Tough Issues for Tweens

Dannah Gresh: Girls today are being pressured to grow up so soon! It can cause moms a lot of worry.

Mother: My daughter, in fifth grade, learned about abortion and feminist rights. This teacher had a political agenda. I didn’t have to worry about that at my age. Why does my daughter, at this age, have to worry about it?

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe, for Tuesday, August 30, 2022. I'm Dannah Gresh.

It seems like the challenges tween girls face today are more complex than ever. From emotional unwellness to confusion about gender, it’s not an easy time to be a preteen. Are the young girls in your life equipped to recognize harmful lies and combat them with the truth?

I’ve devoted much of my life to preparing them to know the truth and be set free from this world’s harmful messages. In addition to my role as Nancy’s cohost for Revive Our Hearts, I am the founder of True Girl. I lead a team of moms on a mission to fill their daughters with so much truth from God’s Word that there’s no room for the world’s lies.

One more thing before today’s conversation between Nancy and I: sadly, some of the issues girls face today are mature. If you’re with younger kids, you may want to keep them busy somewhere else as we talk about these serious topics. To begin, we’ll hear some comments from moms about the challenges they face while raising their daughters.  

Mother 1: There’s just more targeted advertising. Media giants decided they weren’t making enough money and looked around and identified the tween market. They’re especially targeting to our girls. They used to target toys and games and stuff like that, but it’s now it’s food and makeup and clothes.

Our daughters don’t need these things, and the media is making them think that they do.

Mother 2: My daughter came home with a book from the library that had a character in there with two moms, and another character—another boy in that book—also had two moms. I was really disappointed the library had an agenda they were pushing like this. My daughter’s only in second grade! She shouldn’t be exposed to topics like this yet.

Mother 3: So my daughter was in third grade when she was eight years old, and her friend who was in fifth grade committed suicide. I really don’t think that people my age were committing suicide at that age.

Dannah: Those are Christian women who attended some focus groups I facilitated as I was preparing to write Lies Girls Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, along with a Mom’s Guide to the book. They’re the voices of mothers of girls ages eight to twelve . . . and they’re sounding the alarm for their daughters’ generation.

Shortly after this book released as part of the Lies series, I sat down with Nancy to talk about it—specifically the lies girls are believing and the importance of helping them discover the truth. Here’s Nancy starting off our conversation.

Nancy: Well, thank you for persevering and for pressing into me and to our team on this. You kept saying, “Girls need this; girls need this! They’re not too young. They need the seeds of truth before the lies are planted in their hearts.” They end up with these huge complex issues that so many women our age are experiencing today—ones that started when they were much younger.

Dannah: Exactly! When you wrote Lies Women Believe . . . I hear story after story. I meet women all the time who know that we’re friends and say, “Will you please tell Nancy how I was set free through Lies Women Believe.”    Did you ever imagine when you were penning that you’d be releasing a book for eight- to twelve-year-old girls?

Nancy: I didn’t. And you’re the one who’s really helped me to see that these are issues that start when we’re really young . . . and more so today than ever, perhaps. You’ve done the research, you’ve done these focus groups, you’ve talked to girls, you’ve talked to moms.

We’re going to hear some recreated audio from what you learned in those focus groups. I think that some moms and grandmoms listening are going to be maybe really astonished.

Dannah: Shocked!

Nancy: Shocked.

Dannah: When I started ministering to this age group, the average age of an eating-disorder clinic patient was fifteen. Now it’s ten—with girls as young as five years old in those clinics! That’s the drastic difference.

Another thing is the incredible rise in depression and anxiety. Girls today—tweens and teens—score as high on anxiety and depression scales as girls that age who were admitted into clinics in the fifties.

But now we’re just saying, “Hey, you’re gonna be fine. Go ahead, keep living your life. You may be a little depressed; you may be a little anxious.” No, no! Something’s very wrong! Something needs to be fixed.

Nancy: So we said we need to extend this line of Lies books beyond women and young women and the one that my sweet husband wrote for men, Lies Men Believe. The world is really targeting girls at a younger and younger age with its content and its message.

Dannah: . . . very mature content.

