Building Courage in Your Family

Hi, this is Jim Daly with Focus on the Family. I want to let you know about an online experience called SeeLife 2021. In this six-episode video series, we're sharing stories and encouragement that will inspire and empower you to live out your pro-life views. You'll also discover valuable resources to help you step up and get involved in the cause.

This is a digital experience you and your family won't want to miss. All the details are at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash SeeLife. I can't help but think that God has created us with such strength and powers. He has placed His Spirit within us to live in this dark world. And the church is walking around terrified of cats when Jesus is saying, There is a lion within you that is the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now live in love and stop being driven by fear. That's Kevin Thompson, and he's our guest today on Focus on the Family. Thanks for joining us.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, here's a billboard statement. God does not want us to live in fear. Maybe that's why He tells us so often in His Word to be courageous. One of the most well-loved verses on courage comes from the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, Joshua 1-9, where God says to Joshua, Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Some of you in the audience right now are probably saying, Yeah, but Lord, you don't know my circumstance. He does.

He's got it. He knows where you're at, and He's still saying to you, Be courageous. And this world can be driven by fear. I think that should be a distinguishing mark between the Church, Jesus followers, and the world.

We should be people that are fearless and courageous. And today we're going to talk about that specifically in your home with Kevin Thompson today, and I think it's going to be a great discussion. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this, Jim.

I think there's a lot of application for many of us. And Kevin is the Married Life pastor with Bayside Church in the Sacramento area. And he and his wife, Jenny, have two children, Ella and Silas. And he regularly meets with and counsels families and couples. And he's a marriage and parenting conference speaker and has written a number of books. We're going to be talking today about fearless families building brave homes in an uncertain world.

And we've got copies of that here. Stop by Focus on the Family dot com slash broadcast or call 800 the letter A in the word family. Kevin, welcome back to Focus on the Family. Great to be back here. Thanks for having me. This is the third time. It is. You're popular.

A trifecta. But it is good to have you back. And when we've had you here, it's on marriage themes, family themes, obviously. This one is really interesting, your book, Fearless Families. Let's start with a broad question, something I've observed with us in our parenting and in our home. And it doesn't always have to be mom. It can be dad, too.

I get that. But fear, when it rises, usually control follows right behind when you're parenting, fear and control. And I think it is destructive to the relationship with your children, depending upon the age. I mean, obviously, your kids need control and at a younger age. But those teen years, if you're fearful and that control is rising in you, you've got a problem.

No. And it makes me wonder if because as soon as they hand you a baby, there are two feelings that immediately come to you. It's overwhelming love and terror. Maybe for the first time in your life, you feel a sense of fear that you didn't even realize that you had. And fear, here's what I think is an important thing about fearless families. Fear in and of itself is not a bad thing. Fear can actually be a God-given gift. Think about it.

If we were decades ago, centuries ago, if we were out on the tundra, we'd have to scan the horizon. If we saw movement in that moment, I mean, fight, flight or flee kicks in, right? We have to figure out in that moment what are we going to do. And that's a God-given protective nature.

But here's the problem. When your wife walks in and says we need to talk, fight, flight or freeze is not a good response. When your teenager misses curfew, fight, flight or freeze is not how we need to respond. And so why fear is a good thing, what fearless families is about is that far too often we have given fear the key to the car. And fear does not need to be in the driver's seat. It needs to be in the back seat where it can influence us.

It can make us aware of things that we might want to be conscious of. But ultimately, love needs to be driving who we are and what we do. And yet far too many of us, especially in the home, especially parents, have given the keys to the family to fear. And now it is leading us to places we do not want to go. And here's the main message I think of fearless families. When fear drives, it leads us to more fear.

Yeah, that's good and that's true. And it's not healthy. I mean, especially coming out of what we've come out of, the pandemic and everything, there's so much fear in the culture. We see it in our own extended families, et cetera, where there's just, you know, fear is in the driver's seat.

Probably more so right now than ever before. And you've got to recapture that, especially for Christians and get that under control. You dealt with anxiety in your own family.

I want to tap on that. I mean, people are so grateful, I think, to those who are the experts who talk about their own, you know, situations and shortcomings that they've experienced. And I appreciate that about your book. What happened in your family that is an example of where fear was in the driver's seat? Yeah, so I have two children, Ella and Silas. And they're now in middle school, junior high, up and into high school. But all throughout their elementary school years, I had the privilege of the elementary school was just a quarter of a mile down the road. And so it wasn't at 8 o'clock everybody piling the car and let's go to school.

