Recognizing the Truth

Dannah Gresh: Elizabeth Urbanowicz says parents, grandparents, and teachers have some important things to pass on to the next generation.

Elizabeth Urbanowicz: We want to help our kids see that God’s Word claims to be true, and we are going to build our lives upon it. And even when we look at God’s world, we see that God’s world is consistently lined up with God’s Word.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, for September 17, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Our theme this month is all about fortitude, endurance, staying strong even when it’s hard. Do children need to learn to stand strong too? Absolutely! I think the heart of any mom or dad who loves the Lord resonates with the apostle John who wrote, “I have no greater joy than this: to hear that my children are walking in truth” (2 John 1:4).

Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, we all long to see the next generation embrace and own and live out the gospel in their lives. Our guest today shares that burden.

Elizabeth Urbanowicz is an author and the founder and C.E.O. of Foundation Worldview. She’s passionate about equipping young people to understand the truth of the Christian worldview. In fact, she’ll be speaking to the teens in the teen track at True Woman ’25 in just a couple of weeks.

Not long ago Elizabeth spoke with Dannah about how we can help kids get a better grasp of the truth of God’s Word. Here’s Dannah with some more introduction.

Dannah: I am beyond excited about my guest today! Got an email just a few weeks ago from Nancy that said, “Would you consider interviewing Elizabeth Urbanowicz?” And that is not your everyday name, friends. You don’t hear the name Urbanowicz every day. I know that name! It’s a blast from my past.

When I was revising my first book, And the Bride Wore White, almost a decade ago, Elizabeth wrote to me and shared some things that were on her heart about the topic of sexuality and purity. And I have had her on my radar ever since.

She’s a rising star. The founder of Foundation Worldview, a ministry that . . . listen to this: “fortifies a child’s faith for the future.” (Don’t we need to be doing that right now?) She was an elementary school teacher at a Christian school, but then she saw something that burdened her, and she’s doing something about it.

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Oh, thank you so much for having me on, Dannah. It’s so exciting for me to be on with you.

Dannah: I’ll tell you, I interview a lot of really special people, and I’m really excited about them, but I have a special warmth in my heart for you as I’ve watched you grow and emerge into a leader and a really important voice in our culture, and right now you are working on some content for our children that I believe is just so important.

What did you see in the classroom that caused you to leave a career that I imagine you’d dreamed about for a really long time—elementary education teacher—to start Foundation Worldview? What did you see?

Elizabeth: Yes! Well, as you mentioned, I started off my professional career as an elementary educator in a Christian school, and I just loved getting to teach my students the whole truth. That was the beauty of teaching in a Christian school.

But I was really confused after my first few years there because I saw that my students came from these great Christian homes where their parents were intentional at discipleship. They were under my tutelage for seven-plus hours a day, and I’m passionate about God and His Word, so I was giving them a biblically-based education. And most of them were fairly involved with a local church. But when it came to actually translating the things that they were taught in Scripture into everyday-life situations, I saw that there was just huge gaps in their ability to do this.

Just a few examples come to mind. Like, one afternoon after recess, two little girls came in. They were like, “Miss U.” . . . cause Urbanowicz is a hard name.

Dannah: (Laughing) Yes!

Elizabeth: They call me Miss U. And they said, “Miss U., we did a dance at recess. Can we show it to you?”

And I was, like, “Sure.”

So they show me this little dance they did to a Taylor Swift song. And afterwards, I was, like, “I’m so proud of you for using the creativity that God has given you. But I want you to think for a minute about the words to the song that you just sang.”

I said, “This year in Bible class, how did we learn that God created all humans?”

And they knew right away. They said, “In His image.”

I said, “Yes.” Then I said, “Now think about the words that Taylor Swift was saying and how she was talking about the boy in that song. Was she talking about him like he was created in God’s image?”

And they just kind of, like, look at one another, and they’re, like, “No! But she’s a Christian.”

And I was, like, “Whoa! Wait a minute! Let’s talk about this for a second.”

They were trained to know Genesis 1:27, that God created humans in His image, but then when it came to the media they were allowing themselves to ingest and to speak into their lives . . . they didn’t have any filter.

Then another time . . .