Nancy: It was obvious that we wanted to talk about topics like beauty and friendship and academic pressure . . . and boys—yes, at that age. But then you also said, “We’ve got to address things like social media, gender identity issues,” and I flinched a little bit.

Dannah: You did!

Nancy: I said, “We’re talking about children here!” I was thinking of some of the eight-, nine- and ten-year-olds that I know. I’m thinking, Are you sure !? And we had these conversations.

Dannah: Well, and I’m glad that you flinched, because I think there are women right now, there are grandmothers who just flinched and said, “You’re going to talk to my granddaughter about social media? She shouldn’t even be on social media! You’re going to talk to her about gender identity? I don’t think she’s ready!” So what that forced me to do was extensive research.

Nancy: Which I’m so glad you did! You did these focus groups. Tell us a little bit about what you did with that.

Dannah: We went to eleven cities across the country. We also did some online focus groups so we could involve women from Canada and the Dominican Republic. 

The stories we kept hearing over and over about social media were so alarming! One mom said, “We don’t believe kids should be on social media, so our daughter wasn’t allowed. I walked past her phone one day . . .” (Which I kind of was like, “Why does your daughter under the age of twelve have a phone?” But I think sometimes there are safety reasons.)

But she walked past her daughter’s phone one day and a message came up that said, “Matt (or somebody) accepted your friend request.” And the mom said, “I went crazy! I was like, ‘What!? She’s not allowed to be on social media. Why does she have a friend request?”

But the research also backed up the opinions of mom—-the concerns of moms—with a survey of fifteen-hundred tween girls (and these are girls ages seven to twelve). Sixty-nine percent claim to be Christians; they’re predominantly from evangelical homes. Forty-two percent of girls age twelve said they have Smartphones with the Internet on them.

Nancy: So they’re being exposed—not only through that means but other means as well—to a lot more things than what their parents are probably aware of.

Dannah: Yes. And sometimes the parents were really trying to shelter them—in a good way. Like, they wouldn’t have Internet on the phone or the parents were saying, “You’re not old enough for social media, so don’t go on social media.” But the peer pressure their daughters were facing was such a bother!

And they asked, “How do I talk to my daughter about the fact that . . .” Nancy, you use the idea of salmon swimming upstream [against the harmful trends of culture]. “How do I tell my daughter it’s good to be ‘salmon;’ it’s good to swim upstream? She needs to be reminded how that’s making her stronger and better. But she’s not really believing it because of all the peer pressure. What do I say to her about that?”

Nancy: Can you give another illustration of how the girls in this tween age group are facing mature content that we didn’t face at their age?

Dannah: Just anything from gender where they’re being exposed to the questions. Sometimes it’s what moms called “the scariest content,” where the kids might be exposed to a neighbor who’s “transitioning.” We heard that in the focus groups.

A mom said, “I have a fifth-grade boy that lives down the street who’s transitioning to be a girl. How do I talk to my child about that!?” Sometimes it wasn’t that complicated. It was just, they would be hearing this message over and over again: “There’s no difference between men and women.”

The moms were saying, “But the Bible says there are differences, so how do I say that? Is it okay to say that even though it’s politically incorrect to say that?” These were the kinds of questions the moms were asking for help with.

Nancy: And I know, Dannah, that as you were listening to these moms tell stories about what their girls were walking through, it was heartbreaking for you!

Dannah: Yes. One mom told me this tragic story . . .

Mom: My daughter’s friend had used the word “sex” at school, and my daughter was curious. So she came home and Googled it, and she saw horrible things! Now she’s seen sex in a horrible way! What was made to be beautiful has now become ugly. Maybe if I would have had the discussion with her sooner, it wouldn’t have ended up like this.

Dannah: So, I have to emphasize, Nancy, that this was a Christian mom. These are Christian mothers who are facing these just heartbreaking stories: pornography, boy-craziness, gender confusion. Their daughters needed help!

They were sounding the alarm to me, saying, “Will you please tell the other moms that they need to talk to their daughters about these topics that they’re afraid of so that they can avoid the pain that we have felt!”

