Training the Next Generation

Leslie Basham: Missy Schrader’s daughter learned how to dress herself years ago, but she still needs her mom’s input.

Missy Schrader: So they have an outfit on, and I can say, “What do you think about that? Do you think that’s modest? When you raise your arms, I can see your stomach. Is that the best choice for you to wear that to school?”

Leslie Basham: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, July 19.

Moms have so many practical questions. How much TV should I let my kids watch? What clothing is appropriate? Which friends will be good influences?

Today, get the kind of practical advice you need as a mom. Nancy’s talking with a couple of generations of godly women—Missy Schrader and Julie Tassy—and we’ll start with their mom, Bobbie Wolgemuth.

Bobbie Wolgemuth: One of the roles I have as a mom is to help my children identify their feelings, to validate their feelings, and then move them in the direction of the proper use of their feelings.

Righteousness is doing the right thing at the right time with the right person for the right reason. Anything short of that is missing the mark and is not God’s will.

So it could be a great guy but the wrong time in your life. It could be you’re motivated by the wrong thing. “You just like him because he’s cute.”

There was another thing we did a lot. I had a passion for purity for Missy and Julie because I knew how important it was. I knew how it felt to be married and to have only had sex with my husband and nobody else. I knew how important that was, and I wanted to give that gift to them.

So I told them my story, or I would tell them a story about someone I knew in their spiritual journey. In the same way, it’s fair for a mom, in a protected environment with her daughters, to tell purity stories—people we admire who have been married for a long time or were pure when they got married.

It was interesting. At both of the girls’ weddings, people came to me and said, “There was something about this wedding. We can’t quite identify it, but there was such a sparkle.”

Julie walked down the aisle to “Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart.” Missy walked down the aisle to the hymn, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.”

There was reason for that sparkle. These girls and their husbands were able to walk to the altar with that purity. There is no other gift I would rather have my children experience than that.

At the same time, because they had friends that had given up their purity when they were maybe in high school, we tried to encourage them that God allows you to start over.

That’s the beauty of the gospel. You can start over again pure, as white as snow, because Jesus washes you clean. So there is new purity.

I do believe we need to encourage young people that have gone through abortions or that have faced promiscuity: They can have restorative purity.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: For moms who are listening and saying, “Well, Bobbie, that’s nice that you had this great story to share with your daughters, but I didn’t. I blew it. I was not pure before I got married,” some of our listeners may be saying. That’s a story too.

I’ve encouraged moms over the years, “You know what? You need to share out of your failures, too. At the right time, in the right setting, talk about the consequences of wrong choices and how you want to see your daughters experience something different and better than what you did.”

Bobbie: What’s interesting now, and what I’m hearing from young moms is, it’s very young children. They’re in sixth grade and seventh grade. They’re hearing a lot about impurity.

Nancy: A lot younger than that.

Bobbie: Yes, so I think we probably need to address it. Missy has grade school kids, so she’s probably aware of this more.

Nancy: That training does need to start early. Missy and Julie, I know you desire for your children to be able to have that sparkle at their wedding. What are some of the things you’re doing now to plant those seeds of purity in the lives of your sons and daughters?

Missy Schrader: Well, we’re talking about it, that’s for sure. I think what I am wanting very much to foster in our family is open lines of communication in this area, so that it’s not this huge, big thing that you make “THE TALK.”

But if someone has a question, you answer the question. And if that’s not quite enough, if they need a little bit more, then you give them a little bit more, and it’s not such a huge deal.

That’s what Mom did really, really well. We had a question, she answered it. No big deal. It was part of life. It wasn’t this, “We’ll answer that later. I don’t want to talk about that right now,” making this huge, “Ooh, I wonder what that’s all about!” Just kind of the mystery.

Nancy: The intrigue of the forbidden.

Missy: Yes. Abby is older, so we’ve talked a lot more than I have with the boys. But the image that I have tried to convey to her is that she is a gift—that she will be able to give herself as a gift to someone someday, and that gift needs to be saved and preserved. I think that’s kind of where we are at this point.

Julie Tassy: I have a four-year-old and a five-year-old. Right now I want them to understand that God made their bodies; that they are fearfully and wonderfully made; that they’re not their own; that they belong to the Lord.

Again, we want them to see healthy affection, for them to see my husband and me hug, for them to see us “smooch,” as we say in our family; and for them to have in their minds, “I want that.”

