Victorious Families

So when we sit down with a lot of parents, with little kids or even teenagers, we always ask them a question and most parents have never even thought of this question and they don't know how to answer it.

Do you know where I'm going? I think you're gonna say, what's your plan or what are you trying to raise? Yeah, so many parents, we talked about this in our No Perfect Parents book, have never even asked the question, what is my goal? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson and I'm Dave Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. If I could envision my son or daughter as a man or woman in their 20s or 30s or 40s, what kind of man or woman are they? And I think one of the most important things we can do at Family Life Today and Family Life is help parents, number one, know what a worthy goal is to shoot for and then have a plan to do it.

Equip them. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm not kidding, we couldn't have a better person in the studio today to help us do that. Terrence Chapman is back with us again to talk about spiritual formation in your family. Terrence, welcome back. Hey, it's good to be back. We're glad to have you here in Orlando and we've already talked with you. I said, you know, previously you're a man with a plan because what you've done with your family, and I just want to review, I mean the fact that, you know, your wife challenges you to say, how are we gonna develop disciples of our kids?

And you not only take that challenge... Wait, Dave, she said, and you better have a plan in two weeks. She gave you 14 days.

What's our plan of how will they defend their faith as high schoolers and even college students when we're put into this world of everything is going against our faith. So she's basically saying, Terrence, what's your plan? Did she help you after that? I mean, in those 14 days, did she come back day two and say, hey, do you need some help or were you on your own to sort of develop this? Dave, all she did was cook me some great meals, took me back to those Sunday dinners and say, buddy, you're on your own. I'm praying for you.

So I would say the way she helped me was she prayed for me, which I needed a lot of. And you guys have been married almost 40 years. Oh, man, almost 40 years. You have three kids, six grandchildren.

There will be six grandkids once our youngest daughter deliver those twins. Yeah. We talked previously about, OK, you developed a goal, mission, values, vision.

I mean, again, you've done that with Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson, different in your corporate life. But now, and the stakes are higher, I think, aren't they? Now, this is disciples in my own home. And you said previously, the first thing you did was get on your knees and pray, take us back there.

Then you get off your knees. And what? How did you develop this plan that now 100,000 families have been trained to go through? With a ministry that's called?

Do Your Children Believe. And so think about this, right? All through the 66 books of the Bible, what is God trying to get us to do? One, he's introducing his son to us. He's introducing his plan from the very beginning. He says, you are now at enmity with me because of the fall, right? And so I'm going to be coming. I'm going to bring this whole thing back together where there's what?

We have unity again. And what's the answer to that is Christ Jesus. He tells us the plan from the very beginning that it's all about Christ. As I thought about this coming off of my knees, the vision that I saw was who this Christ was on the cross. I saw on the cross what? His pain. I saw his sacrifice, his surrender, his will.

But you know what? His great love for his creation. And I thought, what else would be more the sweeter than to see my kids fall madly in love with this Christ Jesus? And that's what we all long for as parents because we know that's their hope.

And our children can't believe without that image. And so as I thought about it, that's what was I rose off my knees and said, Lord, you know, I don't know how to do this. I want to know how to do this.

I think I know how to do this. And I tell you, if you don't have a plan for your children, someone else will. Hollywood has a plan. The Internet, you know, all the discussions that's taking place, they have a plan. Educational system has a plan. So if we're not intentional with a plan, and by the way, we are people of planners.

Think about it. We have vacation plans. We have estate plans. We have ministry plans. We have business plans. We plan. Can you ever imagine going on a vacation without planning? Just hop in the car.

I'm heading out to wherever, and I'll see you when I get there. We never do that. So why do we try to raise kids in spiritual formation, unity in the Spirit, without a plan?

And yet I think so many of us get afraid at that moment. It's like, well, I don't know where to start. I don't know what a plan would look like.

I don't know if my kids are interested. Yeah, am I equipped to do this? Yeah, and you said start on your knees. And so then you get a vision of the cross.