Mom: If we don’t tell them, the world will! And that’s what makes them lose their innocence.

Nancy: This is a huge responsibility—and a hard one—that’s on moms and parents today. There is so much external pressure, including with this whole thing of social media. As we’ve said, we didn’t face this in the same way at all when we were growing up. We heard a lot from moms about that topic.

Dannah: What’s alarming about so many tweens being on social media is that there’s actually an online privacy protection act called COPA that forbids collecting any personal information: name, email, age, anything from someone under the age of thirteen.

That’s why most social mediums will say, “The recommended age restriction on this is thirteen.” Some of them is eighteen. And still, moms are saying, “I’m respecting those limits. I’m respecting those recommendations, but my daughter’s friends’ parents are not.” And that’s creating a lot of conflict and confusion in those sweet, little girls.

These girls were saying to their moms, “Well, everybody else is on social media. Why can’t I be?” And that was putting pressure on moms to maybe talk about the risks of predators, the risks of bad pictures—dangerous pictures—that they could run into, and even just social media bullying.

Moms were scared, and I understand that. It’s hard to talk to your sweet, innocent daughter about those dangers.

Nancy: I think it’s important to keep in mind that these are not just statistics, these are not just studies. You read a lot of those, you did a lot of research. But these are moms, these are families, these are daughters, these are friends. I know that one of the stories we included in The Mom’s Guide to Lies Girls Believe is a story about a dear friend of yours.

Dannah: I couldn’t even get myself to fictionalize their names. To protect everybody, the stories are real, but I used fictional names. I could not do that with this story because it was too close to home for me!

I had a dear friend come to me with a picture of her daughter on social media. It was one of the most tragic photographs I’ve ever seen in my life! And the reason might be is because I have a framed picture of this little girl in my office. She’s giving her heart to Jesus at one of my live events for tweens.

It was just such a sweet moment! It’s my friend, the mom, and this little girl. A mutual friend of ours was one of the prayer counselors that night. I remember rejoicing the night this sweet little girl came to Jesus and watching her faith blossom and grow!

Fast-forward just a few years and this mom is showing me a picture on her phone. This little girl had gotten on Twitter behind her mom’s back as a twelve-year-old and posted a photo of self-harm. She had cut her wrist, was holding her hand up, and had this dead look on her face, as if she wasn’t feeling anything, while blood was streaming down her arm!

My heart broke into a million pieces for and with my friend that day. This was a mom who had respected the social media limits, couldn’t imagine her daughter being on social media—let alone self-harming and taking a picture of it and posting it!

I’m not talking about some crazy family that’s never walked into a church, that didn’t have a passionate love for Christ, and a non-Christian girl. I’m talking about the person sitting in the row next to you in your church! That’s who this family is to me.

Nancy: Well, we know that the devil comes to steal and to kill and to destroy (see John 10:10), and he’s working hard on this. We can’t be blind or dumb to that. We need to be alert to his schemes in our own lives, in the lives of our families, and those that we love.

As tragic as those kinds of things are, as determined as the enemy is to wound and destroy and deceive people like that little girl, what is even more powerful is the power of the truth! And you’ve seen God work in that situation to bring a process of redemption because of the truth and the light starting to shine into it.

Dannah: My friends didn’t immediately set up limits and consequences—they did do those things—but because this friend had read Lies Women Believe, she knew, “There’s a lie under this sweet, little girl’s heart. There’s a reason why she’s acting out in this way.”

Nancy: So she didn’t just react to the the behavior, but she said . . .

Dannah: “Why!? Why did you do that, my sweet, beautiful daughter?” She held her. Her daughter was angry because she’d been found out. She wanted to run, but her mom just held her fiercely with love, and she said, “I love you! I don’t know why you did that, but we’re going to figure it out together.”

My pastor was in the home within hours, investigating. This sweet girl had been bullied and had been hearing really terrible words—words that I couldn’t get myself to put in the book—words that no woman, nor any little girl, should ever hear. She’d begun to believe those and internalize them and think those things were true about her. They became labels and lies in her heart.