Maybe one of the most powerful things we can do as mothers is to ask the Lord to give us an amazing love for our husbands that our kids can watch and say, “I want that, and I’m willing to wait. I’m willing to say no to myself and to be self-controlled and to be wise so that I can have that.”

Missy: The girls’ issue for us that we talk about is modesty. If they really are keeping themselves as a gift, then they need to keep their bodies wrapped. Wrapped in a turtleneck and earmuffs? No. But we actually have gone through a little devotional together that was specifically about modesty that once again brought up the conversation.

So they have an outfit on, and I can say, “What do you think about that? Do you think that’s modest? When you raise your arms, I can see your stomach. Is that the best choice for you to wear to school?”

Nancy: The Lord has put this burden on our hearts at Revive Our Hearts, to be providing resources for moms to be training their sons and daughters in purity. As you’re talking, I’m thinking about some resources we’ve had a part in developing.

One is a little booklet called Does God Really Care What I Wear? on modesty for pre-teen and teenage girls. It’s something moms can discuss with their daughters.

Then there’s a set of resources we’re very excited about. You’ve heard us talk about it on Revive Our Hearts before. It’s a book for little girls called The Princess and the Kiss, and a companion study guide that goes with that, Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss.

The book for little boys is called The Squire and the Scroll, and there’s a life lessons book that goes with that as well.

I want to encourage you to go to ReviveOurHearts.com and find out more about these resources. We also have Pure in Heart conferences for moms who are wanting to teach their children how to be pure, and for moms who want to learn how to use these and other resources.

Bobbie, as a grandmother now, and Missy and Julie as young moms, let me ask you about how you have handled the issue of things your kids are exposed to through entertainment, movies, television, music. What’s been your philosophy and approach to that?

Bobbie: Things have changed so much. I’m going to say what happened with Missy and Julie, who are now in their thirties. The main issue we had when they were young was music. Television wasn’t that big of a deal, because they grew up with Little House on the Prairie, and the shows were pretty decent back then.

The music—when they went to bed at night, if they had music on in their room, we required that it was either classical or some kind of inspirational, but not the top rock songs or something like that. I feel like the music was very important to us.

Now Missy and Julie and the generation that has teenagers now, you all are dealing with a lot of other technology that’s bringing stuff into your kids’ heads, and I don’t know. How are you dealing with that?

Missy: We’re in a very protected environment, and we’re not ashamed of that right now. The parents at our school—we’re in a very small school—we kind of all see eye to eye on that. We’re still quite protective of what they see and hear and what influences them. The teachers really discourage talking about any movie or anything they have seen, just so that it’s not a point of distraction.

The movies that we see, I always go check on a Christian website to see the review of it and see if it’s gotten a good review before we watch it. If there is anything questionable, then we always talk about it.

But questionable would maybe be, there’s a kiss in it. It’s not like I would ever have them be exposed to anything . . .

Julie: I remember a movie that my kids saw had “shut up” in it. And I heard Harper say, “Shut up.” My five-year-old!

I said, “Excuse me.”

She said, “Oh, I wasn’t talking to anybody. It’s just in that movie.”

I said, “Well, just because it’s in a movie doesn’t mean you’re allowed to repeat it.”

They’re going to hear things from neighbors, even from kids at church. There are different standards in different homes, and just because they hear it doesn’t mean it’s worthy of repeating.

I think that’s something to encourage our kids to say, “Let’s think about this when we hear anyone say it, and let’s let the Word of God be the standard that we take everything to. ‘Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth’ [see Eph. 4:29]. How does what you hear in a movie or what your friend or neighbor say measure up with the Word of God?”

Nancy: What I hear in you younger women, parents, and Bobbie also as you were mothering, is that you’re not just letting your children get raised. You’re not letting the world raise your children. You’re being intentional and saying, “We want to fill their hearts and minds with the Word of God, with that which is pure and true and lovely [see Phil. 4:8], so they come to have an appetite for the things that are wholesome.”

I’ve found that as I was growing up in a home that was very protected in terms of outside influences—not in any sort of spiritual superiority sort of way, but those were just not things that came into our home. There was not a lot of the outside culture brought into our home.

Some people thought that was maybe not the right way to bring up children. But that’s the way my parents felt God wanted for our family. I found that by the time I got to college . . .