Dannah: First, let me say this before you go to the next one: You just stepped on some people’s holy ground. Right?

There are Swifties the world over that are super excited about everything happening in that woman’s life, but this is what I want to say about music lyrics in general: There is incredible research and data, even if you take the worldview issue off the plate, that says that if your daughter is dialing into secular music on a regular basis, and that’s the download drip of the music content that she gets, that we can really actually track and trace those to issues like body-image, anger, and violence.

And yet we’re kind of like that frog in a pot of boiling water. I mean, let’s say this about Taylor Swift, she can write a song.

Elizabeth: She can.

Dannah: The lyrics are catchy. The tunes are phenomenal. But we want to be practical today.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Dannah: So we’re going to talk about the real names, the real things, because our kids are believing lies because of what they’re dwelling on and ingesting.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Dannah: We’re not talking about public school kids here. You were teaching in a Christian school. I’m the founder of a Christian High School. I love Christian education. But today is a wake-up call for us as Christian educators, too.

All right. Example number two. Go. (I just had to say that ‘cause you stepped on toes already.)

Elizabeth: Yes. But I think what you’re hitting on there is so important. What we’re allowing our kids to soak in is so vital. But then, also, how are we preparing them? Because even if someone is listening who’s a mom or a grandma who doesn’t let their children engage with Taylor Swift music, their kids are still going to hear it as they’re walking around school.

Dannah: Right.

Elizabeth: They’re still going to hear it as they’re at a friend’s house or as they’re at the playground. So what are we doing? First, are we making sure our kids aren’t soaking in these things? But then, what are we doing to make sure that our kids are prepared to evaluate these things so that any time they are exposed to them, they’re not absorbing it, or they’re not drawn to it, but they’re actually critically evaluating it?

And this goes into my second example. Another day I was teaching. I was using technology. I was using a smart board, and my projector went on the fritz. So I had learned that before you call the tech guy, you just try and figure it out on your own cause it might be a simple solution. So I just gave my students an assignment to do, and I quick hopped up on a desk and was fiddling around with the wires on the projector. And as I was up there, I heard one of my students say, “Guys, this is kind of stressful. I think we should meditate to stay calm.”

Now, I am not a good person with height, and I was up on top of a desk. So I had to steady myself. And by the time I steadied myself to look down, half of my class was on the floor with their legs criss-crossed, their arms out in an Eastern meditation stance. And I was, like, “Whoa!” I get down off the desk, and I’m like, “Everybody back in your seats. We need to talk about what just happened. What were you guys doing?”

And they were like, “Well, we were meditating.”

And I  said, “Okay, let’s think about that. What were you trying to do with your mind?”

They said, “You know, have nothing in them.”

And I was like, “This is not the type of meditation that God’s Word talks about. Where did you learn this?”

There were just blank stares. Eventually it came out in different shows that they had learned this on. I thought, Okay, I am passionately teaching God’s Word every day to children who are growing up in Christian homes, but there’s some kind of disconnect.

Dannah: Yes.

Elizabeth: So as I started diving into more research, I just learned with the amount of information that our children are presented with—even if we’re very careful to limit screen time and what our kids are exposed to—in one year of their lives, they’re going to be exposed to more competing ideas than most humans throughout history have been exposed to in their entire lives.

And so what we need to do is actually train them how to ask some key questions so that whenever they hear an idea, whether it’s out on a playground or in a textbook or on a TikTok video or on a YouTube video or on Disney Plus, they’re equipped to ask themselves, “Wait a minute. What did I just hear? Is what I just heard true? Or is it not true? How do I know? How does this compare with what God’s Word has revealed is true?”

So it was seeing this need in my students that really set me out on a journey. I was, like, “Okay, where are the materials that are going to help me teach my students to think this way?” And everything that I could find, after scouring the internet for days and weeks, was created for kids who were in high school on up. I was so grateful there was material existing because it’s so necessary. We need to teach our high schoolers and our young adults how to think well.

But I thought, If these eight and nine-year-olds in my class are having trouble with this now and we wait until they’re sixteen years old to train them how to think well, we have just lost seven or eight years of really important ground.

So that was just the beginning of my journey that led me to start creating resources to help other Christian parents and educators and church leaders equipping our children to think carefully.