It was literally I take you by the hand and we walk. And some of the most fun times for parenting for me was that three to four minute walk to school every morning. Well, one morning we got up pretty typical. Ella was in sixth grade. Silas was in fourth.

And everything was good. Silas wasn't at the back door when I expected him to be. I yelled at him to get there. He didn't come. So I went to search for him thinking he'd be looking for his tennis shoes or his homework or something like that. And I couldn't find him. And it kind of became a little bit more panicked until finally I found him kind of hiding in the corner and I could see by the look on his face just terror in his eyes.

And this is a straight A student. This is a very obedient child that we've never had any problems with whatsoever. But you could tell in that moment that something was wrong. And for Jenny and I, that was day one of what was really a two year journey of beginning to understand the anxiety that had long been going on in his life that had never really surfaced in a way that we could comprehend it. Looking back, we can definitely see the signs that were there. The struggle with reflux growing up.

The difficulty maybe sleeping in other places with darkness. All those things are pretty typical with childhood. But in looking back, we can now see how he was struggling with anxiety for a long time. And it wasn't probably a year later until a counselor helped us and diagnosed him with what's called school refusal. Which is very common among specifically boys around the middle school age.

Very bright. What's happening is outwardly everything looks okay. But inwardly there's a storm that is going on until one day it finally expresses itself. And the way it expresses itself with Silas was he just didn't want to go to school.

He was terrified of getting in trouble, of not keeping up with the work even though he had never experienced any of those things. And that really began the journey for us. And what I found very quickly as we went through that process was that his anxiety was changing our home. Our home, which had always been the place that we ran back to, which was fun and relaxing. Jenny and I both have stressful jobs.

We always ran home to find safety and rest. And the next thing you know is we're parenting in the midst of this anxiety. His anxiety is adding to our anxiety. And our whole home became what I ultimately called the home of the afraid. Where everything we did was an attempt to minimize or lessen the fears either of our children or ourselves.

And it simply wasn't working. And so we had to figure out what are we going to do in response to that. Yeah, and I guess the key thing there is how did you diffuse it over time?

I know you talk about the home of the afraid and the home of the brave. So how did you make that move toward kind of building into Silas an attitude of courage? That sounds daunting as a parent. You're overwhelmed. Yeah, the powerful moment for me came in this moment where Silas truly was having a really anxious moment and was being driven by it. And my wife was there and I was there and eventually Jenny looked at him and said, Silas, I know you're afraid. It's okay to be afraid. But we are not going to be ruled by your fear.

We are going to love you to the best of our ability. And right there I thought, all right, that's it. Now, it didn't solve everything in that moment. But the paradigm by which we needed to be led through this was right there in that statement. That we're going to feel fear and that's okay to feel it. But we cannot make our choices based on it. Instead, we have to do the most loving action in the moment no matter what the response is.

Even if it's scary to love in that moment, that's what we have to do knowing that love will ultimately give birth to more love, whereas fear will give birth to more fear. Then the question becomes, which one are we going to choose in the moment? Not which one are we going to feel.

It's okay to feel everything. But you can only make a choice based on one. You cannot make a choice based on love and fear at the same time. One of those are going to be in the driver's seat. We have to put love in that seat.

Well, and I think through your experience and even Silas today and how he is doing, how does a person make that choice? How do you convince yourself to allow love to be in the driver's seat and not fear? There's a lot of fearful people. And I get it. And I like the way you express that, that fear is okay. We just need to keep it in the back seat.

The question people are screaming right now is, okay, how do you do that? And one of the very first things we have to do is we have to first recognize how fear is ruling us. And once you recognize it, then you can begin to make the conscious choices of, okay, I did make that decision based on fear. What would love have looked like in that circumstance? Hoping that then the next time before you actually make the decision, you can pause in that moment and say, okay, what would love look like here? And as a family, if you go through this as a family, as a Sunday school class, as a small group, you can begin to hold each other accountable and to call people out over lunch if you're there with your spouse to say, okay, is that decision based on fear or is it based on love? And what would love do in this circumstance?

And then it literally becomes a lens by which you view everything. And it's not just the family. It's the workplace. It's the church.

It's the community. Imagine what this country would have been like if over the last year, the number one question on our minds would have been, what's the most loving thing for me to do rather than being driven by fear? Yeah, boy, that's great to contemplate that. And in all seriousness, that is wisdom doing that.

