Michelle Hill: It’s easy for parents to look around at a society that is increasingly hostile to Christianity and think, “Is my child (or are my children) going to be ready to face this?” Here’s Barbara Rainey.

Barbara Rainey: Relativism is the mode of the day and, “Believe whatever you want to believe and it doesn’t really matter. If that’s what you believe, that’s good for you.” And I think that parents don’t really know how to combat that with their children. If we, as parents, aren’t imparting the value of knowing the truth to our children, they may not be able to stand strong when the situation calls for it.

Michelle: Welcome to the Barbara Rainey Podcast from Ever Thine Home, where we’re dedicated to helping you experience God and His truth in your home. Thanks for listening!

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Michelle: If you’ve ever read Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, you know Alice enters a strange world where basic assumptions are not necessarily true. She has a bizarre conversation with Humpty Dumpty, who likes to define words however he pleases. It’s frustrating for Alice, it was funny to Lewis Carroll’s original audience, and it’s amazingly — well, relevant for us today.

In the 1990’s we thought it was shocking and sad when a president of the United States imitated Humpty Dumpty by saying, “It depends on what the definition of the word ‘is’ is.” Today, in the 2020’s, we feel like Alice as we bump into multitudes of words with reimagined meanings.

We do live in a strange world, but it's not new. Isaiah the prophet wrote centuries ago, “Truth has stumbled in the public squares.”

And YET, God has placed you here, in this moment in history, to accomplish His purposes. And to pass His truth on to coming generations. If you’re a parent or grandparent, you recognize this, even though it can be confusing to know how to prepare our children.

Some years back, Barbara wrote a series of devotionals specifically to help parents teach and lead their children. It’s the “Growing Together in…” series. They’re now out of print, but on today's episode she explains her thinking behind why she wrote them. And that motivation is never out of print!

Barbara: One of the things that motivated me to do these books for families is my own experience. When we were raising our kids, we had a ten-year age span between the youngest and the oldest. When the youngest was five, the oldest was 15. Finding some material that we could use with a five-year-old that also worked with a 15-year-old was impossible. There just wasn’t anything on the market.

I remember the few things that I did find when the youngest was a little bit past five—the one thing that seemed to connect with my kids the best were stories. The stories that I found that I could read to my kids that gave them inspiration, that provided role models for them, that helped them think differently about life; and it wasn’t just coming from Mom and Dad.

They’re inspirational to me, they’re challenging, they’re hopeful, and they all focus on Christ. I think that they will be very helpful to families as they try to inspire their kids to live for the Kingdom.

Dennis: It’s been fun to watch Barbara work on these books because she’ll say, “Come in here!”. “Let me tell you about this story.”

The thing that’s really fun in seeing her light up about this, is that it’s not just the story of heroism; but it’s that the story and the human life she’s reading about illustrates great principles of faith and of character that she wants to pass on to the next generation, and not merely our children and grandchildren, but she wants to see—

Barbara’s really got a heart that parents be equipped to be able to tell these stories, and then talk about faith in just a normal way with their children, and interact around it, and call parents to be instructing their children, “How to live the Christian life.”

Michelle: Barbara, stories and history have always been a great way to transmit truth to the next generation. Kids learn how they ought to act by hearing great stories, and by learning from historical examples.

Barbara: Exactly. I think—and all of us are that way. I don’t think it’s just children. I think adults are too. We think, “Oh, I remember hearing about this person; and if they can remain strong in the midst of what they faced, I can, too, because my situation is not as hard.” There’s something about having those role models, even if they’re not people that we know personally, even if it’s someone who lived 100 years ago or 500 years ago. It really gives us courage to keep going in the present tense by knowing the story of their life.

The idea is that these would be stories that could be read over and over. So if you’re going through a season in your family’s life, where your children are particularly gripey, you pull that book off the shelf and, “Let’s read about Corrie ten Boom again and how they gave thanks in every situation, including a flea-ridden barracks.” It will take your kids’ focus on what’s so terrible about my situation and remind them, “Oh, it’s not that bad. I need to give thanks.”

Dennis: What I’ve seen, is as Barbara’s emphasized this, I’ve become aware of how all of us have stories where God has worked in our lives and we’ve done things that were courageous or we’ve demonstrated an attitude of gratitude in the midst of tough circumstances. We have stories that we can pass on to our children and our grandchildren. But we’ve become such a fast-paced culture—just moving from one thing to the next and everything in front of a screen—to stop, and ponder, and say, “What stories do I have of God working in my life that I can transmit, share, and tell about what God did for me, and for Barbara and I together as a couple, and for our family? What can we pass on to our kids?”

I honestly believe the internet is stealing away from us some of these moments of being able to just sit by the fire and tell a good story; and tell a story of your own humanity, and your own failure, and how God redeemed the situation in spite of you. It’s all a part of, I think, of how we pass on our faith to our children and our grandchildren.