Did you then just sit down and say, okay, I'm going to write some ideas, some curriculum? I mean, what are we going to go through? Walk us through that. So get this experience, Dave and I'm sitting there, and I'm like, okay, Lord, here I am. Use me in a mighty way.

And I'm saying, God, I want to see this happen. And this is a true story, and not audibly, but I hear this voice, and I can't use you at all. You're not equipped to move forward.

It was a crushing moment. But then he says something. He says, I can't use you the way that you are right now, because you think it's about you. You think it's about the plan you're going to create.

You think it's about your mental capacity, but it's not. And there's four words that still stick with me today as I've developed that plan. Those four words are this. I need a you that's willing to sacrifice your will for my will. I need a you that's willing to surrender. I need a you that's going to be dependent on me and not you. And finally, I need a you that's humble for those that humble themselves and seek his face. And that's what I needed to do.

So it's not about what I could create, what I can develop, what I can write down based on 20 years of experience in the corporate world. It was really about surrendering, sacrifice, great humility and dependency on him. I didn't like those words. Well, it's so funny, too, because that's our natural state of like, okay, what am I going to do? And God's saying, no, that's the wrong question.

The question is, what am I going to do through you? And that's what you're saying. It's a state of surrender.

That's exactly it. And here's a freeing thing. I want all parents to understand this, see, regardless of where you have a strong spiritual legacy or maybe a first generation, doesn't matter. I want you to understand this for total freedom. You can't go back and change the beginnings.

But what you can do is you can start where you are and change the ending. And I had the ending in mind. It's this vision that one day, we will all unite in the heavens. And the Lord would just, this isn't spiritual, but it's just my vision.

Give it to me for a minute, okay? And he'll come and he'll turn and he'll say, he'll bring out a welcoming committee. And imagine that welcoming committee that no one comes out. Your father, your mother, your brothers, your sisters, your children. Honestly, guys, it will still be an amazing day because you will be there with eternity with the Lord.

But now imagine that he turns and people that you had no idea comes out. But starting with your own family members, starting with your sons and your daughters and your fathers and brothers and sisters and so forth. And that day to see a welcoming committee, we call it the unity and the spirit was our aim. That became our motto. Unity and the spirit is our aim.

That we would walk here glorifying him and enjoying him forever, but that forever is not only this life but eternity. Now is that sort of the end you had in mind for your sons and daughters? Like when they're adults, I envision, I'm hoping and I'm dreaming and now I have a plan to help them get there to be what?

Say it again. What were you dreaming your kids would be as adults? We call it unity in the spirit. That we would be together for not only this life but eternity.

And we would be bound in spirit on this earth to glorify him and enjoy him forever. That's the purpose of life that that we all long for. And in order to do that, it's about a relationship.

And I wanted them to understand what this relationship was all about. It's not religion. It's not about what I do.

See, I grew up under a theology of hellfire brimstone. I thought it was about what I did and so I tried to do the right thing but guess what? You know how that turned out. Not too well. Yeah. Right? I wanted to do the right thing.

I just don't know how sometimes or sometime I do know how which is the problem. But here I am, I'm marching through what I call performance theology. It's about what I did to earn God's favor. That's religion. And I didn't want to teach my kids religion. I wanted to teach them the relationship with theology, the done theology. So God is sovereign. He's sovereign. The Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the love and the grace and so I wanted to teach them that.

That he's sovereign. That's where we started. Which is so great too because earlier we had talked about you started out with sharing your story and your wife's story of you surrendering your lives to Jesus and what that looked like.

Yes. And then you said your kids shared their stories or maybe their lack of knowing Jesus at that point and I think that's a good way to start. So then what happened as you started discipling them? Yeah we went back and I began to really kind of say now let me put this pen to paper and this vision. I cast a vision there after my story and I hear her story, cast a vision.

What that sound like? Unity in the spirit. Oh this is your unity.