And that night, my friend got out her Bible and she began to bathe her daughter in truth. She found verses that were the antithesis of those lies, and she began to bathe her in truth. It’s been a few years now, and I’m still watching them walk that out.

But I’m seeing that daughter transformed! This age group is capable of deep spiritual transformation! It’s not just that the enemy can mold their thinking and their thoughts and their emotions . . .

Nancy: But the Lord can, too!

Where it ends on first play**I know, Dannah, that one of the reasons you’re so committed to helping these girls experience freedom from lies is that when you became a teenager, the enemy really took a swipe at this sense of God calling you and setting you apart that you had experienced as a child.

Dannah: I was so in love with Jesus! I was obeying a call He had put in my heart when I was eight years old to be a missionary, a Bible teacher . . . or a veterinarian! (There were a few things!) But I really sensed, “Teach the Word. Teach the Word.” And I was doing that.

I was teaching three- and four-year-old Sunday school class. I was a missionary for Child Evangelism Fellowship. And the lie that I believed was that I was immune to some of the sin and temptation that many of the teenagers around were experiencing. I really thought that could never happen to me.

And, in the middle of that, I was blindsided by sexual temptation and sin . . . and then believed God could never use me! So I resigned from teaching Sunday school; I withdrew from my youth group; I sat in the back row at church; I quit my volunteer position with Child Evangelism Fellowship. And for ten years nurtured the lie, “God can never use me.”

And you know what, though, Nancy? I’m so grateful for the seeds that my mom planted in me when I was a tween. Because, though God used many things, ultimately what she and the Lord planted in me as a little girl were what rescued me.

Nancy: That’s the truth that is so much more powerful than the lies! And the time came when God drew your heart back to that truth that addressed the lie that God could never use you, and that’s what set you free!

Dannah: Yes. One of my favorite verses is 2 Corinthians 1:3–4. It says, “Praise be to our God and our Savior Jesus Christ who comforts us in all of our troubles . . .” Not just the ones others have brought on us, but the ones we have brought on ourselves. “. . . so that we can comfort others with the same comfort we ourselves have received” (NIV84).

And you know, your sin, your purity, your testimony—however difficult or hard or ugly it may be—the more comfort you have needed from the Lord, you have that comfort to pour out on others. I began to look at things differently because I had a mother who said, “The truth is not what you’re feeling, the truth is not what you’re experiencing. The truth is what is written in this Book.” And I returned to that.

Nancy: And now you’re planting those seeds of truth in the lives of moms and their daughters. I’m so thrilled, Dannah, that you’ve gone through the hard, “birthing” process of writing this book Lies Girls Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free along with this Mom’s Guide.

These are two amazing resources! It’s one set; you need them together. We want moms to walk through this with their daughters. These books—I wish you could see them—they’re beautiful! They’re fun; they’re creative; they’re beautifully designed; they’re truth-packed.

They’re based on extensive research and conversations with moms and daughters, and we’re going to talk a lot more about that over the next few days.

Dannah: We’ll get back to continue my conversation with Nancy in a moment, but I wanted to pause and let you know that you can get a copy of Lies Girls Believe this week when you make a donation of any amount. I hope this is a useful and encouraging resource as you share the truth with your daughter or the girls in your life. Request your copy by visiting us online at ReviveOurHearts.com or calling us at 1-800-569-5959.

And right now, you can also register for a fall online Bible study where my True Girl team will lead you and your favorite tween girl through a six-week study based on Lies Girls Believe and the Truth that Sets Them Free. You can learn more at MyTrueGirl.com. Just look for our Bible studies menu.

Well, sometimes moms believe lies that keep them from recognizing their daughter is in danger. After I finished writing Lies Girls Believe, we waited to release it until the Mom’s Guide was finished to go with it. Let’s jump back in to my discussion with Nancy about these two resources.

Nancy: Why did you feel it was so important for us to have both?

Dannah: Well, the truth of the matter is, I finished one deadline—and on time. (laughter) Have you ever been there? And the other, not so much. And we had discussion about releasing them separately, but the publisher, Moody Publisher, said, “No, no, no, no.” Sometimes a book that you write comes out with kind of . . . It’s an entrée, and there’s a side-dish book, a study guide for example. This is not that. This is two entrées. You need both of them together.