When I was a junior in college, I transferred out to the University of Southern California, at the age of seventeen. I had been in this very protected, godly environment, and now I was on a coast, a continent away from my family and really could have done whatever I wanted to do, in a sense.

But there was already this deeply ingrained love for things that were holy and good and true. I found that those things I got exposed to all of a sudden out there in southern California were not alluring to me.

Now, I’m not saying that sin is never tempting to me; it is. But I found that the culture just didn’t have the sparkle to me that the things of God did. I think it’s because of the huge exposure to the Word of God and to the reality of the Christian faith that I found very attractive.

That sounds like what you’re seeking to do with your children.

Missy: I would rather my children be imagining and playing, having some play or dressing up, or I would rather be reading to them or playing a game with them. That’s always more fun than sitting in front of a TV or a computer anyway. That’s always my choice.

They want to play the computer, so we have a boundary. If they want to do a game on the computer, it's for just a short amount of time. But it seems if they do watch TV or play the computer, they almost get grumpy because their minds kind of turn off.

So I love it when I see them imagining and playing.

Julie: I say to my children, “Your brains will turn to mush if you watch TV, especially in the morning.”

Nancy: Now I know both of you gals, and Bobbie as a mother years ago, have made some choices about the priority of being a wife and a mother and a maker of the home. You’re all bright, intelligent, capable, gifted women who could have had careers of your own apart from your family.

But you’ve made some choices in different ways to focus those energies on your home, on your husband and your children during those child-rearing years. Has that been a tough choice? It’s one that really runs counter to the world. What has prompted you to make those kinds of choices?

Julie: I want to be very careful not to project myself as having figured this one out. I would say daily it’s a struggle for me. I never would have thought of myself as a career woman, but I am an entrepreneur, and I have a business idea a day of something I could do, something I’d love to do.

It is constantly there. And maybe it’s the “thorn in the flesh” that Paul talks about [see 2 Cor. 12:7].

Nancy: “It” being the desire . . .

Julie: The desire to run a company, to start a business, to go to work, to be successful in the world’s eyes.

Nancy: And you could do all of those things.

Julie: Well, I don’t know; I guess so. But it is a constant battle.

I’ll tell you when I realize how much it’s worth it to stay home and to be a wife and a mom. Just recently I’ve had a very tough time wanting to spread my wings. I talked to a girlfriend who is pregnant and working. This is her first baby.

She said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. My husband doesn’t want me to work after the baby’s born.” Then she got tears in her eyes. She said, “I don’t want to lose myself.”

I wanted to just cry with her, and I did. I thought, Well, that’s kind of what this whole thing is all about. You do lose yourself. And you say, “Lord, take away all that is me that’s not of You, and fill me up with You.”

I know I’ll look back and be so grateful for every chance I took to invest in my children rather than investing my time in a business. I bet I’ll regret the moments when I chose to check my email rather than sit down and read a book.

That’s where we have to have God’s grace. We say, “Lord, thank You that Your mercies are new every morning.”

Nancy: Yet I’m sitting here thinking of what Jesus said—if you do lay down your life, you get it back [see Matt. 16:25]. How many women have said, “I want to hold onto my life, to preserve it—my interests, my fulfillment”?

Yet some of them are the women who are writing to us and saying, “I’ve lost my marriage. My children don’t have a heart for God.”

I’m not saying if a woman has a career outside the home, that necessarily means her marriage will fail or her children will fail. But I will say that if we hold onto our lives, Jesus says we will lose them.

He said if you lay it down—whatever that means, whatever that looks like in each season of life—then you will get it back. That’s the way of the cross—the resurrection does follow the crucifixion.

But there’s no resurrection without the crucifixion. There’s no gain without giving up.

Bobbie: Nancy, I’m sitting here realizing that I have the vantage point of looking back. It was hard. I mean, I’m tearing up with Julie because I was exactly in her stage when I had to make the same decision.

I wanted to be a singer. That’s what I was when Robert met me. At one point he even said, “I’ll quit my job and sit on the front row, and you go be the singer. That’s what you were doing when I met you.”

And I had two little girls, who sit here today because I said, “You know what? I don’t get a ‘do-over.’ I only get one chance at this. I want to be the kind of mom that, when I look back, I say, ‘Lord, I gave them what You needed. I fed Your lambs.’”