Michelle: You wrote Growing Together in Gratitude, then Growing Together in Courage, and again, they’re no longer available, sadly. But there were more character qualities you wanted to address. When you got done with gratitude and courage and you looked at your list, what bubbled to the top, and why?

Barbara: The one that bubbled to the top next for me was to collect a bunch of stories that talk about truth. For several reasons I felt like truth was an important one for me to write about and for families to read about.

I think truth is being challenged in our culture probably as never before. Relativism is the mode of the day. “Believe whatever you want to believe, and it doesn’t really matter. If that’s what you believe that’s good for you.” I think that parents don’t really know how to combat that with their children.

So I wanted to find some stories that talked about the importance of knowing the truth and the importance of acting on the truth because I think our kids are going to need to face those issues. We don’t know what’s around the corner. We don’t know what life will be like in 10 or 15 years. Our kids may need to literally stand on the truth for their very lives. If we, as parents, aren’t imparting the value of knowing the truth—absolute truth to our children—they may not be able to stand strong when the situation calls for it.

Michelle: You’re talking about something that goes beyond just teaching our kids not to tell lies.

Barbara: Yes, that’s right.

Michelle: You’re talking about your children understanding that there are certain things that are unchangeable, that are not determined by cultural tides, but are true from the beginning to the end, whether we embrace those as true or not; right?

Barbara: That’s exactly right. I think that understanding that there is a bedrock of truth to the universe that God put in place, and that’s found in His Word, and how we teach that to our kids is really, really important. So, when you read stories of people whose lives were changed by the truth or who acted on the truth and God intervened in remarkable ways, it gives credence to knowing it and you go, “Oh. There really is value in knowing the truth.” It can change lives. It can change the course of a person’s life forever. I think that will help parents have those conversations with their kids as they’re growing up.

Dennis: I just want our audience to pause for a moment and think about how important this is.

When God formed a nation, what did He start with? The Ten Commandments. He started with absolute true commandments from God to man. Why? Because forming a nation of imperfect people, you needed a standard. You need something to call them to.

I’m going to tell you. I think it’s no different today in building a family. You think about what families need today. They’re getting all kinds of false messages, lies coming from TV, from the internet, from music, from peers. If there’s ever been a time when families needed to return to the truth, it’s today.

I’m thinking of John, Chapter 1, which is speaking of Jesus. Verse 14 says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only son from the Father…” (Now listen to this—full of two things): “Full of grace and truth.” Really, truth makes grace necessary because there’s a standard. We are going to fail—so, we need grace.

But before you can talk about receiving grace and forgiveness, you first of all have to understand the truth of Scripture, the truth of God’s standards, the truth about God. To the average parent who is listening right now, this is a life and death issue for your family—to teach them and train them in truth, and to tell them great stories—great stories of people who embraced the truth, and it cost them. It cost them their lives. It may have cost them their families; but they still stood strong on behalf of the truth.

Barbara: And many of them were set free because they banked their lives on the truth. So it not only cost them, but it set them free. I think that’s the great hope of these stories.

Michelle: And we’ll be hearing some of those stories on upcoming episodes. Dennis, you mentioned John chapter 1, where it says that Jesus was full of grace AND truth. I’m thinking of John 14, where Jesus told His disciples, and specifically Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

That verse is one of the “I Am” statements of Jesus featured on our 2026 “I Am” poster calendar. Each month is a different name of Christ, and the artwork that goes with it is stunning. It’s a great way to get the truth of who Jesus is into your mind, your heart, your life, and your home. And to prompt conversations with children, too.

The I Am poster calendar from Ever Thine Home is available in our Etsy store. Quantities are limited, so order your calendar today. To get to our Etsy shop, just head to BarbaraRainey.substack.com, and click on the tab that says Etsy.

Well, we’ve talked today about the importance of stories for passing on truth. In the next episode Barbara will tell us one of those stories. We’ll hear about an amazing girl named Elizabeth, and how she learned to stand strong for the truth.

Barbara, from next episode: she went off chasing these soldiers, and she found her father, where they had left him after they had beaten him. He was lying on the ground somewhere near a ditch and was bleeding. It was apparent that he was probably not going to live. She got down on the ground next to him on her hands and knees and put her face down next to her daddy’s face, and she started talking to him.

Michelle: Barbara will tell us what this dying father said to his 11-year-old daughter, on the next episode of the Barbara Rainey Podcast.

That episode is available when you subscribe to Barbara’s Friends and Family. It’s only $5 a month. I’m part of the Friends and Family. Are you? Sign up at BarbaraRainey.substack.com.

I’m Michelle. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope you’ll subscribe and join us for more of the Barbara Rainey Podcast, from Ever Thine Home.