When I thought about that, that was a powerful visual imagery for me. I realized it’s true because I can’t shape your daughter or your granddaughter or the tween girls in your churches spiritual lives. Only God can ultimately do that. But I’m not the best tool—the mom is, the grandma is, the small-group leader, the Sunday school class leader.

Nancy: Somebody who’s doing life with them.

Dannah: Yes. Somebody who’s doing life with them, that can disciple them and help them through this. So we wanted to make sure these books were released together, and we really want to encourage moms and grandmothers to use them together, not just to buy the Lies Girls Believe for their tween and set them loose.

Nancy: Well, as you did these focus groups, you realized that, as mothers were living out the truth, their daughters were more likely to do the same. Was there a particular story that kind of made that fact really clear to you?

Dannah: Oh, definitely. There was one focus group, right here in Michigan, as a matter of fact. This mom had driven quite some distance to come participate in the focus group. It was very important for her.

She was a single mom. In the book, her name appears as Carla. That’s not her real name. Her story is real, and it’s riveting.

Carla: I had my daughter when I was just seventeen. We basically grew up together. In high school, I was dating a very good Christian guy. He treated me with love and respect, but I ran from him. I didn’t think I deserved to be treated that way.

I got pregnant with another guy’s baby. My Christian boyfriend still offered to marry me, but my heart was crushed, and I ran again.

Dannah: Now, before we get too far, I should tell you that the silver lining, Nancy, is that she chose to keep her baby, her precious baby girl. But as that sweet girl grew up, she began to see evidence that her daughter was believing lies, and she realized that they were lies that she herself had planted as a mother.

Carla: I was boy crazy, yet I didn’t want my daughter to find her identity in boys the way I did. She did not submit or obey. And it all goes back to watching my life and learning from my actions. At school, she excelled. But the only thing the teacher ever talked to me about was obedience and submission.

Dannah: So this sweet girl—like many—was struggling with submitting, obeying, making good choices in her life. But it wasn’t until Carla hit a really dark moment in her life, in the aftermath of a particularly bad relationship, this mom finally cried out to God for help.

Carla: When you’re in the darkest place, God shines the brightest.

Dannah: In that dark pit, in that loneliness, in that despair, God sent a pastor to Carla, a pastor and his wife, and they introduced her to Christ. She made a decision to follow Him, but she told them, “Listen, I’m pretty off the rails here. I’m complicated.”

That pastor and his wife invited Carla and her daughter to move in with them, and they began a process of retraining her heart and her mind to believe truth instead of the lies that had been directing her behavior almost all of her life.

They didn’t just say, “Hey, no boys,” although that was part of it, “no more this, no more that.” They said, “No, no. The first thing you need is for your heart to be filled with truth.” And slowly that began to transform Carla’s mind, and it was basically Scripture verse by Scripture verse, as this mom told me.

And as her heart was transformed, she began to see how her lifestyle had impacted her daughter.

Carla: Even though she had seen me date in the past, I made a decision to stop dating entirely so that I could be an example for her.

I was a full-time cosmetologist and the sole breadwinner for my family. But I felt like I had to get into her classroom to reinforce the need for her to respect authority and submit. I took a job with a cosmetic sales company so that I could work from home and volunteer at her school.

Dannah: So this mom took some radical actions. She decided to stop dating, even though in her heart, she wanted to be married. She wanted a father for her daughter. But she felt like she needed to demonstrate a different lifestyle and pattern.

She quit her job. She managed to be the breadwinner for her family by having a job at home, primarily so she could go into her daughter’s school, volunteer, and help her with that submission and obedience problem.

Nancy: These are really radical steps she was taking. It was her radical obedience and desire to pursue Christ and truth passionately that were necessary in order for her to see God do a work in her daughter’s life.

Dannah: Yes, absolutely, and she knew that. These weren’t decisions made out of legalism. They were truly, “I need You to rescue my daughter, God, and I’m going to go with You to rescue her.”