Dannah: Okay, a couple of things: I’m so excited. I feel like I’ve been saying these things for a really long time. I’ve been beating the drum, and I’m like, “There’s another drummer! Praise the Lord! There’s another drummer!”

I want to say that when you say most of the worldview stuff was for high school and college-age type curriculums, the research really does indicate that so much of our worldview is baked by the time we’re thirteen or fourteen. Now, that doesn’t mean the Lord can’t intervene.

Elizabeth: That’s right.

Dannah: That doesn’t mean we can’t come to know Christ and have a radical difference in our worldview, but for the most part, most of us die believing what we’ve believed by our teen years. I kind of think of it as bookshelves. We have bookshelves of what we believe, and all the bookshelves are labeled. Like: Jesus is the Son of God, or Jesus died for me.

We don’t maybe have all the volumes of what we believe about that on the bookshelves yet, but the bookshelves are there and they’re labeled. And the research really does indicate that that’s true—secular research. So you are filling the gap of getting that truth in there before all those bookshelves are labeled, so to speak, through your ministry.

Elizabeth: I think that’s a great analogy. I love that bookshelf analogy.

Dannah: Let’s go back to the word you used, the word “soaked,” when we were talking about the first story, what girls are soaking in, the music content. And then you used the word “meditate” for your second illustration. And when I think about those words, I think of the word “dwell.”

The Scriptures tell us in so many different places to be careful of what we dwell on. And not only that, like Psalm 91 says, “Because you’ve made the Lord your dwelling place . . . ” That’s what we’re supposed to be dwelling on: Christ, the gospel, the Word, God Most High. ”Because you’ve made the Lord your dwelling place, no evil will befall you, no plague come near your tent” (vv. 9–10).

What are the plagues that are coming near our kids? What is the evil that is befalling our children because we’re allowing them to think like the culture instead of like Christ?

Elizabeth: Yes. Well, that’s a really important question for us to think through. I think there’s so many answers to that question. But one that I see as absolutely foundational is a concept that we frequently don’t talk about with our children because it is everywhere assumed in Scripture, but it’s something that our culture is just undermining.

And that is the concept of truth. Because if we actually have our children dwelling on God’s Word, which is what we need to have them doing, but they subtly believe the lie everywhere assumed in culture that truth changes from person to person, then they’re not going to understand that. This foundation upon which we’re trying, attempting to build their whole lives, is actually the truth for everyone.

Several years ago I moved from just outside of Chicago to a southern state. When I was getting to know different women at my new church, I went for a walk with one woman, and she was, like, “I’m kind of confused about what you do. Can you explain to me what you do?”

I explained to her what I did, and she said, “Oh, that’s so great. I’m so happy somebody is out there doing that.” Then she said, “You know what? My kids really don’t need that because we’re really involved in the church, and my teenage boys are involved in Bible studies, and we do family devotions.”

And I was, like, “I am so happy to hear that you do all these things. You’re doing the exact right things like being involved in the local church, having your kids involved in Bible studies, doing family devotions. Here’s one question that I would challenge you to go home and ask your boys (because at the time I think her boys were twelve, fourteen, and fifteen): ‘Is the truth true for everyone or does it change from person to person?’”

She was, like, “Okay.” So she called in her oldest son, who was very spiritually mature, just an all around great kid, like the teenage son that you want. And she said, “I have a question for you. Is the truth true for everyone or does it change from person to person?”

And her son was, like, “Well, when we’re talking about things like science, of course, the truth is true for everyone. Gravity applies to everyone.”

She said she breathed a sigh of relief, and then he said one three-letter word . . . “But . . .” She told me her heart sank into her stomach. “But when we’re talking about things like religion, no. The Bible is true for me because I’m a Christian and you and Dad are Christians, and you’ve always told me that. But I have Muslim friends, and the Bible’s not true for them. The Quran is true for them.”

And then he said, “And then there’s one or two atheists at my school, and the Bible’s not true for them because for them God doesn’t exist.”

And my friend was like, “Oh my goodness!”

So, we need to make sure that we are helping our children understand this concept of truth, that truth is what is real. That truth is what is real, and that God is the source of truth. That in His Word, He has revealed to us what is true.