Yeah. So now I had a plan in terms of framework. Twice a month we're gonna sit down around the dinner table and we're just gonna have a conversation and I wanted to build it around those three things.

You know the first year is connection. So we started at the basics. What do we believe? Why do we believe that? How are we going to incorporate that in our life? Because there's a difference between belief and behavior and a commitment. I wanted them to get to conviction and so not just commitment but what does conviction look like?

Right? Well we're living this out every day and we love it. Okay and I didn't want to force any of this on my kids because they would walk away and so it had to be you know what I call a mutual trust and a mutual vision, a mutual journey together and so I began to just lay out what do I believe? Why do I believe it? What do I really believe that's really real that I really say I want to live through is you know I just remember the Truth Project with Dr. Dale Tack and some other people. Do you really believe what you say you believe is really real?

Mm-hmm. Well what do I really believe? I believe he's sovereign. I believe that he loves us. I believe his grace is sufficient.

How do I teach that? And so I just began to look at verse after verse that he talks about his love and his grace and his mercy and that is endures forever. And we just begin to get our first four or five years we say listen every year we want to be in God's Word and so we started with the Old Testament actually we started working through Genesis all the way to Revelation. You read it as a family?

We read it as a family and we use a daily Bible so each day we have readings it was short readings typically three to four pages we started reading God's Word. At the dinner table? At the dinner table. Mmm. Together. Yeah.

So you have food. And then talking about it. Yeah.

Right? And so as we talked about it we talked, what did you hear? What does it mean to you?

How do you apply it to your life? How do we live this out as a family? How are we doing today?

What can we do better? And these kids just bought into it, right? And they were in high school? How old do you think they were?

Middle school to high school. It says a lot about you Terrence and your wife Monda that they're open to it. They're interested. It says a lot about their trust in you and they're respecting you. That you had built a relationship with them that they've probably already been watching and seeing that in your marriage in your life that this is for real. You know it's so interesting you say that because one of the challenges we had which some will consider this a good thing but basically we were an idol to our kids.

Wow. And I say that humbly but we had just a terrific, we have a terrific marriage and our kids saw that. They saw the way we loved each other.

They saw the way we were available all the time for them and we support them in anything but but we were we were becoming an idol as we later discovered like and that's not it's good on one side but it's not what we wanted to accomplish. What would you say to the family or the mom or dad that feel like I have not been doing anything our marriage has been struggling am I disqualified to be able to have this kind of discipleship with my kids at this point? You know I always say we are always disqualified but he qualifies us and so you know I want to take those handcuffs off of parents that feel inadequate. I want to take the handcuffs off the parents are saying I don't know what to do I don't even know what the right thing is. You know what the right thing is you call upon him and you say Lord I'm not qualified but you are.

Equip me where I'm short. Guys he makes up for the locust years and and all of a sudden those years that you think you haven't had bear much fruit and maybe haven't been as you know intentional in this process don't let don't get trapped there because he has in front of you years of just blessings and and we've seen it we've seen it manifest itself when we just hand it over in open arms and say Lord it's not about us it's not about what we do we're gonna say around this dinner table it's about you we're gonna hand this on remember those words dependency sacrifice surrender and great humility. I didn't like those words but he did he knows he knows way more than I do right so I just you know release it to his care. What would you say to the spouse that maybe is listening right now and going I'm in I want to do this but their spouse is like not interested. Oh man we get that all the time right so weekends right yeah they have those training and you know wives are very you know that man they're smart they bring the husband's they treat they don't even know why they come and have come out we're going to a weekend okay well we're going they end up in the workshop I didn't know I was gonna be in a workshop you know but but no we find that it is typically motivated and wives just seems to be that that more spiritually mature audience sometime but but at the end of the day what we find in our workshops are men just weeping they're weeping because they know that they have not been available responsible but again you know we want we want parents to realize that they are responsible and they need to be equipped and he will equip you create that home environment that's conducive to kids learning and and every moment is a teachable moment look for that moment right and create that environment of love a lot of oftentimes parents will say what's the secret bullet Terrence you know what's the one thing I don't have one thing but I come down and I say you know there might be one thing to teach them love well hmm love your children well and let them know that their home is an environment of love and that you know it's often said that if they see how much you care yeah right they don't want to know how much you know so what you know how much you care and so I feed off this it's kind of funny story but I realized something well my kids were younger I knew everything I was an absolute genius okay when they got into the teenage years I'm sure you guys have heard this and know this I mean you know nothing right right how do I go from knowing something to nothing and then the good news is and young adults they're coming back you begin to know a little bit yeah and then as they get older you a genius again we're not quite a genius but they're new generation when they have their own kids they realize oh I think they did know something you know much but he knew something so we created that home environment of love and care and then we moved into we just available to answer any questions and be there and you know what we don't have to be this Phi Beta Kappa or Christianity something I don't know right I don't have any answer to that well here's another one yeah you know I What if you're a dad and you haven't done this or a mom and you say, you know, let's start this. And I know you've seen this thousands of times because you train these families and your kids are like, I'm not interested.

