Rock Solid Families

Father's Day, 2022 - It's time we celebrate and encourage the dads in our lives.  Our culture is sick due to the void of healthy father figures in the home. If we want better, we must encourage and expect better from our dads.

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Being Christian is about loving people as Christ would love others.  It is about showing compassion and service to others.  It is also about choosing God's nature for mankind over man's nature for mankind.  This sounds easy until you find yourself in conflict with God's nature.  

The topic of Gay pride is becoming bigger and bigger with each passing year.  We now have the month of June dedicated as Gay Pride Month.  Should we be okay with this or does this contradict God's Word?  

During this show Linda and Merrill work hard to keep their opinions out of the conversation and rely on God's word to guide not just the conversation, but also the parenting of our children.  The pressure in our society to accept all things human is substantial.  We all have our sinful nature and none of us likes to be held accountable for it.  We would rather it not be called sin and even have it endorsed so we can live it without hesitation. As great as this sounds, God's nature is for a reason.  Whether  we like it or not, His word is not to be mocked or manipulated to fit our desires.  

As parents we must begin early in their upbringing to give them the tools to identify God's nature, their nature, and how to bring their nature to God's.  We cannot work the other way of attempting to bring God's nature to theirs.  This does not play well as there is only one God.  

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This show airs one week after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.  Yet another tragic story in the moral decline of the United States.  We look around and wonder, "why?"  Then we begin to seek answers.  We are waiting for some incredibly smart person to come up with the greatest idea, law, or proclamation that will end the evil.  Yet, to this point, we are empty handed. 

At the risk of sounding like we know more than what we really do, we attempt today to empower every family across this nation.  During today's show, Reducing the Risks, we discuss the known things that every family can begin to do today that will reduce the risks of these types of tragedies.  There is nothing magical about anything we suggest.  But everything we suggest has proven to reduce the risks of such societal illnesses we face.

If we can suggest one thing only, we would suggest that as parents we stop looking for outside solutions to inside problems.  Our societal problems largely stem from the brokenness of the home.  As bad as that sounds, it is actually not such a bad thing.  We actually have so much more control over what goes on in our homes than what goes on at the state and federal levels. 

In our homes let's start by recognizing that God is the authority of all life.  We must surrender to his way.  We can then learn from his way, that our marriages and kids must be cared for and valued.  A strong marriage will lead to a strong family.  A weak marriage will open the door for societal ills.

Outside of our homes we must learn to care for and  support the positive and God honoring values necessary for our communities, schools, and churches to thrive. 

Critical Assets is not a religious idea.  It is a proven secular idea from a great deal of study and research.  If we want to reduce the risks, we must realize what has been increasing the risks and begin to turn the tide.

http://rocksolidfamilies.org 

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What are you doing this summer?  Do you have your kids busy and attending camps and activities?  Or, are you kids going to be spending a lot of time sleeping in, watching television and playing video games?  

These are the kinds of questions that every family will encounter once the kids get out of school for summer.  Somewhere in the middle of these questions is a happy medium of work, fun, and relaxation.  During this show, Linda and Merrill talk about "anchor" activities that can help you and your kids have direction during the summer, but not necessarily being so over committed that there is no time for relaxation.

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Mental health has been slow to get the attention that so many other bodily health systems receive. We have regular check-ups to our dentist, dermatologist, hair salon, and general practitioner, but what about mental health?  When was the last time you went for a check up for your mental health?  

Mental health has shown its importance more in the past couple of years than ever before in recent history.  Between the daily stresses of life and then adding in things like Covid, the economy, and vastly different work and family conditions, we have seen people struggle to maintain their mental health.  Across the board we have seen an uptick in depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide.  All are symptoms of a less than healthy mental function that we call mental illness.  

Yes, as a nation we could stand to improve our mental health for the betterment of society, but how about we start in our own homes?  Let's start with ourselves and our family members.  What can we do to first and foremost, prevent mental illness? We often make things more difficult than they need to be.  Nature is always trying to seek a state of equilibrium of energy.  The same holds true with our personal lives.  What would equilibrium look like in our lives?  Maybe a little more calmness, or a better diet.  Maybe eating more healthy and improving our relationships with others.  Possibly building our faith and recognizing our little part in a much bigger world.  Mental health is something that when left unchecked can wreak havoc. 

