Appreciating God’s Design

Dannah Gresh: Elizabeth Urbanowicz says when we think talking to our children about sex is going to rob them of innocence, that’s actually not correct.

Elizabeth Urbanowicz: Having a basic conversation, or having several basic conversations, with them about the goodness of God’s design, that is not robbing their innocence, and it’s actually preparing them to be protected from those things that would steal their innocence!

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for September 18, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is the author of Adorned, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: When God made you, He knew exactly what He was doing, and His design of you as female or male is good, too. It’s hard enough for us as adults to get that into our heads and hearts, and for kids it can be even more difficult.

Our guest today on Revive Our Hearts is Elizabeth Urbanowicz from a ministry called Foundation Worldview. She knows how important it is to discuss sexuality with children, and to do it from a biblical perspective.

You might be surprised to hear what age she recommends for having those first conversations. Let’s listen. Here’s Dannah Gresh and Elizabeth Urbanowicz.

Dannah: Elizabeth, thanks for joining me again for day number two as we really consider the topic of God’s good design and how to talk to our children about what they believe, their worldview.

Yesterday when we ended, I asked you where is the culture really trying to indoctrinate, and you said the word, “sexuality.” Let’s just dive right into that. Why is that the word that came into your mind?

Elizabeth: Well, as we think about just where our world is headed, everything that is aimed at us and our children is aimed toward this topic of sexuality. We know that our world has just taken God’s good gift and twisted it.

And the message that our world is communicating to our children today is that there are no boundaries. You know, “There just are no boundaries! What do you feel like? That’s your gender. It might be a gender that no one has ever had before, and that’s okay because it’s what you’re feeling.”

And then, in regard to the actual act of sexual intercourse that God has given us as a gift within the marriage covenant between a husband and a wife, our world is trying to teach our children that the only thing that is wrong, the only thing that is sinful, is having any limitations on our sexual expression; that we should be free to express ourselves to whomever we want, whenever we want, however we want, so long as there is consent. Consent is the only rule. 

And so we need to make sure that we are grounding our children in a biblical understanding of God’s good design for them, of God’s good design for relationships, of God’s good design for sexuality so that we can prepare them ahead of time for all of the ways that the culture is just going to try to indoctrinate them into its own worldview that is radically against the worldview that God has so graciously given us in the Scriptures!

Dannah: Yes, I was burdened . . . This was a good decade ago, but at one point Facebook allowed you to select a gender, and there was a pull-down menu, and there were more than fifty options for gender!

Now if you go there today, it will say, “male, female, other.” It’s fill-in-the-blank because they can’t keep up. I agree with you, this is an area of utmost importance! 

Let me ask this: I’ve heard so many parents say, “You know when it comes to religion, it’s just about the gospel. So this area of sexuality, I get really bothered when Christians try to talk about it too much, because I just talk to them about Jesus and the gospel.” What would you say to the parent who says that?

Elizabeth: Well, the first thing that I would encourage them with is, “I’m so happy that you’re talking with them about the gospel” because that is foundational. We do need to make sure that we are talking with our children about the gospel.

And then I would ask them, “What is the gospel?” And when we break down the gospel message, the gospel message is that God designed us in His image, that our first parents when given the option to love, trust, and obey God or love, trust, and obey themselves, they chose the latter.

They rebelled against God, they ushered sin and death into the world. Now we are all born with a sin nature, and we choose to sin every day, and we are separated from God! But God, in love, sent Jesus, God the Son, to live the perfect life we could never live, die in our place, and rise again to new life!

And now all of those who repent of their sin and trust in Him are reconciled to Him and will live with Him forever in the new heaven and the new earth. Well, when we think of the gospel, where does sexuality fit in with that?

It fits in with being created in God’s image. And then it also fits in with the Fall, that because we are fallen image bearers, we often reject or ignore God’s good design. And so, that is what our culture is pulling our children to do; it’s pulling them to reject and ignore God’s good design!

There are many places in the Scriptures where God gives us strict warnings that unrepentant sexual sin is an indication that we have not actually been reconciled to God! You know, in Ephesians 5, Paul talks about how there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or impurity or covetousness.

And then he says, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Eph. 5:6–8). 

