Passing a Biblical Worldview on to Your Children (E2)

0:00The evils of society can be depressing for parents and grandparents. Jeff Keaton provides perspective by reminding us that it's actually been worse before. I do come across Christians who are very pessimistic. It's more like maybe there's no hope for our children, not grandchildren, I say stop it. If there was hope for Noah's children, there's definitely hope for our children today. Welcome to the Reviver Hearts Podcast for September 30th, 2026. I'm Dan At Grash. Our host is the author of a dawn, Nancy DeMasse, welcome. If you're a parent of a younger child, if you ever imagined the day that he or she will become a mature, godly adult, now at times it may seem to you like, yeah, that's never going to happen. But you can dream, right? And if you ever looked at society and thought, wow, there's such a strong current threatening to sweep my child the wrong way.

1:03Parents can easily feel pangs of fear. What if my son goes off the rails or what if my daughter gets caught up in the devil's lies? And those are real concerns. Our guest today is Jeff Keaton and he wants to provide hope to you as a parent or grandparent. He says by God's grace, your child's story doesn't have to be a heartbreaking tragedy. And he's convinced that a big key is to help your child develop a biblical worldview, to think biblically about everything. On yesterday's program, Jeff defined a worldview as a person's core set of beliefs. Those beliefs inform the choices we make. So a biblical worldview is one that lines up with God's word. When we left off, Jeff was talking about the importance of parents being authentic. He also mentioned prayer and what an important weapon that is in our arsenal as we ask God to rescue and redeem the lives of these young ones.

2:06Now let's listen to part two of this conversation between Dana Grash and Jeff Keaton. You know, Jeff, I want to go back to when you were a child. Like who was praying and depositing truth into your heart? My beautiful mom and dad. My mom and dad got married at 17 and 18. I was their fourth child born on their fifth anniversary. Then they had five more children after me. So we had nine kids. My dad preached in 38 different countries of the world. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who tried to manage the chaos of nine children with a husband who traveled a lot. But my mom and dad, and man, they're alive today. I'm going to go take them out to dinner here in a few minutes. They're 81 years of age. By the way, we gave them 41 grandkids. And just in the last month, they've had their 84th great-grandchild born.

3:07Wow. You didn't give them that many grandchildren. All of the nine of you together. The nine kids, the nine kids, gave them 41 grandchildren. And 90 of us are in full-time vocational ministry. Wow. That includes moms and dads and kids right now. So eight of the nine kids in my family, I will say eight of us nine kids went into full-time vocational ministry for the last 30 plus years. We did have, I say this, to encourage people because sometimes people get a little bit enamored with a big family in the ministry. But we had one brother that went into full-time rebellion. And he served 24 years in US military. We're very proud of him. And today, he makes a profession of faith. He comes to church with us a lot. The bottom line is this. They were 100% sold out to Jesus. I don't like to overcomplicate it. Dr. Josh Mulvey Hill who leads our church and founded a visionate renownation is written incredible books like 50 things every child needs to know before leaving home. And when I read Josh's book, 50 things, he wrote it because I told him to because I saw some material he had.

4:12I go, Josh, I could have done a better job. You know, I didn't do it just like you do it. However, my parents didn't even have James Dobson. You know, they didn't have all these tools that people have today. But I'll tell you what they had. They were utterly sold out to Jesus Christ. Period. They loved him with all their heart. And there was no thought in their mind that any of us children would do anything but follow him with all of our hearts. So even though my dad was busy in ministry, he was masterful at taking us children with him. We were involved in all of his ministries in some form or fashion. And so my mom and dad, it was just everything was about Jesus and his kingdom on earth and eternity. That's all I can say. Yes, we had family devotions, but not every single night. We didn't have a real massive discipleship program. My dad would read the Bible. We would get on our knees and pray. But then just every moment of every day was discipleship to mom and dad.

5:14Not in some kind of weird way where we always felt like we couldn't have any fun or anything. It wasn't like that. It was just, I remember going down the road as a boy. And my dad would reach over and pat me on the leg and he would say, You are destined for leadership in the kingdom of God on earth. Don't you ever let the devil mess that up. Well, what did that do to a little boy's heart? I didn't know what that meant. But I felt like that I had a grand purpose in this world. And that's how my dad passed that on to me. And then just my dad preached the Syrian sermons. I never heard him complain one time about having to preach or prepare. It was his calling. It was the love of his heart in life. And so I'd say it was somewhat more caught from my parents than it was taught. We just saw them in action. And I will say this, modeling for parents, even though absolutely parents should be intentional about teaching their children at home.

