Presidents’ Day: The Naughty & Nice List

Your marriage should tell the story of the gospel — but irritation and busyness often drag it off course, especially once you have kids. The panel talks about practical ways to cultivate friendship and affection with your wife (both physically and emotionally)…fostering oneness and guarding intimacy…and maintaining margin for each other without neglecting work and children.

What actually produces embittered homeschooled kids? This conversation examines the patterns that provoke children to wrath — control without relationship, structure without vision, and homes disconnected from church and community. Kevin and Danny call families back to a God-centered model of education rooted in Scripture and relational discipleship.

If you don't believe the right gospel, you're going to hell. So what is the gospel? Kevin and Josh talk about the key elements that Scripture spells out — and ask why one of the chief ones is so often omitted and ignored in the modern church. There is something extremely wrong with the typical summary that "Jesus died for our sins," and this is reflected in the deep sickness that is killing evangelicalism.

Kevin and Bill talk about the patterns of our cultural disintegration, and how they are reflected in the changes to the half-time show over the past 60 years. Events like these incrementally adjust worldviews by pushing the envelope of what people feel is acceptable to society. But how should we engage with those who think it was just a celebration of diversity? How do we avoid groupthink, and point out that the emperor has no clothes? Multiculturalism is meant for a pass on bad morality, but not for us.

Both negative and positive examples are important in Scripture: bad guys are a warning, and good guys are a model. Kevin discusses his top five best and worst US presidents…the seven criteria for judging whether they were good or bad…the pattern to why righteous or unrighteous presidents appear at certain times…why Abraham Lincoln doesn't make either list…and which president was the worst in US history.

The panel discusses the classic concern: how could any child become socially and relationally mature without attending a state school? But what is socialization, defined biblically? And does state school actually teach it? The dads share practical methods for ensuring kids don't become isolated and introverted…how they trained their kids to interact with adults and unbelievers…and five simple questions to make kids great conversationalists.

Kevin talks with Israel and Brook Wayne about the most common parenting challenges facing homeschoolers. They discuss, "I don' t like my kids and they don't like me!" — plus, how to take clashes between tweener sons and their moms and transform these into enduring mother/son relationships…tips for turning disobedience from littles into love and respect…and why the Waynes chose Generations for their Raising Them Up Podcast, rather than a more mainstream Christian platform.

Fear has gripped the modern world — and in recent years, it gripped the church as well. Scripture draws a sharp distinction between the fear of man and the fear of the Lord, and it does not treat cowardice lightly. What does true biblical courage look like in an age of intimidation and uncertainty? We explore how the gospel frees believers from the fear of death and calls them to lion-hearted faith

The highest ethic for many Americans is niceness…so Hillary Clinton is upset about MAGA's "war against empathy." But should the magistrate empathize with those who break the law, or should he punish them? And why is it always certain people we have to empathize with — the mother, but not the aborted baby? The protesters, but not the ICE agents? Kevin and Bill discuss how empathy untethered from God's law leads to hypocrisy and tyranny.

With rising tyranny leading to the worst persecution of Christianity in history, Kevin speaks to Jacob Tanner, author of Resist Tyranny, Obey God: Lessons from the Life and Times of John Knox. They discuss how nations, not just families or churches, are in covenant with God and must obey him…how in desperate times, ordinary ministry becomes extraordinary…what it means that "resistance to tyranny is obedience to God"…and how we are to do this.