The most interesting thing—and I want to encourage young moms that are where Julie is right now—I’m fifty-seven. At age fifty I started art classes. I’ve done all these books and a music project since the girls are grown and have children of their own. It doesn’t mean that if you don’t do it in your 20s and 30s and 40s that you’re never going to do it.

Nancy: I know our listeners have been touched as they’ve listened to this conversation, as I have been. I just want to thank you, Julie and Missy and Bobbie, for your transparency, for the sparkle that is Christ in you, for sharing with our listeners. I know that’s brought encouragement and hope and challenge.

Bobbie, as the mom and grandmom here—the mom of these daughters and now the grandmom of those five precious children—I wonder if you would pray for moms and grandmoms who are listening? Ask God not only for His blessing but for wisdom and courage and faith and encouragement for all that is needed for them to be the women and the moms God wants them to be in this season.

Bobbie: I’d love to.

Father in heaven, we cling to You today. We look at You, and You’re high and lifted up and exalted. You are a good God, and You only give good gifts. I pray today for the moms, the grandmoms in the homes represented by this audience.

I thank you for each mom who, in her heart, knows that You love her, love her children. I pray You will speak to her today, speak wisdom and courage and hope into her heart. Fill her. Help her to know that You are enough.

I pray for grandmothers who are able to spark in the children and grandchildren a love and a passion for You. Thank You for grandmothers who love and adore and hold and read to the children. I thank You for grandmothers that are praying for their children.

I ask that You would give us Your grace in this land as we raise up godly children and as we establish firm foundations for homes; that You will give us Your mercy, Your grace, Your courage, Your wisdom, and the hope of all that is in Your eternal Word. We thank You in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Leslie Basham: Hearing from two generations of moms has been so helpful today. We've reminded us why it’s so important to stay engaged in the lives of our children. Our guests have been Bobbie Wolgemuth and her daughters Missy Schrader and Julie Tassy.

I need the kind of program we just heard. It’s solidly biblical and keeps me focused on things that really matter. If you appreciate this kind of teaching that feeds your soul and offers practical steps, you have a special group of people to thank.

Our Monthly Partner team has been praying for you and all the rest of our listeners. They pray that listeners’ hearts will be open, that Nancy would speak clearly, and that God would provide for this ministry.

Our friend Elizabeth Grattan spoke with one of these ministry partners to find out why they invest in Revive Our Hearts.

Elizabeth Grattan: Revive Our Hearts ministry partners are those committed to the mission of a counter-cultural message, and for many, partnership has become a very personal story. I spoke with Meta, who shares why she took the challenge.

Meta: First of all, it is knowing that a ministry like this cannot exist on thin air. Our foundations as a culture and even as a church are cracked. We need to repair that.

I see in Revive Our Hearts that on a daily basis they proclaim God’s might to the next generation. This is what I find in the teaching of Revive Our Hearts, and I’m very strongly committed to supporting what they stand for.

Elizabeth: There are countless testimonies of how Revive Our Hearts has touched so many lives. Meta shared hers with me after sustaining a physical setback. She found the teachings of Revive Our Hearts able to help her through this personal crisis.

Meta: Just how it spoke to my heart! I was like a dry sponge soaking up water. At the time of my injury, it was this teaching each day that brought me rest and has made me able to hang on to God where I needed to rather than pursuing what our culture or even our church people would have to say.

Elizabeth: Meta shared the difference partnership has made in her personal walk, and her involvement with Revive Our Hearts.

Meta: I feel like I’m part of that family of God, and I can stand together. It has so renewed my personal devotion. Also, by becoming part of the ministry, I get input from them on what to pray for their ministry.

They’re also very personal. It’s a bigger organization, but they connect with you. They’re very personal, and they make you feel like your little story or your concerns on the big board are just as important to them.

Elizabeth: For many like Meta, becoming a ministry partner is simply an act of gratitude.

Meta: Anything that we can do. We’re just so thankful that this ministry exists.

Leslie Basham: Will you find out more about becoming a Monthly partner? When you do, you’ll get regular updates from the ministry. We’ll send a copy of one of Nancy’s books. And you can come to one Revive Our Hearts conference each year at no cost. That includes Revive '13 this September and True Woman '14 next fall.

The easiest way to get details and sign up is by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com, or call 1-800-569-5959.  

On Monday, we’ll hear from a woman who received devastating news—her husband had been into pornography for years unbeknownst to her. Can a marriage be saved in a situation like that?  Hear the story Monday on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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