And so, if we are saying, “Oh well, it doesn’t matter! It’s just about the gospel. It’s not a big deal if my child is engaging in sexual sin. It’s not a big deal if my child is just exploring with different pronouns, different genders; they’re just figuring out who they are.”

No, these are sins. Scripture is clear that the wrath of God is coming because of these sins! And so, if our children are walking in these and they are unrepentant, that is an indication that they have not turned from their sin and trusted in Christ, and they are under God’s just wrath!

And so, this shouldn’t frighten us, as in we’re overcome with anxiety, because we’re told in Philippians 4:6 not to be anxious but to present our requests to the Lord. But we should make sure that we have an understanding that sexual sin is part of the gospel, that it is something that keeps us separated from God.

That’s what I would say to a parent. This does involve the gospel, and we need to take this very, very seriously! 

Dannah: When you were talking about Adam and Eve in the garden, and that sentence where you said they had a choice to submit to and obey God or submit to and obey themselves . . . that reminded me of Romans 1, where Scripture really describes where we are as a culture today.

Romans 1:22–25 says: 

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them [over to] the lusts of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God [we talked about truth yesterday] for a lie and worshiped and served the creature [themselves] rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

That really is the reason we need the gospel. Genesis 1, 2 and 3. And Romans 1 really speaks to how we are really reenacting Genesis 3 in our lives and in our culture right now.

So, we’ve attached it to the gospel, I believe you’re correct, that is so beautiful. How soon do we need to start talking to our kids about all of this stuff? Because these are pretty scary and dark topics, when you’re looking at the counterfeits the world is offering up as “good.” They’re calling them “good.”

Elizabeth: Yes. Now, everyone is probably going to gasp when I say this, so everybody hold onto your horses here. I really genuinely believe that we need to start having these first conversations about the goodness of God’s design for gender and sexuality and marriage and family at the age of four.

Now, I know that’s probably a minimum of four years younger than people were thinking we should have these conversations. But let me just give some justification for why I think it’s really important to have these conversations starting at the age of four.

The first reason is, we want to make sure as parents that we are the ones our children are coming to with their questions. We don’t want them to go to some teacher, some textbook, to a friend, to Google . . . wherever. We want them to come to us.

I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but I just know there’s this psychological phenomenon where whoever we hear about something from first, we view that person as the expert.

To this day, when I have an issue with something that’s going on in my house, I call my dad. Now, I am fully aware that there are many men in my church or people in my neighborhood who are much more equipped to help me with this problem than my dad. 

But why do I call my dad? Because my dad was the first one to introduce me to home improvement. And so in my mind, even though he’s not technically the expert, he’s still the expert. 

If we wait to have these conversations until our children have already been exposed to these ideas of gender and sexuality by someone or something else, they are going to view that person or that thing as the expert, and we’re going to be backpedalling.

The second reason for this is, the world is just coming after our children at such young ages! We don’t even know the next place that’s going to try to come after them. You know, there have been many TV shows that have had a Pride parade on it, even Blues Clues.

So many things are coming after our children. If the first time they are exposed to any kind of idea about gender or sexuality is in the form of a deviation from God’s good design or a corruption of God’s good design, we have to backpedal. In their minds gender and sexuality are going to be a negative thing where that is not true.

In Genesis 1:27 we are told that “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Our gender is an inherently good thing! And then, right after that in Genesis 1:28, God gives this dominion mandate and He tells Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it.

God is commanding them to partake in His good gift of sexual intercourse within the marriage covenant—to have children, to fill the earth, to subdue it. So, the gifts of gender, sexuality—sex within marriage—are inherently good! 

We want to make sure that we have the opportunity to lay this foundation for the goodness of God’s design before our children are introduced to corruptions. Because when they think about the fact that God has designed them as male or female, when they think about the marriage covenant and the gift of sex within that, we want our children to understand that these are good gifts! Have they been tainted by the Fall? Yes. But God is a God of redemption.

And so that’s the reason why we really encourage parents to start having these conversations by the age of four–so that our kids view us as the experts, and their first introduction to these topics are focused on the inherent goodness of God’s design.

Dannah: By the way, I didn’t gasp, because I totally agree with you 100 percent. After twenty years of studying the topic of sexuality, I truly believe . . .

