Praying for Nashville

Africa needs Jesus. Give a radio and give hope. Many parts of Africa do not have the means of connecting to the Internet, so join with the Truth Network and Transworld Radio to put the Word of God straight into the hands of those most in need in Africa. Visit truthnetwork.com and click on the Africa Needs Jesus banner, or call 888-988-5656 to pledge your gift to put a wind-up radio into the grateful hands of people desperately in need. This is the Truth Network. Praying for Nashville, six tragic deaths, a brutal murder and the death of the perpetrator as well. Law enforcement's been there. The whole country is swirling. The left is attacking and mocking people that are talking about prayer.

The right is getting too angry about Second Amendment rights. In the middle of it, my friend Terrence Chapman, who is trying to preach the message of a victorious family. Your heart is broken, Brother Terrence. Man, you're an author. You're a preacher. You're the victorious family academy. You've got so much going on. Tell us, just share with us just kind of some raw reaction to what happened in Nashville just this week.

Oh, my friend, thank you so much for having me on. Honestly, I can't even begin to speculate what was going on in the life of Audrey Hale, but I do know that we all mourn for the families today across this nation. We mourn for not only those who were victims, but we also mourn for the family of the shooter. And as we go through this pain, we have to remember that we are living in a nation that looks a lot different than the one we grew up in. We see moral and spiritual decay. You know, we're shouting this from the mountaintops and people are saying, you know, just be quiet, be quiet. But today we're seeing acts like this upon children, innocent children, innocent families.

And it just pains me. It really grabs me at my core because one of the things I want to see is strong, healthy, flourishing families. And so somewhere, somewhere down the road, not knowing where, not trying to place any blame anywhere, I think we have to deal with the real issue.

Because I think we've been dealing with symptoms of the issue far too long, we need to start to deal with the real issue here, which I believe is spiritual moral decay in our nation. And our churches are becoming just a shadow of what they used to be, our parenting. Parents feel inadequate to deal with mental, physical and emotional issues of the day.

In fact, latest survey out that 83% of parents feel totally inadequate to raise their children in the Lord and to disciple them and to share their faith with them. And so, you know, we are abdicating our growth of our children to technology, to schools, to churches, outsiders, if you will. And that has to begin to come back into the home, no longer can we abdicate this responsibility to others, or to technology, we must be the parents that we are called to be equipped and responsible.

So where all of this is getting us, I believe what you're seeing acted out is what is all leading to. It kind of reminds me of Judges 2.10, that just one nation after Joshua passed away, an entire people fell away and stopped worshipping the Lord and stopped practicing the standards that he had put in place. In Victoria's family, we want to equip a generation to reach a generation still, because we live in this world that's different. We live in a world that single-parent households have taken over. We live in a world where God is minimized. We live in a world that less than 10% of families are praying together. We live in a world with less than 6% of a world view, biblical world view. We live in a world when we look at our college teens and our young adults with a 2% biblical world view.

In other words, how we process things and think about things, and as this young man or woman, I'm not even sure, but I would just call her a person that was battling. Where's the parenting in this process? I know these parents are hurting as well. Maybe we take it from the point that children need to be heard.

They need to be connected. This person was reaching out. They wanted to be heard. They sent a message before this heinous act. Maybe that's it, but at the end of the day, I will just leave it as a quote from R.C.

Sproul. He says, no one can be victorious in the battle without being in the battle. In your family's spiritual battle, life battle, what are we defending right now? What are we putting forth in our families right now that will bring forth strong, healthy, flourishing families?

That is my passion. That's my cry out today because I can't speculate, and I don't want to speculate what was in the mindset of that individual that took lives that day. But what I can say is that something must change, and it must start to change now.

That's right in our own families, and that's what you're encouraging with your Victorious Family Ministries, Victorious Family Academy, doing a big event in April at Coca-Cola, navigating a discipleship plan for your family. These shooters, they were someone's child at one time. What is Terrence's message to parents right now?

They can't control, obviously, what has happened. That's one of the most painful parts of this. You feel helpless.

You feel like these precious little ones who are one little girl rushing to pull the fire alarm to try to save more kids and gun down viciously in cold blood. So while we can't control that, give us some quick tangibles as we wrap up here, ways, Terrence Chapman with Victorious Families, what's some of the biggest ways we can engage our families right now? Like those listening that are going to go home to their precious ones tonight or their grandbabies, what can they do?

Give us a quick practical, and then give us a good shout out for your website. Well, I know if the parents are anything like me, they went home and they hugged their child that day because, you know, it's no longer a guarantee that we send our kids off to school and they're going to come back home. And so today is the day that we have to go and hug our child. You know, when I think about kindergartens and first graders, some of the things we teach parents is think about, do they have your attention? Because at that age, they're trying to have your attention because they want to capture, you want to capture their heart and they want to capture your heart. If they're in second and third grade in that phase, kids are asking the question, do I have what it takes? They're looking for affirmation.

Think about those words of affirmation for your child. If they're in the fourth and fifth grade, they're asking the question, do I have friends? You know, they want to be, they want to have community.

Community is important. They've been away from community for two years. They want to know, do I have friends? Are they real friends? Can I trust those friends? We all have a situation where we trusted someone in a relationship and it failed us.

It was broken. You know, these kids have broken relationships or no relationships or artificial relationships and they're asking the questions, do I have friends? You know, when they get a little bit older in high school, they're not asking any questions at all. And so we've got to begin to shape their biblical world view between the ages of three and fourteen years of age. And what Victoria's Family does is prepare parents to disciple their kids. No longer applicating that to the church or to schools or camps. We must be the primary disciple of our children.

Now, let me be clear. I'm an elder in the church, so I, the church must be healthy as well. But the church can no longer be the primary source. It must be the secondary source in the sense that parents must start it in the home and be supported by the church. And we want to help parents and prepare them for the task that they have been given, which is to bring up. I quote Ephesians 6, 4, fathers don't exaggerate your children, really speaking to parents, but it says, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

That's family discipleship. We must be intentional. We must get into the battle. And so we do that and I would hope people join us. No, we want to.

Tell us the name of your, well, tell us the name of the website. Listeners, you can learn more about your upcoming events and get your books and plug in to become intentional about really discipling the next generation. Yeah, absolutely.

Very critical. I believe the next great movement of God is going to take place through the family. And so therefore, go to victoriousfamily.org slash take the next step. And on April 19th at the World of Coca-Cola, we're bringing thought leaders in from the family, from the faith base, from education and also from the marketplace, from the business group. And we're going to sit there and we're going to talk about some real life issues and how we can address these issues and how can we come together. Because I believe back in the old day, we knew it took a community to raise a family, took a village. And I believe we've got to come back and bring all fears of influence to have impact on these issues that we're hearing about today. No longer can we be isolated in this approach. We've got to come together as a community. Maybe one day we'll say it takes a family to raise a village.

Wouldn't that be nice? Because we're returning to Christ's commandment to disciple our kids and equip them and build them up. Terrence Chapman, what a blessing. Thank you for visiting with us. Everyone go to that website and get involved in his ministry. Support him. And we're excited. We're open to hear more from you too, my friend, on this show. And we'll make this into a podcast as well. God bless you.