6:14I'm going to tell you something. You can teach all you want to. But if your life is not authentic and you're not a good example, truly in the home, your words will be blown away by your example. Well, you're talking about sort of what God instructed to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6, which is this whole lifestyle of discipleship. I'm going to paraphrase, but it says, teach my commandments to your children when you walk, when you sit, when you stand, when you lie down. This isn't like quality time discipleship. This is every moment of every day you bump into your child. When this experience happens, you turn it into a discipleship moment. That's what you're talking about. It's all life, every day, modeling and teaching. That is one of the most powerful passages scripture for parents ever. I really loved Deuteronomy 6. And it's in another place or two, you know, in the Old Testament, the same words.

7:15Because one of the reasons why I actually ended up getting into education as a pastor was because I read that passage and I thought, how could we segment seven hours a day and say, okay, we're supposed to teach them God's truth all day long, except for those seven hours. And literally as a pastor thinking about how do you best disciple children, that's when I begin to get into this whole idea of the importance and the value of education because of that very command right there in Deuteronomy 6. Life changing. I want to talk to you about your family is a testimony of encouragement in a world that's pretty nutty right now. It's pretty crazy. There are some really radical identity issues alive and well in our world that, I mean, just for example, pronouns are they don't make sense. You know, at least let's find a singular pronoun to describe you if you don't like him or her, right?

8:17But not a plural pronoun like this doesn't, it's not logical. There's a lot of insanity I think in what's happening in our culture. But Noah raised a family through a culture that was so insane that God said, I just want to wipe you out. I can't even with you anymore. Yes. But then he finds Noah. And he finds one man and one family that he says, I have some hope here. So I guess Noah is sort of evidence, you say this in your book, that he's sort of evidence that it is possible to raise a family with a biblical world view in a world gone crazy. Can you talk to us about that? You know, I mean, think about it. How much harder do Noah have it than we do? I mean, we have the Bible, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. And obviously the Holy Spirit was working with Noah back then as well. But we have millions of Christians surrounding us in this world to encourage us and to help us and give us hope.

9:21So I mean, one of the reasons I like to focus on Noah is because I do come across Christians who are very pessimistic. It's more like maybe there's no hope for our children, our grandchildren, I say, stop it. If there was hope for Noah's children, there's definitely hope for our children today. So literally I just spoke in a church on Sunday and gave my speech on Noah called saving our children a world gone crazy. How did he do it? How did he do it? And I start off first of all, he did it because he was right with God. Yeah. I'm telling you right now, the hardest young person to reach with the truth of the gospel for me in 34 or five years a straight ministry now is that young person who lives in the home with Christian parents where one or both of them are inauthentic in their walk with Jesus. I'm telling you, my niece said to me, she's a pastor's wife down in Texas now and she said, Uncle Jeff, did you know there's seven kids from our church slash school setting my age and she was 32 or three at the time, she said, who are divorced already?

10:23I said, from our church and school, she said, yes, and we had hundreds and hundreds of kids. So I didn't even know. I said, name them for me. She named them six of the seven came from a home with one parent who was totally not walking with God. It was complete dysfunction. What I try to say to parents in my book is listen, first and foremost, before you think about how you're going to train your children, make sure you are in an intimate relationship with God. Yeah. Because you can't fake it to children. If you're not an intimate relationship with God, your desires will not be for the things of God and for the Lord Himself. And you'll have passions and desires that will lead your children astray. I talked to dads a lot about sports. You know, travel sports is dominating. Pastors and heads of schools tell me how to tell me all the time. You know, parents are literally taking their kids out of church. Two of one dad, he took his son out of church at 11 years age for 22 straight weeks to play travel baseball.