I used to say the average age that we had to have a really thorough conversation about sexual activity was nine. I think that’s lower now. And at the time I started to talk to them it was not even on my radar to talk to them about gender, because it was such a societally accepted construct that there were two genders, male and female. That is no longer true.

But, can you give me some examples of how you would talk to a four-year-old about this, to where we are just introducing them to the beauty of God’s good design, and we’re not robbing them of their innocence?

Elizabeth: Yes, so I want to talk about two things there, the thought about robbing kids of their innocence, and then about how do we do this? So I actually think we need a little bit of a mind shift here, that when we think that talking to kids about sex is going to rob them of their innocence. 

I think we have an incorrect view that if our kids are exposed to things . . . If our kids are exposed to pornography, that is robbing them of their innocence, definitely. When we have a conversation with them about the goodness of God’s design for sex, that is not robbing them of their innocence. 

Because, if we think that talking to them about sex is somehow stealing innocence, well what is our presupposition there? We’re presupposing that sex is inherently dirty, and our kids were better off before they knew about it.

And so, I think we need to have a mindset shift there, to view the things that can rob our kids of their innocence as those things—pornography, abuse, inappropriate TV shows—are things that steal our kids’ innocence.

Having a basic conversation, or having several basic conversations, with them about the goodness of God’s design, that is not robbing their innocence, and it’s actually preparing them to be protected from those things that would steal their innocence!

And so then, how do we go about having these conversations? We want our children to understand that this is God’s design, so we want to ground this in God’s Word.

So even just talking about being created male or female, I would say take our children right to Genesis chapter 1. Take a four-year-old right to Genesis chapter 1 and say, “Okay, I’m going to read you a verse from the Bible. And this verse from the Bible is going to show us some truths about how God created us, okay? So I’m going to read it to us and I want you to listen to see if you can hear what those truths are.”

And then just read, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” 

Then say, “Okay, what did you hear? There was a word there that was repeated.” 

And then you can read it again and talk about “image,” and what it means to be designed in God’s image. We show the world a small picture of who God is. We are not God, but we are supposed to show others what God is like.

And then say, “Hmm, there were two other words there: ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Those are just fancy words that mean to be a boy or a girl.” And that’s where you’re going to want to (just as a warning for anyone who is listening, if you have little ears listening, I’m about to use the anatomically correct terms for what it means to be male or female). 

Just explain to kids and say, “You know what? If you’re a boy, God created you with a special part of your body called your penis. If God created you as a girl, He created you with a special part of your body called your vagina, and these parts of your body reveal whether you’re a boy or you’re a girl. Isn’t God’s design for us so good?!”

You know, and that can be as simple as your first conversation. You ground it in Scripture, ask what truths are revealed, make sure you’re keeping it upbeat and positive and focusing on the goodness of God’s design.

Now, then, your children might have questions, and they might have questions that scare you! And it’s okay if they do. If our kids ever ask us a question and we think, “Oh my goodness, I wasn’t prepared for this, I don’t know how to answer this!” buy yourself some more time by just keeping a smile on your face and saying, “That is such a good question! I am so proud of you for thinking about that question! You know what? Mommy’s going to have to think a little bit more before she gives you an answer, but tomorrow at lunchtime, we’re going to talk about this!”

So don’t freak out, buy yourself some more time, and then that night search the Scriptures, talk with your husband and figure out how to address the question that your child asked you.

Dannah: Okay, it is official that I’m going to go home tonight and tell my husband about my interview with Elizabeth, and he’s going to say, “Can we hire her to teach our grandchildren?” And, I should probably say this: Revive Our Hearts family, please do not email us asking for Elizabeth to provide private tutorials!

We will tell you, however, how you can get some teaching from Elizabeth. But one of the things I’m noticing: Yesterday you talked about the importance of asking questions when our kids are off-course in their worldview. Asking them, “Why do you believe that?” or “Tell me who told you that.” Now you’re more in the driver’s seat, because you’re saying, “Let’s open the Bible, let’s read this,” but you are still employing the use of questions. Tell me again why that’s so important.