Nancy: She needed her own heart rescued, and that’s what God was doing. So the focus wasn’t just on, “What do I do to rescue my daughter?” but “What is God doing to rescue me?”

Dannah: Yes, exactly. And He was at work in both of their lives.

While that sweet single mom was not dating anyone, that Christian boy whom she’d dated in high school heard that Carla had come to know Christ and that her life was changing. He took a great risk, and he corresponded with her and said, “I’ve loved you forever. I still love you. Is there any chance that this could . . .”

They began to correspond. The pastor and his wife were carefully mentoring. There were lots of decisions about, “Is this good for my daughter? Is it the right time?”

And here’s what blew me away, Nancy, this is why the story stands out to me: Carla was getting married that coming Saturday, but she was sitting with me at a focus group to talk about lies girls believe. And I said, “What are you doing here?”

And this is what she told me: “Because I’m free.”

Carla: I’m totally free from the sin that had a hold on my life, and I want other moms to know that they can be free, too. It may take some drastic decisions, but they can be free. And their freedom will dramatically increase their daughter’s ability to walk in truth.

Nancy: Wow. I think we need to be quick to say that not every story has that kind of fairy-tale ending—although, that was a long journey and process that God had her on. We look at the ending, and we say, “Wow! That turned out really well.”

But that mom had to make some tough decisions. She had to not just focus on her daughter’s obedience and following Christ, but saying, “What is God saying to me?” And the change that came about in her daughter’s life, ultimately, was the fruit of the change that God brought about in her own life.

Dannah: Beautiful. Yes. And that sweet girl I met, she wasn’t boy crazy. She was God crazy. I couldn’t imagine this sweet, compliant girl being disobedient and having troubles with submission. And Carla said, “Listen, you’re witnessing, you’re seeing a miracle. This is not the little girl I had a few years ago.”

Nancy: This is how God intends us to pass truth on from one generation to the next—not just telling them what’s true, but us living out truth and obedience to God’s Word and walking with Him. That then creates a hunger, a thirst, an appetite in the lives of those that we’re responsible to lead.

So, Mom, you’re leading your daughter to truth. You’re not just telling her the truth. You’re modeling truth—or believing lies.

Dannah: And modeling that.

Nancy: And modeling that.

Dannah: In many ways, don’t you think, Nancy, truth is better caught than taught?

Nancy: Absolutely. We see it. And I’ll tell you this: Those who follow us, they sense when we’re saying something that’s different than what we’re living. Even if they may not know the words to this, they’re looking for integrity. They’re looking for authenticity. They’re looking for our lives to match our message.

Dannah: I think children are little lie detectors. (laughter)

Nancy: Yes. Right.

Dannah: They really are, and they know when what you’re telling them is not what you truly believe.

That’s why I felt like it was so important in A Mom’s Guide to Lies Girls Believe to outline what I think are the three most common lies the focus groups revealed that moms were believing. And I have to confess that I was a little convicted when I was beginning to see them manifest in women. While I was pointing my finger at them, I realized there’s a whole bunch of fingers pointing back at me.

Nancy: So let’s dive into one of those lies that, Dannah, you found commonly believed by moms—and there are actually two sides of this lie. Some tend to believe more one side, and some tend to believe more the other side. You might say it this way: “I can control how my kids turn out. If I do this right, if I teach them this, if I have the right formula, then my kids are going to believe the right things; they’re going to turn out right.”

Now, an opposite side of that lie would be: The kids turn out in a way that’s disappointing, and you say, “I have no control over that. I can’t influence. I have nothing to do with the way my kids turn out.”

I think the enemy can get us trapped and discouraged if we go in either one of those directions.

Dannah: Oh, yes. And some moms might believe one or the other. But I felt like a ping pong ball in a ping pong match sometimes going back and forth between them.

There were times when I felt like I deserved a “Mother-of-the-Year” award for what a great Christian mom I was. And I’m doing all the things—the Awana, the Bible memory, the plant the truth, plant the truth. And I had it all together.

And then, at times, I was comatose. I literally felt comatose when my children would face a dilemma or make a decision that I knew was not in alignment with Scripture, especially as they became tweens and teens—this sense that, “I can’t do anything about that. There’s nothing I can do to stop it, and I can’t change it.”