Then we need to help our children discern the difference between a claim that’s either true or false and one that’s just based on someone’s feelings. Because our culture is telling us truth changes from person to person, and your best guide for truth is your emotions. Our emotions are a great check engine light, but they’re a terrible GPS, because they frequently point us away from the truth.

 

So this is one lie that is just assumed in our culture, and I think it’s so dangerous because we don’t even see it going after our kids.

And so then we’re like, “My child has John 14:6 memorized, “Jesus said ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.’” But what our children are subconsciously hearing is “Jesus is the way for some people. He’s the truth for some people. He’s the life for some people.”

So we want to combat this lie so that our children understand: Truth is what is real. God is the source of truth, and my feelings are not the best guide for truth. Because then when we have that foundation, that’s when we can continue building upon all of the bricks of the truths of God’s Word and where we want our children to dwell.

Dannah: Okay, you’ve got a Grandma listening who is really feeling burdened right now. She’s, like, “My granddaughter’s listening to music and making up dances for me,” or “Yes, I think if I ask my grandson ‘What is truth?’ he will probably sound a lot like that boy. He’s, like, ‘Yeah, it’s true if it’s science, but not if it’s religion.’”

What Bible verse do we have to shore up our own minds first, and then to teach to our children as evidence. I mean, you just mentioned one: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’” What other Scripture do we have that really indicates that truth according to the Word of God is the truth for everyone?

Elizabeth: Well, there are plenty of passages of Scripture where God talks about Himself, speaking what is true. Now, I may get some of these references wrong, so I’m going to say what I think they are, and then go and fact-check me. I know it’s Psalm 119, and then I believe that it is verse 160.

In Psalm 119:160, it says that, “The sum of your word is truth.” That means that the total of God’s Word is truth. We can have our kids go right there, and we can ask them: “What is the sum? What is the sum in an addition problem?” Well . . . it’s when two numbers are put together, what they are in total. “So what does that tell us about God’s Word?” Well, that tells us that when we put all of God’s Word together, this is the true road map to life. We want our kids to know that God claims this. God declares this.

In Isaiah 45:19, God says, “I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right.” And so we want our kids to see that, that God claims that His Word is true.

And then, even on top of that, what we want to help our children see is we’re not just saying, “The Bible is true, believe it.” Now, for us who are believers, who are Christians, we have repented of our sins. We have turned from those things and have trusted in Jesus, and now we trust God’s Word as our foundation. No matter what it says, whether we fully understand it or only partially understand, or we’re having trouble understanding it, we put our complete trust there.

Sometimes our kids might not be there yet. So we’re still going to teach them the truth, and we are going to teach them what is right. What we want to help them do is we want to help them see that not only does God claim that His Word is true, but when we investigate the evidence all around us, it consistently lines up with God’s Word.

For example, even when we think just about everything that’s going on in our culture, we’re talking about life and justice and fairness, a grandmother can ask her grandchild, “Why is it that every human has the sense that we’re supposed to treat one another fairly?”

Because if we take the secular model, this belief that we got here accidentally by some blind, unguided evolution, we don’t really actually have value. There’s not really any reason why we actually need to treat one another nicely. Like, “Yeah, it might work out better for us in the end.” But there’s no morality that we actually need to do that.

What is it that makes us understand that we need to treat one another fairly? It’s the image of God in us. And no other worldview has a doctrine like that that speaks to why it is that we just inherently know that we need to treat one another fairly. And so we want to help our kids see that God’s Word claims to be true.

And we are going to build our lives upon it. Even when we look at God’s world, we see that God’s world consistently lines up with God’s Word. And we want to help instill that confidence in them.

And to any parent or grandparent who’s listening, and you’re thinking, “It’s just too late for me. I haven’t started any of this. My children are teenagers, or my grandchildren, they’re twelve and fourteen, it’s too late for me.”

As we said before, Dannah, God is the God of redemption, and God has worked bigger miracles before than turning a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. So it is never too late. It is never too late. We should always be praying for our children.

And then in these conversations, we tend to want it to be this one and done thing, like, “I’m going to have this one conversation with my eighteen-year-old, and he’s going to turn on his knees and trust in Jesus. And if that happens, wouldn’t that be amazing?”