During this show Linda and Merrill discuss the preventative measures for us to look at and begin to take control over the factors we have the ability to influence.  We do not have to be victims to every crisis that comes along.  We can step back and walk a slightly different path through the troubling waters of life in order to maintain our mental health.  

https://www.rocksolidfamilies.org

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Church hurt is a very real thing.  At one point or another most all of us can think of a time in which someone in our church or the direction of the church hurt us.  This can be devastating as we often give the church such permission to be part of our lives.  

During this show, Linda and Merrill discuss church hurt and how we can, one, prevent it, two, heal from it.  This may be a difficult topic for many, but avoidance and turning your back on the church can have longer lasting negative effects.  The church is not perfect as it is made up of fallen humans, but the church as a whole has the responsibility to shepherd the flock, to care for and help direct. When we lose touch with the church body we stand a greater chance of falling off course and losing the caring resources the church is there to provide.  

If you have fallen away from church, we can understand, but, we challenge you to re-evaluate and consider how you could become active in a healthy manner in a healthy church. 

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Many people are in a position to give others advice.  Whether a parent, teacher, coach, or boss, but that doesn't mean we are always ready to receive this well-intended advice.  In fact, many times when people are offering advice, we are quick to turn them off.  We don't see it as giving advice as we might see it as meddling in our business.  We often can feel like well- meaning people can overstep their bounds and attempt to insert their ways in to our ways.  When we experience this we can feel annoyed to the point that we would rather them be quiet and let us do our own thing.  What's worse is when you begin to recognize a pattern in these advice-giving people.  Every time you are around them they always seem to have something they want to insert into your life.

I have developed a word for this type of person, USAGER.  Unsolicited Advice Giver!  I know it is not that creative, but it works for me.  The question that we tackle during this show is how do we handle the usagers in our life? We know from being teachers, coaches, and parents that people do not always want your advice.  However, if they ask for advice, they are now ready to receive it and the usefulness of it is so much more effective.  People must take in information when they are ready to process it for themselves. 

Usagers almost always act out of good intention, but when it comes at the wrong time it can often be even more damaging than helpful.  It can begin to break a relationship or the respect between two people. A common example might be a parent of an adult child that keeps trying to give advice to the adult child.  At some point, the adult child does not want the unsolicited advice and the relationship becomes strained. 

Setting boundaries on the usagers  in our lives is important for the relationship and protection of the value system that is personal to us. 

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In this day of throw away and replace we have found it more and more difficult to stick with things when they are not working well.  We quit on our jobs, our friendships, our fitness, our faith, and even our marriages.  We have the screaming of instant gratification yelling at every cell in our body. The question might be, "Should I ever give up? If so, when?" 

This can be a very difficult question.  Some will tell you to never give up and others will tell you that if something is not working, you're wasting valuable time sticking with it.  So, what is the right approach?  During this show Linda and Merrill discuss these questions that all of us have faced or will face. The answer is not always easy, but one thing we want to be sure of is to make sure we are running it through the eyes of God rather than the eyes of the world.  

The world gives us daily messages that speak to our desire for instant gratification.  Our microwave, drive through world, is all about taking care of our fleshly desires.  But what does God's word have to say about these things.  God's word speaks of such things as suffering  leading to perseverance and perseverance leads to character, and character leads to hope. (Romans 5:4)   If we truly want to see God work in our life we often need to build our perseverance and patience.  We frequently can't see the reason for something in the moment but when we look back we say things like, "now I can see what God was doing."  

We must not minimize the challenge that we all experience by working through our suffering.  But in the hardest of ways to comprehend, it is often that suffering that produces the  greatest gifts in our lives.  It is time that we stop robbing ourselves of the gifts God has for us. 

Contact us at: https://www.rocksolidfamilies.org

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When something is brand new does that make it better than something that is old?  At first thought we might think yes, but the older we get the more often we see that just because something is new does not mean it is better.  In today's show we get to learn more about this idea through one of the most notable parenting experts of our times.  During this show John Rosemond joins us to share his experiences, knowledge, and wisdom that he has gained through his years as a psychologist in the  area of parenting.