11:27When he was 11 and when the boy was 17, happened to be my brother's church. When the boy was 17, his dad had the audacity to come to our student ministry's pastor and say, there's something bad wrong with this student ministry because my son has no interest in church. Okay. So the bottom line is this, parents must be right with Jesus. They must have a right relationship with Jesus and live it authentically in the home. I like to say too, he saved his children because he knew God's plan for his family. God said, okay, to save your family, you got to stop whatever else you're doing and build this massive arc. Okay. Insane, right? How drastic. Yeah. I mean, how drastic is that? And you got to know, I believe God enough to do what he said. He knew what God's plan was for his family. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm a little bit old school. I didn't grow up with all of these thoughts. I've grown into all these thoughts as I've studied the Bible more. I believe Christian families are violating God's good design for the family. When it comes to the roles of husbands and wives.

12:29When it comes to, it troubles me. And I know there must be some circumstances where it's absolutely necessary. But it troubles me to see young mamas having the job. They're six week old babies off of daycares and go and do their job. And somebody else tried, you know, God wants parents to be the primary influences of their children to raise their children. The bottom line is, I think Christian families have to rediscover what is God's good design for the family, what are the roles of husbands and wives. And if we would re-adopt that, the crisis in America is the crisis of the breakdown of the family. That is the crisis. 75% of every person in prison basically grew up without a healthy father or grew up without a father. Why? Why does that happen? Because it's God's good design and you can't break God's laws without God's laws breaking society and breaking God's. So anyhow, that's another reason, you know, Noah said his family because he knew what God's plan was and he followed it 100%.

13:33He was willing to be different. I like to say that. If parents today are not willing to be different, your kid is going to become, you know, you mentioned devices or screens or something earlier. Let me tell you something. If we're not willing to buck the trends of our kids being locked into screens and devices all day every day, we're not going to raise healthy children who are going to fulfill their purpose in this world. And also we've got to not be locked in ourselves. Exactly. Absolutely. We all set the example. And it's hard. You know, we all live in this world. But in early 2026, there were a few landmark court cases, one in California, one in New Mexico, where the court found in favor of families who came up against the social media giants and creators and said, I think you knowingly damaged my child. And the court said, yes, they did know.

14:34They did know that they were creating addiction. They did know that they were manipulating the mental health of these children for the sake of their algorithm. And parents need to wake up and read about these court cases. In addition to that, there's just this constant ivy drip of untruthful things and false teachers in the name of Christianity, but they're not saying things that are true from scripture on those screens. And our children need to know that. And the way they're going to know that is by being so familiar with God's word that when they hear those things occasionally, they're like, that doesn't sound like it fits with the word of God. They agree with that, but they can't be constantly exposed to it and not be influenced by it and affected by it. Anything else about Noah stands out as an example for us as parents and grandparents. I am Stan God sovereign to you know this, but I've often wondered how hard it was for him to convince his three sons to follow him onto the ark.

15:45I'll let theologians argue over all that, but the point I like to make when I think of that is that we must win the hearts and minds of our children. My dad was a strong disciplinarian, but he was also filled with love. And I'm a strong, I was a strong disciplinarian with our daughters and I made them follow the rules, but I also was full of love towards them. Probably the coolest thing that happened for me was that showed me that I'd won their hearts and minds was they both went away out of state to college separately of three years apart. And I had said to them all through the years, I hope when you find a young man that you think you might want to date or marry, that you'll let your dad be involved in that. You know, because obviously they weren't going to do that before they were 18. I was very involved before that. And both of my daughters called me from college and said, Dad, there's a young man that wants to date me. Do you want to talk to him? And buddy thing is people laugh about it and I laugh about it, but I typed up a multi-page handout and I went and met with these boys and literally took them all the way through it.

16:56And you know, laid it out, started out saying, you know, God entrusted these girls to us. We only have one dream for them that they will know, love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ their entire lives. We realize who they marry is going to determine how well their lives go and if you marry my daughter, you're going to be the father of our grandchildren. And we want a godly man. And so I thought, you know, it's pretty cool. My oldest daughter, Juliana, who now lives on a 2000 acre farm with three boys and a little girl and just incredible woman. But a hard work in farmer's wife. She's tough. She's tough on her dad. She would challenge me. I'd preach at church. We'd be going home and say, Dad, I'm not sure if you actually live everything you just preached. Okay. So I was like, what you're kidding me? However, she trusted me enough to let me help her make that decision. And I didn't make the decision, but I've vetted those young men. And I've got two fantastic son-in-law now. So my point is this, and here's where I met with my grandsons right now, my grandchildren.

