the last almost five years on the marriage space. And now five years into that we have a whole quiver of daughters, three daughters. And the whole purpose of this podcast is to give you, our fierce listeners, parents listeners, the tools and encouragement and reminders in the Gospel.

Selena: Our whole mission here at Fierce Parenting is to point parents to Christ and encourage them in the Gospel. So that said, like you said, we are excited to finally be kicking off this new podcast.

Ryan: Yeah. So what can our listeners expect from the Fierce Parenting Podcast? What are they in for?

Selena: Our goal is to keep this podcast at about 30 minutes. We’re going to explore scripture, we’re going to talk about application, we are going to be transparent in kind of our struggles. And this will all be done through our conversational kind of style that you’re used to over on the Fierce Marriage podcast. We’ll also be incorporating more interviews. I think this will be much more of a collaborative effort because there are more seasoned and wise parents than us.

Ryan: Yes.

Selena: So we are excited to glean from them about topics such as tech and screen use, discipline, behavior and correction, discipleship with your kids, what that looks like, why it’s important. How can we get started? Should our kids do extracurricular activities? What does that look like for our family? Why should the gospel weigh in on all of this and how does it weigh in?

Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Those are all huge questions. I think oftentimes in parenting life, we can too quickly be driven by the currents of society, in the culture and the water that we’re swimming in. And here we are to say you know, it’s time to push back, it’s time to swim upstream, to start valuing the household the way God designed the household to be. In that we are going to disciple our children within the home, we are going to value them as the blessings that they are, and we are going to see the family as not just our idea or some cultural construct, but God’s idea. And actually, it goes back to the three tenants, right?

Selena: Yeah. We believe that every question in parenting can be addressed by considering the biblical roots of three core tenants that we hold true here at Fierce Parenting. The first one is kids are a blessing.

Psalm 127, talks about “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.” So children are a blessing from God Himself, we have to resist the attitudes that consider children to be burdens or nuisances, are kind of in the way, or even just a commodity, and just kind of that next step. Children are blessing because God says they are a blessing.

Ryan: Yeah. That’s the first tenant. By the way, we’re going to spend the next three episodes coming out next week. We’re going to drop them all at once. And we’re going to talk through these three tenants as kind of the foundational principles of our approach to talking about parenting. That’s the first one. Kids are a blessing.

The second one is this: family is God’s idea. And I mentioned it earlier. But there’s this modern belief that family is just an arbitrary social construct that has just evolved over time. And you know what, it’s run its course, and everything now is up for grabs.

And we are here to say, no, the family, the nuclear home is a biblical idea, it’s God’s idea, it is a biblical institution given to us for the flourishing of mankind. And what that looks like is a mother, a father, and children. And that is not really up for debate, not in a biblical view.

So we’re going to talk through why exactly and how his family God’s idea and how has He designed it so that we can flourish and so that society can flourish as a result. Lots of Scripture to go into that one.

Selena: Oh, yeah.

Ryan: And then the third tenant, what do you got?

Selena: All of parenting is discipleship.

Ryan: Yes.

Selena: We base this on Proverbs 22:6. “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” As parents, we face many decisions about how to parent, what we allow in our kids’ lives, what governs those decisions that we make. When we view all of parenting as discipleship, it changes everything.

Ryan: Right. You use the example of “should we let our child to do extracurricular activities or be involved in sports, or do whatever the thing is? Right?

Selena: Mm.

Ryan: We’re not here to tell you what to let your kid do. But we are here to say is that decision that you’re about to make is a discipleship decision.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Because, however, they’re spending their time to how they’re spending their lives, that’s where the affections and where the, you know…

Selena: The heart stir towards.

Ryan: The heart stir toward, those things. And so we need to make sure and be guardians of not just, you know, the behaviors and what’s being placed before our children, but really the margin of our children so that they can engage in the things of God without being distracted to no end by everything that the world has to offer. It’s not that you don’t do one or two things. It’s just that that’s the foundation. It is a discipleship decision.

Selena: Right. Engaging in the things of God deeply. Every choice has a context. We want to raise our children to know, love, and obey God. And so, again, I just love what you said that we have to view parenting, all of it as discipleship. And the decisions that we are allowing our children to help us decide or encourage them in has to be through this lens of discipleship.

Ryan: And the reality is you’re going to disciple your children some way. You’re going to disciple them in the things of God, or you can disciple them in other things that aren’t of God, whether they’re just the things that you like or what you value in terms of, you know, the ultimate in this life. Whether it’s education, achievement, acquisition of wealth, whatever that thing is, you’re going to disciple them in something.

And we’re here to say, that yes, all parenting is discipleship and the trajectory of Christian discipleship is to be more like Christ and to follow Christ. And that’s what we’re here to encourage you in.

Selena: Right. So this podcast is for parents. Hello, fierce parenting. [chuckles]

Ryan: Hello.

Selena: But I just want to bring a little texture to that. If you’re parents of children that you’ve had naturally or your grandparents, taking care of children’s children, or you’re foster parents or adoptive parents, if you have any sort of tag of parenting in your role of children who are young or older in their teens in high school, maybe they’re still at home, honestly, we would argue that these conversations can be helpful to kids just even in their adult life.

Ryan: Absolutely.

Selena: But this podcast is for you all. And we are so excited to share and to journey with you, and to explore some of these tenants, especially next week, in more depth.

Ryan: Yeah. And I cannot express how excited I am. We were getting coffee early before recording this, and I thought, “I cannot believe today is the day.” I’m so excited to start this new conversation. We’ve been in the marriage side of things for so long that I just can’t wait to start opening God’s Word and talking about His deep truths as they apply to our lives as parents, into the lives of our children.

So stay tuned for those three tenants dropping next week. We can’t wait to share those with you. Again, our promise is to keep everything gospel centered always, point you to Christ. We’re going to give you tangible tools. And we’re going to try to keep it under 30 minutes so that you can quickly get in and get out and then go apply the truth that you discover.

In the meantime, we encourage you to check out fierceparenting.com for more information and resources. We have some really valuable tools there. We have creating a family tech plan is there, we have the how to craft a family vision statement as an eBook. It’s like 48 pages long. That’s free there. We have some “how to do simple family worship” is another resource and the guide that we have there. So check out fierceparenting.com.

You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We are constantly posting encouragements and updates there. I think that’s it for now.

Selena: Thanks for listening. And until next time—

Ryan: Stay fierce.

[00:16:27] <outro>