Exclusive Content:

3 Ways to Fight for Your Marriage When You’re Tempted to Throw in the Towel

"People were placing bets at our wedding. Nobody thought we had a chance."

How to Deal With a Lying Husband and Get a Better Marriage

"I can still remember vividly the look on my husband’s face as regretful tears fell and he lay broken before me."

One Year After “I Do,” Husband Realizes Why Marriage Isn’t for Him

They met when they were 15 and were best friends for 10 years—but after being married just 1 year, the truth hit him HARD.

7 Ways Parents Push Their Kids Away from God Without Knowing It

When the ultimate goal is to make sure our children never experience the evils of the world, we not only do them an injustice socially, we rob them of seeing the gospel’s transformative power.

As a parent, your goal should not be to teach your kids how to flee from evil. Your goal should be to show them how to engage it. For the glory of God. In those spaces, they will see the gospel. And it will become real.

5. They need to see God as more than rules and church attendance.

Every decision, every thought, and every action comes down to this: in whom do I place my trust?Kara Powell

Looking back on my childhood, this was the most important factor in my faith as I transitioned into college. I needed to see that my parents trusted the promises of God. I needed to see that my parents made decisions as though God was real and alive, not a set of rules or a list of “do’s and don’ts.” I got that from my mom. Not so much from my dad.

And until God surrounded me with men who modeled an unwavering trust in Him, I thought following Jesus was just a piece of the puzzle.

Parents, especially fathers, never underestimate the impact of your decisions on your children. They need to see you trust God with your time and money. They need to see you approach your job as a mission field. They need to see you love people well. All people. They need to see you trust the promises of God in Scripture. All of these things will help prevent your child from turning away from God.

If you boil Christian living down to church attendance and morality, your children will notice. And who wants to follow a God who is nothing more than rules and showing up to a building? I sure don’t.

Kelsey Straeter
Kelsey Straeter
Kelsey is an editor at Outreach. She’s passionate about fear fighting, freedom writing, and the pursuit of excellence in the name of crucifying perfectionism. Glitter is her favorite color, 2nd only to pink, and 3rd only to pink glitter.

3 Ways to Fight for Your Marriage When You’re Tempted to Throw in the Towel

"People were placing bets at our wedding. Nobody thought we had a chance."

How to Deal With a Lying Husband and Get a Better Marriage

"I can still remember vividly the look on my husband’s face as regretful tears fell and he lay broken before me."

One Year After “I Do,” Husband Realizes Why Marriage Isn’t for Him

They met when they were 15 and were best friends for 10 years—but after being married just 1 year, the truth hit him HARD.