Elizabeth: Yes, so in this situation where I just modeled taking our kids right to the first chapter of Genesis, reading and then asking them questions, when we ask a question, the other person then has to respond.

And in order to respond, they have to think, and they have to formulate words and then say those words. And so when we’re asking questions, we’re making sure that we are actually engaging their minds! And again, this is what Jesus did.

Where we just sit down and we say, “Okay, I’m going to read you this Bible verse and then I’m going to tell you this truth,” there are going to be a few kids out there who are going to listen and they’re actually going to glean that truth, and it’s going to be great!

The majority of our kids, they’re going to be fidgety. They might listen to a little bit here or there, but they’re really not going to pick up on too much. If we make sure that we’re asking questions, then we are forcing them / requiring them—in a positive way—to be engaged.

Now, some of you are going and try this, and you’re going to ask, “What truths are revealed?” And your four or five or six-year-olds are going to look at you, and they’re going to be like, “I don’t know!” So if that happens, then what you do is say, “You know what? Sometimes it is hard to hear that the first time, so here’s what I want you to do. I want you to listen. Mommy’s going to read you that verse one more time, and there’s going to be a word in the verse that’s going to be repeated three times.” And then as you’re reading it, you say the word “i-i-maa-age” with a little bit more inflection.

Or then, pull out the words “male” and “female” and say, “Hmm. Have you ever heard that word before, “male?” No? You haven’t heard that word before? But you know what, “male” is just a fancy word that means, “boy.”

Okay now, tell me, what does “male” mean? That’s right! “Boy!” So if you’re asking questions in an appropriate way, you’re engaging your kids’ minds, because that’s how transformation really happens.

Dannah: I love this! This is just so, so good, Elizabeth. I think what I really love is that you are not talking at kids; you’re inviting them to think. You’re inviting them to inductively study the Word. You’re guiding them through a brief little mini-inductive study, is what you’re doing, right?

Elizabeth: Mmm. Absolutely!

Dannah: Yeah, so good! Okay, tell us a little bit about the curriculum that you’ve just released for, is it ages four–eight-year olds? And it’s specifically to help them with the topic of, is it sexuality or gender? Tell us about it.

Elizabeth: Yes, so this curriculum is called God’s Good Design. It’s a thirty-lesson curriculum and the lessons are all between fifteen and twenty minutes long, and it covers the concepts of identity, gender, marriage, sexuality, family. All of these topics with which the world is just really trying to come and get hold of our kids.

And so as you’ve heard, as I’ve been kind of modeling for you just how to have these conversations, there are many things I am not gifted in, but one of the things that I am gifted in is talking with children and helping them think carefully. 

So what this curriculum is, it’s a video-based curriculum where I do all of the teaching. And so the goal is that parents would be able to sit down with their little one and go through this curriculum together.

We do a lot of teaching, we do a lot of activities, we get little ones' bodies involved. There are times when we ask them to say things as LOUDLY as they can, or as quietly as they can. We have them up and down, and we get their bodies involved and teach them big truths from God’s Word about how God designed us, about what God’s plan is for us, how God designed us individually and how He’s designed us relationally. And then, after we’ve laid that positive biblical theology, then we cover two really important truths. We cover the truth that sin corrupts God’s good design.

We talk about how “corrupts” is a fancy word that means to ruin or destroy, and then we talk about how that’s not the end of the story. Jesus defeated the power and the punishment of sin. But while we’re still living here on this earth, we’re going to see sin corrupting God’s good design. 

What we do then is we introduce in very, very developmentally appropriate language and activities, some of the corruptions of God’s good designs. For example, when we’re introducing the concept of transgenderism.

I’m sure some people are like, “Oh my goodness! Four years old, you’re introducing this concept?!” Well, yes, our kids are going to encounter this, even just walking.

Dannah: They’re going to see it. 

Elizabeth: So the way we teach this truth is, ”Because of sin, sometimes feelings trick us!” And so we talk about because we’re all fallen, sometimes someone might feel jealous of the opposite sex, and they might actually think that they are that sex, where the truth of their body reveals just the opposite! So we introduce it in very basic ways.

When we’re trying to introduce the concept of pornography, we say, “Because of sin, not all pictures are good pictures.” And then we play some games where we give them some examples. 