And that's great. Your grandmother taught you some wonderful lessons, I'm sure, like all grandparents do. But one particular one that fits with this is her observation of giving and receiving. What happened with her?

It's the difficulty of love that I think often we don't think about. So my grandmother, I've talked about him I think every time I've been here, by the way, is my grandparents. That's how influential they were in my lives. But my grandmother was 90. She was dying of cancer.

She had lived 10 years longer than the lifespan, and yet she was dying 10 years shorter than what she thought she was going to. And I'm in the hospital with her, and one day everybody else leaves, so it's just me and her. And she says, Kevin, this is so hard. And I'm like, I know, and dying is difficult. And she goes, no, it's not the dying. She said, it's having all these nurses wait on me.

That's so difficult. Well, I mean, she was born in 1922, right? And her entire life she had served. That's all she had ever done.

She was the workhorse in every way. And yet what she probably really always struggled with her entire life was actually receiving love. She could love with the best of them, but to actually receive love.

You know, if I had to describe our church just into two basic concepts of what we're trying to do, we're trying to learn how to be loved and to love, to be loved by God and to love him in return, to love one another and to be loved in return. That was really what my grandmother was struggling with, having been a Christian for 80 years. She was struggling in that moment to actually receive love. Well, that sounds a bit like humility, right? That is part of humility, being able to receive those things. Yeah, I was going to ask, is that a pride issue that says I'm fine?

I absolutely think it can be. I think it's an issue within all of us. Love requires vulnerability, and to receive that is a scary thing, and that's just an example of how fear is driving us. If you and I cannot receive love, it's because we're afraid. Kevin, you make the case in the book that fearless families keep up appearances.

Boy, I can make that connection. You then say fearless families honor the truth, and that's rooted in integrity. So in this context, what does integrity look like, and how do you get there?

Yeah, I think the great temptation for us is we want to fake it till we'll make it. And so we think we're going to project an outward righteousness. I mean, this goes all the way back to the Pharisees.

It goes all the way back into Old Testament law. That's right. It's the heart of man.

No, that's exactly right. So we are going to project a persona of having it all together, of strength, of power. That goes all the way back in part to the idea of survival of the fittest.

Let's face it, what society says is you don't show a limp if you're among the herd because you're going to be the weakest link and you're going to get attacked. And we have wedded that into our Christian thought to where now we Christianize it and we project a Christian persona not really caring what the truth actually is, honestly believing if we can fake it till we make it, then one day we'll have our heart right. That is a dangerous way to do church.

It is a dangerous way to do marriage, to do parenting, to do family. Would you say, can I ask though, you know, this is a journey of sanctification and you can rest there and that's the problem. You don't want to settle for spiritual mediocrity, right? You don't want to just be okay. You want to be improving in your relationship with the Lord and therefore seeing it in your own behavior in a steady, progressive, positive way in your relationship with Christ, right?

No, absolutely, but the key to that is truth. Right. Here's the difference between what we're talking about. So whenever I talk about, in the book I contrast the home of the afraid with the home of the brave. So the home of the afraid is driven by fear and as fear drives you, we then build and lean on these very natural tools that we think will lessen that fear. And I think about back in second grade whenever the teacher would say draw a house, it would be a very simple stick figure house.

There would be a floor, there would be a roof, there would be two walls. That's what I think of. So the home of the afraid is built on the foundation now of safety. We've taken a good thing, safety, is it going to be safe for us? That's a good thing, but we've idolized it.

We made it a God thing. And now we are chasing after something that we cannot fully control. Drive as slowly as you want to drive. That does not guarantee that you won't be in the car wreck. Eat as healthy as you want to eat.

That does not guarantee that you won't have diabetes. Now, we can choose to do those things and it can lessen our possibility, but it doesn't guarantee it. And we have taken safety, which is a good thing, and now idolized it to make it the foundation upon which the modern home is built. And even the modern church is built. Think about this. How many times did Jesus ever say, is it safe? Can't think of one.

He never did. Now, that doesn't mean he's asking us to do foolish things, but safety is not the ultimate thing for God. Instead, the home of the brave, now driven by love, is built on a different foundation. While safety is considered, it's built on the foundation of trust. Trust in God, his love for us, his sovereign control over our lives, and then abutting trust in one another. We're learning what it means to be trustworthy, which means this concept of integrity is so important. I have to make sure that Jenny has a right to trust me.