John began teaching parents in the 1970's and 80's.  When he first began he was doing what all the other psychologist were doing.  But he began to question what he was actually saying to parents.  In fact, he began studying and observing what he and his colleagues were saying and realizing that they truly were not helping parents and children like they thought they were.   This made him look back at his own experience of being parented and that of his peers.  He noticed that the methods, philosophies, and approaches to what they were instructing parents to do was vastly different than what he grew up with.  

John humbled himself and realized that maybe his grandma did know best.  He began to teach to the ways he knew had a proven track record for many past generations of parents and children.  He began to call on the authority of the parent and bring it back into the house.  Even though the word "authority" as a parent was becoming a bad word in the psychology world.  The more John did this the more he was seeing positive outcomes from his work compared to the negative outcomes from his colleagues. 

His colleagues were promoting a progressive postmodern approach to parenting that placed the child on equal authority ground as the parent.  The child knows what is best for themselves and we should allow them to live in such a way.  They promoted the ideas of relativism for truth and what is right or wrong.  They threw out anything that sounded old-fashioned or especially of the bible.  

As we now clearly see, the experiment has blown up in our faces.  Today's parents are afraid of their own children.  They are afraid they will hurt them, offend them, or possibly even oppress them. They question their parenting decisions to the point that they simply ask the child what would be best for them.  The selfish child inside everyone of us never has any reason to develop and mature, because it is being enabled to stay a child.  

We use terms like "entitled", "lazy", "narcissist",  and "immature" to describe many of the younger generations.  It is time for us to realize that we created and enabled this cancer in our culture.  The good news is this, we have the cure for this cancer.  The bad news is this, it is going to take a great deal of work on our parts as parents to right our wrongs.  

John was so gracious in his words and encouragement to us in our work.  We hope you take his wisdom and begin to apply it to your own family.  Your kids will win, but even better, so will everyone else. 

John Rosemond - https://www.rosemond.com

Rock Solid Families - https://www.rocksolidfamilies.org

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Most of us would look at a mouse in our house as an undesirable thing.  We may think of him as an unwelcome intruder.  Besides just being a little creepy, he could cause damage, make a mess, and worst of all, help make many more mice that could intrude into your house.  It's hard to imagine that many of us would intentionally allow the mouse in our house with an open invite.  Something about that just seems to go against common sense.  

This show begins by discussing the most famous of mice, Mickey Mouse.  In recent days, the creators and owners of Mickey have come under fire for using the platform of Mickey and his gang to infiltrate your house with a very selective message.  In particular, this is the message of promoting and exposing young children to the ideas and concepts of the LGBTQ community.  They openly have stated that they want to do this by creating characters in their productions that reflect or live in such a way.  The hope, as it seems, is to desensitize the next generation to the lifestyle of the LGBTQ community. Not only to promote acceptance for the current population of LGBTQ, but also to encourage those not yet clearly identified or even understanding the concept of the lifestyle.  

Using the "mouse in the house" metaphor, many parents are seeing Disney's latest promotion as just that, an intrusion by an undesired mouse.  Something that could cause damage or harm to their family.  They question the healthiness of the LGBTA lifestyle, especially for their own kids.  

During the show, Linda and Merrill state that they are not doing the show to create an argument on what is right or wrong.  They are promoting that all parents have a responsibility to protect and raise their children.  In order to do this, parents must intentionally identify what they deem harmful or dangerous.  The question is, how do you determine whether something or someone is harmful or dangerous.  This is the crux of the discussion.  Making an assumption, either way is irresponsible and potentially very harmful. Parents must determine how they are going to approach these issues what they will allow their children to be exposed to and then how to protect them from unwanted intruders.  

As for Christian parents, this is actually much easier than we often think it is.  We use God's word to help us determine what is harmful or healthy.  His word describes the nature by which God operates both in the natural world and the spiritual world.  The key here is to refer to God for making the decision as to whether the mouse is harmful or not.  Social pressures or media persuasion is not our authority. 

A key takeaway is the understanding that God hates sin but loves sinners.  All of us are sinners, no one is righteous.  We must not take personally the protection of our sin, but rather, we must desire to take personally the protection of our relationship with the nature of God. 

News on Disney - https://youtu.be/Mi6yBbCUp_w

Rock Solid Families - https://www.rocksolidfamilies.org/ 

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