17:59I'm trying to win their hearts right now. So they'll give me access to their minds as I get older. And yes, I'm pumping stuff into their minds now. But when I take Marshall with me on a speaking trip, and my next one down four and a half year old Henry, he's begging to go, but he's a little bit of a corker. And I just can't take him. You want to have a question? On recent trips, Marshall. Yeah. Marshall wanted to set on the stage with me. When I'm speaking to hundreds of people. And you know what I did? I let him set on the stage with me. And he thought it was so cool. He behaved like an angel until he got a water bottle. And he started crinkling up a water bottle in my last speech. But I told him to stop. But I'm just, and then we go to Culver's ice cream, wherever he wants to go and get volcano ice cream, you know. But I'm trying to win his heart so that when that time he starts thinking really logically in middle school, that he and I can have them incredible discussions, you know, about world view, etc. So you're a man who's your pastor, you started a Christian school, you have a few decades of experience in world view here. Where does a parent start if they're like, I like what you're saying, but it sounds impossible. It sounds difficult.

19:13Like what resources and tools can we direct them to so that they can kind of digest this one step at a time. How do you present a biblical world view to your children? What tools do you use? Yeah. Well, our mission, the way we some of our mission at Renew Nation is to inspire and equip the family church and school to give the children in their care, a biblical world view. Because we've discovered that when you get the family church and school all teaching God's truth, that's a three stranded cord that is not easily broken in the life of a child. The reason we lost so many children in evangelical Christianity over the last 50 years is one or two of those were not teaching God's truth. Okay. So what I would say is, first of all, they need to evaluate, how are we doing in the home? Are we teaching our children God's truth? And some people, you know, it's sacking to me to find out how few Christian parents are actually setting down and simply reading the Bible with their children. So if somebody's listening today and you really haven't gotten started, you're teaching them basically don't do this because the Bible, you know, that's wrong.

20:18You know, you're doing your basic parenting. Here's where I say start. Literally at least three to five times a week, have a meal together in the home. Don't go out to eat, have a meal together in the home. After the meal, open the Bible up and read a brief passage that you know you can have a good discussion around and then let each one of your children, no matter how, you know, if they're super young, they can't, but as they get a little bit older, talk about that passage and what they understood it to me and then you make sure they have a clear understanding of it, answer any questions they might have and then you literally just pray. And I like to have every member of the family pray they don't to pray long, but if you get your children praying, they'll get very comfortable with it. And yes, when they're three years old, you know, my grandson Henry praise the funny prayer, one of his prayers, Lord helped me to be good.

21:18But Henry needs that prayer, because he's not always behaving well. But the point is people overcomplicate this. I dare people to read the Bible three to five times a week with your children and discuss it openly. Now, a mom and dad should kind of maybe read from passages that you want to lead your children into into notes, some teachings you want them to have. And so I say start there and then I would say make sure at your church that you're going to a church that's actually teaching God's truth and do not expect your church to teach your kids that much. And the reason I say this is a kid will tend school from kindergarten to 12th grade for 16,000 hours. If they go once a week from kindergarten to 12th grade to church, they'll go to church for 750 hours total. Okay. So the bottom line is a church does not have near enough time to truly disciple a child. This is why at Renew Nation, we have this online family ministry academy for church workers because we're trying to flip the paradigm away from what we call a trachional entertainment children and youth ministry to where churches are equipping parents and grandparents and inspiring them to train their children at home.

22:28That is critical. So let me just say a word to grandparents. Grandparents, you have an incredible responsibility and opportunity to shape the world view of your children and your grandchildren. I do not believe grandparents should get to 65 years old, move away 5,000 miles and see their grandkids twice a year. Now, sometimes that's in that happens. But the bottom line is is I think every grandparent has a role in the world view shaping of their grandchildren. So I would say just be simple at home. If you want some, you know, the resources we have, obviously my book, you read it. It's a why book. Why should we do this? So if you're not convinced of it, read my books, saving our children a world on great. That's what I call the starting point. But then we have a book that Josh Mulberry wrote 50 things every child needs to know before leaving home. It is an incredible resource. It's got a place to put their picture when they're baptized when they cooked their first meal when they get their drivers license. It's everything pretty much from inductive Bible study to small engineering repair. And really that came from Josh's parents. They set him down at 17 and said, Josh, when you were just a boy, we wrote down everything we wanted you to know. And they literally at 17, they pulled out an old sheet of paper slitted across the table. He didn't even know it existed.