I'm, I don't want to be a part of this. What do you say? Give them a thirst to love. Give them a thirst to love. You know, it's almost like when I, I wanted my kids to get involved in sports cause I play sports coming up and, and that was just a way I bonded with my father and so forth. He had us out in the field playing something, you know, baseball, I love baseball and you know, all that good stuff.

And, and dad was always available regardless. Right. But he gave me a thirst to love the game of baseball. He talked to me about history and you know, we were a third generation, uh, quote unquote, white Sox fan. And you know, it was a lot of pain in those in the Chicago sports arena. Well, you know, you have a little bit of that pain with us, you know, but remember we had a hundred and some years with the Cubs or, you know, the Sox a little bit better, but he gave us a thirst to love whatever he introduced to us. Right.

And in this case, baseball. And so we wanted to give our kids a thirst to love God's word. And so we looked at every moment as that teachable moment so that they can see his love and his grace. And we started, it's never too early to start. Uh, we started a little later in our life.

I mean, we had been talking to them about the, obviously they were following the Lord. We were in doing all the disciplines, church and so forth. But in terms of that intimacy, we wanted to start by showing the greatest intimacy of all, which is the love of the father.

Answer this. How important is it for the children to see mom or dad or mom and dad living out what they're teaching? Oh, here's a critical stuff. So I'm sitting there, right? I'm doing all this teaching Bible study, all this stuff, right? I'm thinking, Hey, I'm really killing it right up. I'm landing it. You know the thing that they talked about years later in terms of dad, I knew you were serious.

I see that was, what is it? We saw you worshiping in church. You never worship in church out loud.

You just stand there like, you know, frozen, chosen at some point. And then we saw you worshiping in church and we knew you were serious. Now get this. I mean, worshiping in church. Come on.

I mean, what about those Bible studies? So it's worshiping in church that they saw me alive, you know, doing that and then just rejoicing and all of a sudden, Oh, he must be serious. Right. And so I just think about those days. We think it's something really sophisticated or you know, some brilliant idea.

And the kids are just looking for that basic thing like, man, that's, that's real. He's living it out. And it must be important to him because now he's been vulnerable and I'm not one that used to be vulnerable. I used to try to keep things close to vest. You know, back when I grew up, you know, dad said, Hey, whatever happens in the family stays in the family. You know, we weren't open and plus me and it takes us a year to say our name.

Uh, anyway, so we're not as transparent. Well, um, obviously you've trained, you said over a hundred thousand families? Over a hundred thousand families.

Over a hundred thousand families. I know you have a goal. You know, we got to have a goal, but I try to stay away from the numbers there. You know, we do have a 9.2 million goal, but by 2030, we do have a, you gave me a number for 2 billion, but that's really a goal.