Yes! But what we can do is we can just put a tiny little pebble in their shoe. This little pebble, they may roll their eyes today. They may have a bad attitude. But it’s going to be this little pebble that’s going to be bothering them as they continue to walk through life. And we can pray that one day they will take off that shoe, they’ll look at that pebble, and they’ll be like, “What is that my grandmother said? What is it that my mom has been trying to tell me for the past eighteen years?”

So I would just speak that word of encouragement to anyone who is listening and thinking, Oh, my goodness. It’s just too late. It is never too late.

Dannah: It is never too late. Use a lot of questions. First of all, I want my children, my grandchildren, you need to be their elementary school teacher because I could just listen to the way you talk to children all day long.

But when you’re talking to them, you don’t just say, “Hey, that wasn’t true, or that wasn’t how you should have responded.” You ask questions. How important is it that we use questions when we’re talking to our children?

Elizabeth:v I would say that it’s vital. Think about Jesus’ ministry. Yes, there were times where Jesus gave sermons. He gave the Sermon on the Mount. He gave the Upper Room Discourse. There were times where He directly spoke truth to people.

But think about how often He asked people questions. The woman at the well, He asked her some questions to get her thinking. He didn’t just come out and say, “You’re committing adultery. I’m the Savior of the world. You need Me.” No. He asked her some questions. He asked her for a drink. He asked her to go get her husband.

And so when we’re working with our children, with the way that God has designed the human mind to learn is most of us do not retain information best when we just hear something. Most of us actually have to live through something, to do something, to interact with this material.

So if we just sit down, and we tell our children . . . If our child does something we’re not happy with, or they’re listening to something, or they spout out something that’s a lie, and we just say, “That’s wrong,” every once in a while we might have a child that’s, like, “Really, Mother, please tell me why is that wrong?” Most of the time their guard is just going to go up.

But if we say, “Hmm, that’s really interesting. What makes you think that’s true?” or “Why is that important to you?” or “Where did you hear that information?” or “What convinced you that was true?” What we’re doing is we’re now giving them the responsibility of carefully thinking through what they have just claimed or what they have just done or what they have just brought into our home.

We can take this model that Jesus has given us of asking questions to actually get people thinking and to come to these conclusions. So I would say it’s so important for us to do this.

But I would encourage anyone listening, this doesn't happen overnight. You don't go from just giving commands to suddenly asking questions overnight. And so I would just encourage anyone listening, as you interact with your kids, think about one question that you can consistently ask them.

It might be as simple as, “Where did you hear that?” You know, just to glean more information. Or, “What convinced you that was true?”

And so just think of one question, and then as you start to ask that question over and over and over again, you're going to start to have longer conversations with your children, and you're going to start to have more opportunities to ask further questions.

Nancy: That’s such helpful advice from Elizabeth Urbanowicz, talking to Dannah Gresh, the co-host of Revive Our Hearts. You can find more about Elizabeth and her organization, Foundation Worldview, at a link in the transcript of this program at our website, ReviveOurHearts.com.

Elizabeth will also be at True Woman ‘25, just around the corner, helping to lead the teen track there.

It’s not too late to sign up for True Woman, by the way. Our theme will be “The Word: Behold the Wonder.”

Earlier in this program Elizabeth and Dannah were talking about Psalm 119. I love that psalm because over and over it extols the value and the supreme treasure of God’s Word. In fact, I’ll be teaching on Psalm 119 at the True Woman Conference on the opening night. I hope you’ll make plans to be there, October 2-4, either in-person there in Indianapolis or online. 

To register or to get more information, visit TrueWoman25.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Now, once again, here are Dannah Gresh and Elizabeth Urbanowicz.

Dannah: All right, I want to ask this. Give a one-word answer: What do you think is the most important topic for parents to be addressing when it comes to worldview culturally? How is the world most motivated to indoctrinate our children culturally right now? What’s the topic?

Elizabeth: I was worried when you said one word, but I think this is an easy one. Sexuality. I think most of our listeners would agree that is the way the world is coming after our children right now.

Dannah: Well, will you come back tomorrow and let’s talk about that?

Elizabeth: Absolutely.

Dannah: Let’s do it.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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