23:40Yeah. And said, tell us how we did Josh. And what do we need to work on in the next year before you go to college? Josh and I were speaking at a conference in Minnesota. When I heard him tell that story for the first time and young couples lined up at our book table and asked one thing, where's the list Josh? And his mom had died suddenly when he was in his 20s. He didn't get a hard copy. But he was written on it hard. And I said to him that day, that is your next book. So that's a great resource. We have a primer on biblical world view. It's a book called biblical world view. What it is, what matters, how to shape the world view of the next generation. It's really simple. Parents can train their children out of that book. And then the last book I would say for grandparents is Josh wrote this. He wrote his PhD dissertation on the biblical role of grandparenting. What does God have to say about grandparenting? That's an incredible resource for grandparents. And it's a paradigm shifting book. So those are some of the things that we offer at Renew Nation. And obviously I speak around the country on this issue a lot. And so does Josh.

24:43We've been listening to Dana Gresh and Jeff Keaton hitting on some helpful parenting and grandparenting related topics. Jeff will be back in a moment to close our time in prayer. I hope you'll wait for that. And be sure to check out the links we've provided in the transcript of today's program at revive our hearts dot com links to the resources Jeff just mentioned as well as to the website of the organization Jeff leads. It's called Renew Nation. Oh Lord, do we need that? Yes. Well, can you believe it's the last day of September? That means it's the last day we'll be mentioning our newest six week study in the Women of the Bible series. Most of our women in the Bible study spend six weeks looking at the life of one woman in scripture. This one's different. You'll cover six different women over the course of those six weeks. My personal favorite is Mary, the mother of Jesus.

25:43But there's also the woman at the well, the Shunamite woman. Do you remember who she is? And more. The title of this study is devoted. And it's our thank you to you for your donation of any amount. You're giving help support not only this radio program and podcast, but also our global outreaches in other languages to contact us with your gift and to request the devoted study in the Women of the Bible series. Just go to ReviverHearts.com and select Donate. Again, that website is ReviverHearts.com or you can call us at 1-800-569-5959. Again, that's 1-800-569-5959. Tomorrow, we'll meditate on a series of passages from God's Word that point us to our Savior, Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God. I hope you'll tune in. Now, here's Dana with Jeff Keaton once more.

26:45We're so grateful that you could join us today and rev us up. This could be sort of considered a jumping off point for some of us to explore more about a biblical worldview and learn sometimes for probably some of you listening. It's just pushing the reset button on some things. And for others, you're just being refreshed and being told, yeah, you're on the right track. But I wonder if you might just take a moment, Jeff, and pray for the moms and grandma's listening that they might really understand the value of passing on a biblical worldview to their kids. Yes, amen. I'm delighted to do that. Dear Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to mothers and grandmothers, Lord. Their role is immensely valuable. And Lord, as I have two daughters who are raising young children right now, I know it's not easy. And there are days when every mother has wondered, am I doing a good job? Is this going to work out? Okay. And there are many days, Lord, when the house is a mess because the kids have been running around all day.

27:56And when they've got to get supper and they forgot to get stuff at the grocery store, that it's just kind of chaotic. And sometimes the devil slips in and says, what you're doing isn't working or it's not valuable. Oh, God, I pray for every mother who has been tempted to believe something like that. And I pray right now, Lord, that you would help them to understand that when they are nurturing a child, when they are loving a child, when they are teaching their children, when they are feeding their children, when they are changing their diapers, they are literally changing the world. They are literally changing the world. So encourage every mother that's listening today. And Lord, prevent the devil from convincing them, oh, you know, I'm not a perfect mom or I don't know how to raise kids perfectly. So I shouldn't even start. No. Lord, no one can raise a person's child like their own mother and their own grandmother. And so I pray for every mother and grandmother listening right now, empower them with your spirit, Lord, give them hope, encouragement because of what they're doing today and raising their children well. So bless them, encourage them, strengthen them, we pray, and Christ, amen.

29:06Amen. This program is a listener supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.