Most of the examples we give are of good pictures, because we want to put the focus on the goodness of God’s design. We say, “You know, sometimes because of sin, people take pictures of other people’s bodies without clothes that should be covering the special parts of our bodies that a bathing suit covers.”

We just expose them to that concept really briefly, and then give them a game plan. We say, “If that happens, if you see a bad picture, you stop, you run, and you tell. You stop what you’re doing, you run to your parents, and you tell them that you saw a bad picture, and they’re going to be so proud of you, because that will help them protect you from seeing any more bad pictures.” 

So at this young age, if we can just give them some basic exposure in a very developmentally appropriate way—we’re not going into graphic detail—we’re teaching them basic truths from God’s Word and we’re putting the focus mostly on the goodness of God’s design. What we’re doing is preparing them, and preparation equals protection! And so that’s what we want to do for our little ones, to really ground them in the goodness of God’s design. 

Dannah: Mmm. So good, Elizabeth! I am going to be your customer by the end of this day, because I want my grandchildren learning from you. I want them hearing these important truths. And I love the way God has given you a special gift to communicate with them!

You have decided you’re going to offer up a discount code for our Revive Our Hearts family. We’re so grateful for that. Tell us about it.

Elizabeth: Yes! If you go to the Foundation Worldview website, which is FoundationWorldview.com, and if you choose any one of our family licenses, you can get 10 percent off a family license by using the coupon code hearts10—just thinking of Revive Our Hearts, so: hearts10

Dannah: Thank you so much for that. I am so excited! Can I ask you to come back one more time? 

Elizabeth: Absolutely. I would love it!

Dannah: Because what I want to do, tomorrow I want to pray a little bit. I’d like to ask you to pray, because we’ve got to march in cadence as women of God! The infrastructure of the LGBT community is not as vast as the media would make you think. But just like when you walk into San Francisco and you see that massive Golden Gate Bridge, the infrastructure that is there is very, very visible, and it makes it appear more massive. That’s a very, very small part of San Francisco, but it’s really memorable.

And yet, they tell bands and soldiers that when they’re in a parade and marching in cadence, they must break cadence when they walk across a bridge, or they will break up the structure. But I’m going to say let’s do the opposite. Let’s be women of God who march tomorrow in prayer cadence over this idol of gender ideology that is an affront to the image of God.

So, will you come back tomorrow and guide us through some prayer as well as just some more truth about purity, sexuality, and gender?

Elizabeth: Absolutely!

Nancy: That’s our guest today, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, talking to Dannah Gresh, the co-host of Revive Our Hearts. I hope you’ll take advantage of that discount code that Elizabeth offered—hearts10.

To get a link to her website where you can use that discount code, look in the transcript of this program at ReviveOurHearts.com. Also, you’ll find a link there for how you can pre-order her new book, coming out in just weeks.

It’s titled Helping Your Kids Know God’s Good Design: Forty Questions and Answers on Sexuality and Gender . . . a really important and timely book! Again, head to ReviveOurHearts.com and look for the links provided in the transcript of today’s program.

Elizabeth does such a great job of connecting with kids at any age level! That’s one of the reasons I’m so thankful that she’ll be speaking to the young women in the teen track at True Woman ’25 in just a couple of weeks.

Our theme this year is: The Word: Behold the Wonder. I know the young women sitting under Elizabeth’s teaching will come away with a greater sense of wonder at God’s Word! I hope you’ve made plans to attend, maybe with your daughter or granddaughter!

If you haven’t, it’s not too late to sign up. You can get more information about True Woman ’25 at ReviveOurHearts.com.

 And then I want to just remind you that Revive Our Hearts depends on the prayer support and the financial donations of friends like you who keep our many various outreaches going. We’d love to hear from you!

Let us know that you’re thankful for Revive Our Hearts and you want to help out. To make a donation, visit us at ReviveOurHearts.com/donate or you can call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Well, you’ve probably noticed that there’s an ideological war raging in our world. It’s a war of ideas, and one of the main fronts in that war has to do with words, terminology, how we define what means what.

Tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts, Elizabeth will be back to help us know how to define words for children biblically, as God defines them. Be sure and be back for Revive Our Hearts.

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

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.