She has to make sure that she has a right for me to trust her. But it's a different way that we're operating out of life. And so that home of the afraid and the home of the brave, it's built on the foundation of either safety or trust, and then it's underneath a roof of appearance. When fear drives us, we find safety in appearances. We're not going to really let people know about that addiction. We're not going to let them know about that grief, about that struggle. We're going to pretend as though we have it all together out of fear of thinking if they find out, they might use that against us. They might manipulate us.

They might look down on us in some way. But when love drives us, instead of using the roof of appearances, we now live underneath the roof of the heart. The writer of Proverbs will say, above all else, guard your heart. Keep your heart. It's like the Father now saying to the Son, the most important thing in life is going to be your heart. When you and I in marriage, when in parenting, in church, in life, when we put our hearts fully on the table and say, okay, here's who we are, now God change us, transform us, miraculous things begin to occur. But for as long as you and I are living with a façade, God's not going to change that. Yeah, I mean, that is well said. That's so true. Kevin, many people collect things or possessions and use that.

I think they make themselves feel better, obviously. I appreciate a toaster. I don't know about you, John, but I like my toast toasted. So there are things, conveniences in this modern world that are great that I don't think twice about replacing, whether that's the coffee machine, the toaster, the dishwasher.

Those are all pretty good things. Where does that cross a line in materialism where we as the Christian community need to recognize that we're medicating through the acquiring of stuff? Exactly. So the home of the afraid is built on two walls. So it's the foundation of safety under the roof of appearances and the two walls that we tend to lean on to lessen our fears are that of materialism and power. And the reality is that fear now drives us to do these two things, whereas love would say we need the walls now of relationship and submission. So the contrast here of materialism is we are going to relate to something. We are created to connect with other people.

Now, created in the image of God ultimately to connect with him, and yet when sin entered the world, relationships became dangerous. Suddenly, this person that I'm supposed to connect with could hurt me, could injure me, could kill me. And so we still have this basic need to connect with things outside of ourselves, and yet the thing that we're supposed to connect with is a danger, so we turn to material things because a new car does not hurt my feelings, a nice golf club.

Ooh, now you're hurting me. Does not now in any way threaten me. A new house does not create vulnerability within me. And not only that, material things, what does it do? It adds to our appearances. Let's hit a little more in depth on the other wall, that idea of power, craving power, that seems to be kind of at the root of so much of the ills that human beings face. Speak to that and define it. Yeah, and power now contrasting with submission. And I understand the difficulty of that word submission in our society. We're living in a time right now where many of our past ills and failures are coming to light, and rightfully so, and how especially in the Christian world, people have used this submission to hold people down and to do ungodly things, and yet the basic concept is still alive. Ultimately, we all need to submit to God first and foremost, and then we're learning how to submit to one another in workplaces, in leadership, in marriage, in family, my kids all the time. I submit to my kids all the time. Now, let me ask you, because some people, you're right. They have a very dark sense of what submission is. Speak to them directly. I mean, when you talk about submitting to your kids, what? Are you kidding, Kevin? That's backwards.

That's upside down. Those are going to be permissive children. They're going to walk all over you. What do you mean by that kind of biblical submission in a way of leadership, really? Yeah, apart from love, submission makes no sense whatsoever. So in a sin-filled world apart from Jesus without grace, you should never submit to anything.

You should grab hold to as much power as you possibly can, because if you don't, somebody else will take it from you, and then they will use it against you. But when we believe in Jesus and we begin to submit ourselves to his sovereign control, to his plan over our lives, to the idea that the way of love is better than the way of fear, then the next thing you know, whoever wants to find his life must lose it. Suddenly, it's husbands, wives submit to one another, respect and love one another. It is even this concept of we have some basic house rules around our house that if I violate them, my child gets to call me out on that rule, and I have to submit to them in that moment, because there is a higher authority that I report to. I'm not in charge of this house. God is. If my child wants to call me out that I'm disobeying God, he has that right in that moment.

I have to submit in love to what's going on. But we live in such a dangerous world that we honestly believe that if we don't have the control, and maybe that's a better word. Maybe that's a better word for a lot of people, that power. We don't see power. We think we don't have any power. The government has power. My boss has power.