The word “comatose” is actually interesting because that’s how I would describe how I felt, and that word “comatose” is actually interesting because that’s the best word I could use to describe how I felt. And that word kept coming up in these focus groups as moms were describing their experiences.

Nancy: I think it’s interesting—both of those come out of a sense of self-protection and pride. Feeling, first of all, “If I’m doing this and this and this, then I’m going to have a certain guaranteed outcome. If my kids turn out great, then I can take any credit for it.” We wouldn’t say that, but it’s feeling the sense of self-satisfaction that we did something right, and it turned out okay.

But then you experience that frustration, that sense of helplessness, that, “No matter what I do, it doesn’t seem to influence the outcome.”

And when it comes down to it, this is for moms, dads, grandparents, this is a walk of humility. It’s a walk of faith.

You realize there’s no formula. There’s no one-to-one correspondence. You have in the Scriptures illustrations of godly parents who had ungodly children. You have ungodly parents who had godly children. And we can all think of illustrations of those. Scripture doesn’t always tell us, “This is why. They did this wrong, so their kids turned out bad,” or “They did this right, so their kids turned out right.”

It’s all, all grace, and it’s Christ.

The goal of parenting . . . and you’ve taught me so much about this, Dannah, as I’ve watched you walk through things with your kids. The goal isn’t that we do this perfectly. The goal is that we show the gospel to our kids and to those who are learning from us. We show them we do blow it. We don’t do it perfectly. We’re not God. We’re not the Savior. We do sin. And we need grace. And we need the gospel.

I think it’s more impacting on these kids to see their parents fail and get to the cross in humility, to get God’s grace, than it is to say, “Oh, my parents never blew it.”

Dannah: Oh, yes. Bob and I sure could never say we never blew it as parents. We were very mindful of how broken we were.

What comes to my mind is how God didn’t control Adam and Eve. He didn’t choose to control them. He gave them the choice so that the behavioral decisions they made were real. They were from deep inside of them.

Nancy: He could have. He wanted to be loved. And He didn’t want paid lovers, or forced lovers.

Dannah: He could have built a moat around that tree. Right?

Nancy: Sure.

Dannah: Or He could have made it not bear fruit. He wanted to direct them, or He wouldn’t have told them, “Hey, don’t eat from that tree because you will surely die the minute you do.” So there were boundaries, and yet He gave them the choice to obey and submit or not to.

And when we act as moms, “Oh, I’m in control.” Wow! We’re better than God because He gave them the opportunity to choose to walk with Him.

Nancy: Or to walk away.

Dannah: Or to walk away.

When I think about parents and children, controlling or not controlling, and walking away, I think of Eli the priest.

His children were out of control. They weren’t under anybody’s control—not even, I think, their own self-discipline. God isn’t angry at Eli because his children weren’t perfect. He is, it seems in Scripture, addressing the fact that Eli didn’t try to do anything to address their sin and ill behavior.

Nancy: It seems like he was complacent as a parent. He had his walk with God, but he didn’t, Scripture says, discipline his children. He didn’t rein them in. He didn’t challenge them or confront them when they sinned. So the point wasn’t that he couldn’t make his children godly. The point was that he was being complacent and not providing the leadership they needed.

So really, we’re just stressing the importance of parents being intentional.

Of parents saying, “This is not a formula. I’m not determining how my kids turn out one way or the other, but I still need to model godliness to them.”

And, as mothers—biological, adoptive, spiritual moms—we can’t be prideful, thinking, If we do it this way then we’re going to have great kids.

And we can’t be complacent saying, “They’re going to turn out the way they’re going to turn out.”

We need to be intentional about planting truth in their hearts. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that—and, Dannah, you and I have talked about this. I am mystified at times as I watch parents who seem to be not intentional about establishing any boundaries around their children. I’ve watched some of the choices their kids are making—and I’m talking girls, young teens, not adult kids. That’s a different set of circumstances.