No, it really is. Uh, we're in a position, uh, the Lord has just opened doors, uh, despite us into place if we never thought we'd be, we just launched into Pakistan, uh, the low, it was just the fifth most persecuted country in the world. What 2020 has done, COVID 19 has done. It just took us into highways and byways and apartment buildings that we've could have never even thought about or certainly couldn't visit. And so we were able to just reach, uh, I had done some training in Dubai about a couple of years ago, and that opened the door, uh, to Pakistan and which is interesting enough.

Our three largest countries today is, um, Indonesia, India and Pakistan. Wow. Really?

We're just expanding to Saudi Arabia, uh, and some countries, you know, we've been in France and Italy and so forth, but these are places I couldn't physically visit. Yeah. But the book has taken it out there.

Our training has now multiplying and going out. But I think the bigger picture is the Lord is at work and you know, Blackaby always said, I'm a Blackaby fan. He says, listen, you find out where the Lord's working and you join him here. Right. And that's our prayer. We don't try to sell our way into some scenario. We simply say, Lord, where are you working around the family?

Invite us into that. And guess what? I'm finding the Lord's working everywhere to the end of the days. These people around the world are longing to disciple their kids as well.

They are thirsty. You know, what I'm finding is parents, they're just afraid. And you know, if we, if we fear failure, we do nothing.

Yes. Especially men. We fear failure.

We'll do nothing because we want to see, everyone wants to be affirmed regardless of who you are. They want their life to matter. They want, you need to breathe in affirmation into kid's life. And that's what we wanted to do is breathe in affirmation into kid's life through the gospel message. And in order to, I believe for transformation to take place, you must get them into God's word. You must get them into the discipline of prayer.

That's the conversation. And you have to get them into worship. It's not just one Sunday, you go 45 minutes. Let's talk about that worship service that the pastor sent 20 to 30 hours preparing, right?

And you say, you go to IHOP somewhere and never mention it again to the family. What we want to do is engage our kids at every teachable moment. And you know, we know we're all grandparents sitting in the studio, that the window to impact your kids in your home is, closing quickly. It's gone before you know it. Yeah.

Real quick. I want to mention really quickly something around that because those years are critical between the age of three and 13 years of age. Barna has said, Hey, between those ages of three and 13, kids are shaping their biblical worldview. Yeah.

Now, unless there's a traumatic experience that happens in life, that worldview would be changed. But that three to 13 age period is critical. So with that being said, we really wanted to engage our kids in that. That being said, we really wanted to plant the seed during those formidable years. Right now, you know, we're still doing our workshops, uh, every other week, eight to nine. Uh, we're diving into the year of commission. Uh, we're training parents around the world.

They can go to Victoria's I O U S, victoriousfamily.org. Start with our seven day prayer guide. We map out the seven days. Very simple. Our process is keep it simple. Yeah. Yeah.

Repetitive and consistent. And so we, we keep it simple. We don't have to create this long thing, but simple, but powerful, impactful and transformational.

And we're trying to build a transformational, sustainable generational movement, not a program. All I would add to what you said is start today. Start to don't wait till tomorrow. You can change the future right now. And I'm telling you that today's the day.

Do you now? Thanks Terrence. Thanks for being with us and for all you're doing. Well, thank you. On our website at familylifetoday.com. We've got a link to Terrence Chapman's website, Victorious Family, where you can find the resources he was just mentioning.

And I think the point is clear. What's a step you can take today, a simple step in the right direction. Maybe it's as easy as opening the Bible at the next family meal and saying, I just want to read a few verses and just let us think about these and starting to make that a practice at mealtime. Maybe it's something in relation to bedtime or at the start of the day, but these simple repeatable practices are powerful in our children's lives and in shaping our families. Terrence has written a book called, Do Your Children Believe? It's a book we've got in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can go to familylifetoday.com to find out more or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. If you'd like to order a copy. Again, our website is familylifetoday.com.

You can also call 1-800-358-6329 to get a copy of Terrence Chapman's book, Do Your Children Believe? Call 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. You know, it's hard to think, but we will be on the edge of the new year in just two weeks. Christmas is next week.

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