I don't have any power. Yeah, but what about control? And we think that as long as we control our lives, that we know we won't do it perfectly, we think that we will do it better than anybody else can, and that will at least minimize or negate some of our fears. But the reality is the more we try to grasp hold of control, the more terrified we're going to become. Power leads to paranoia. I mean, that's the long history of humanity. I'm thinking in the context of parenting, parenting teenagers.

I mean, you try control, and you're going to end up with distant kids, and they're going to go in a direction you don't want to go. One of my favorite stories to really put this into perspective is consider Christmas. So a young couple grows up, they get married, and now they're going to have their first holiday season together. So they come up with a plan of how they're going to do that. They're going to spend Thanksgiving at her place and Christmas at his, and the next year they're going to flip.

And so it's a great plan in that moment. But along the way, at some point, the wife thinks to herself, you know, one day we're going to have kids, and eventually I'm going to want them to spend Christmas morning at our house where they're growing up. And the husband and wife talk about that. They're like, oh, okay, that'll be great. Well, the kids come along, and they're starting to get to that time, and the wife's bringing it up, and the husband's like, okay. And so finally they hit the year that this is the year. Man, my kids are old enough, they're five, they're six. I want them to have these memories, but this is the year they're supposed to go to his parents for Christmas. And so all year long, she's saying, hey, call your mom. Let her know that this is the year. And so he finally calls his mom, and his mom in that moment says, well, think about it. His mom in that moment, how should the conversation go? It should be, oh, I'm so disappointed, but I understand.

New traditions can be formed. We'll find a better time. You need to do what's right. If you put your wife on the phone, I want to encourage her, thank her for taking care of my grandchildren.

No, no, no, no. Let's move to control and manipulation. How does that conversation go? How could you hurt us like that? This could be Grandma's last Christmas. You think about in that moment, what the mom is thinking in that moment is, if I don't control this right, Christmas isn't going to be everything that Christmas can be. And fear now tempts her to use power to manipulate with the intention of it's going to be for everybody's best. But in reality, it fractures the family. Love would be such a better way. And you're answering that question that really ultimately is, what is the better way? And you've said it repeatedly here today.

And this has been so good, Kevin. I hope people can really grab on to living life in a different way so that it brings them peace, right? This is the shalom we talk about, rather than chaos. And when you're living in fear and control and those other things, living in sin really, your life's going to be chaotic. Your relationships are going to be chaotic, starting with your spouse and then your kids and then you keep moving. And I so appreciate what you've done here in Fearless Families to draw out these perspectives that really help you mature in your faith in Christ, which is your goal, I know. And we don't do it perfectly, but what a great roadmap you have created here for others. Is there anything, is that last question, is there anything you would add to that parent, that spouse that's listening right now?

It's you, maybe. And you're saying, you guys are talking exactly where I live right now. What are the one, two or three things they could do to lasso, if I can use that imagery, to get a grip on that fear and become a brave household and not a fearful household? Fear is going to tempt you to feel guilty about it and do nothing about it. Love is going to drive you to action. And the simple action is this. Maybe it's the book, maybe you just rewatch this interview, but you get in your head the concept of I'm going to start diagnosing fear and replacing it with love, and I'm going to have somebody else hold me accountable to that, and together we are going to grow into that understanding.

Consider, two of the most often repeated phrases of Jesus in the New Testament are fear not, love one another. Let's do that. Man, that is a great admonition. Thank you, Kevin, for being with us.

It's been great. Get a copy of Fearless Families from us here at Focus on the Family. Of course, when you do, it helps us to do ministry. So you get a twofer, right? You're getting some great content and a resource to help you, and then you're also helping other families. So you can do that either through becoming a monthly sustainer here at Focus on the Family. John and I do that with our wives, and it really works.

It helps us balance our budget throughout the year. Or a one-time gift, if you can't make a monthly commitment, we get that. But a one-time gift is great, and we'll send you a copy of Kevin's book, Fearless Families, as our way of saying thank you. Get in touch today. Donate as you can and request that book by Kevin. And I might add, Jim, we have some really terrific, caring Christian counselors here, and it may be that as a listener you need to talk to someone and kind of unpack where you're at right now in your journey.

If so, let us know. We'll schedule a consultation. It's free, and they'll direct you to other helpful resources as well. It all begins with a phone call to 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459, or stop by focusonthefamily.com slash broadcast. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back, as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. Hey, this is John Fuller, and Focus on the Family is looking for talented writers and editors to help produce our audio programs and podcasts. Go to focusonthefamily.com slash about slash careers to learn more about these and other job opportunities here at Focus.