But I’m thinking, Does that mom, does that dad realize that they may be setting their child up for failure and hurt and pain by a lack of establishing boundaries that that child needs, that child that doesn’t have the maturity, the wisdom to establish on their own?

Dannah: Yes. We see that modeled in the Garden where God gives Adam and Eve those boundaries. It’s a healthy thing. The opposite of this lie is that, “I can’t control. I’m not in control.” The opposite isn’t, “Yes, you should control them or you shouldn’t try.” You should set boundaries. You should establish boundaries, godly boundaries that help protect them, help them learn to live inside of truth.

But, ultimately, it’s God who’s in control of those children, and it’s your children who have been given the choice.

Nancy: The Spirit of God has to open their eyes and make them desire Christ as the supreme treasure, the One they want to follow. And that’s why, maybe a mom’s greatest ministry in her daughter’s life is prayer. “Lord, would You move by Your Spirit in her heart.”

Earlier today you and I were interacting on social media with a woman who was expressing concern about a sixteen-year-old girl who was engaged in some really dangerous, destructive behavior. And the mom wanted to know, “What book can I give her to read?”

And we said, “Let’s start by praying. Let’s turn to the Lord who is the only One who can really open this girl’s eyes and give her a sense of the preciousness of Christ and the desirability of Christ and can bring her out of the lies and deception.”

Dannah: A book might outline rules and boundaries, but what that girl really needs is relationship.

The Bible tells us that God walked with Adam and Eve. Can you imagine? God walked with them in the cool of the Garden.

Nancy: That’s what you’re inviting moms to do with their daughters as you wrote Lies Girls Believe for tween girls, ages eight to twelve, but then this Mom’s Guide. You’re helping moms to fulfill their responsibility to plant seeds of truth in their children without feeling the weight and the burden of, “It’s all up to me how my kids turn out.”

Dannah: Yes, or, “I can’t help it.”

I think the goal in there is not restraining their behavior but having relationship with them that helps them understand what the truth is. That’s what we see modeled in the Garden of Eden. God walked with them. He had relationship. He did not restrain them. He told them what the boundaries were, but He walked with them so they understood His love and the relationship they could have with them.

Nancy: He asked them questions. He listened to their answers. And I think this is what is sometimes hard in the whole parenting thing, to know when is the time to just give directive—do this or don’t do that. Sometimes that needs to happen.

Dannah: Sometimes that’s real efficient. “Don’t do that. You’re going to die. Don’t walk across this eighteen-lane highway. You’re going to die.”

We want to do that same urgent thing with some of these moral issues that our kids are facing today because we know the danger. But if you don’t take time to explain to that toddler what will happen while you’re telling them, “Don’t run across the road,” they’re never going to, ultimately, not run across the road when you’re not around. We have to do the same things with moral boundaries: Why. What’s the danger. What’s going to happen. But then set them free, with God’s Spirit to choose to walk with Him.

Nancy: Oh, Dannah, I think moms, and ultimately their daughters, are going to be so helped by these two resources that you’ve written. I had the joy of being involved in the editorial process with them, so I’m very familiar with them. And you piggybacked off of the things that we taught in Lies Women Believe and Lies Young Women Believe that we coauthored.

Dannah: As we mentioned earlier, you can get a copy of Lies Girls Believe with your gift of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. But if you’d like to get the entire series of Lies books, you can upgrade your gift to $70 or more and receive them all. That includes: Lies Women Believe, Lies Young Women Believe, Lies Men Believe, and the book we’ve been talking about today—Lies Girls Believe along with the Mom’s Guide. Just ask for your copy, or the whole family, today when you call us at 1-800-569-5959, or visit us at ReviveOurHearts.com.

While you’re there, check out the downloadable listener’s guide for the "Heaven Rules" series Nancy will be starting next week. You’ll find a link to it in the transcript of this program.

Now, when you think about topics like sex, gender identity, eating disorders, depression, social media, how do you know when it’s the right time to address those subjects with your girls? And you may be thinking, I think eight- to twelve-year-olds are a little young to be talking about some of those topics. Well, we’re going to discuss that challenging question on the next Revive Our Hearts. I hope you’ll be back.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is helping you be set free by calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.  

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