(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Hey, how are you? I'm good thanks. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. So, Brother Jared, you have a 19-year-old son who's in a program as an apprentice to be an electrician, and this is something that I actually think a lot about because I have two sons. My oldest is 13, and I think a lot about how to help them be set up as young men to be able to have a good job, you know, to learn a skill, to get in some sort of a trade so that they can support a family in the future. What did you do to help your son prepare for that? Well, since, you know, since he was young, you know, a big, big part of raising our kids in general is that I wanted to instill in them a strong work ethic first. That's the foundation of everything, is the work ethic. It's giving them tasks, teaching them responsibilities, helping them to be, you know, diligent in their business as, you know, Proverbs 29 would say. Whatever that business is, when they're small, it's small business, cleaning garage chores, things like that, helping them pay attention to details, making sure they do a good job with things. If they start something, finish it and do it well. That's the foundation of everything. Yeah. And I like that because that's something I can put into practice right now. Right. You know, that's something we try to do in our home, make sure they're getting up early, make sure they're getting dressed for the day, make sure they're doing their chores, they're working hard around the house, outside of the house. Right. That structure, especially in a homeschool family, that structure is what you make it. Right. And it's good to have a good structure and teach them to work hard at everything that they do, you know, that they're given. But as far as the electrical trade, obviously I have, you know, background in that. So another nice thing about homeschooling is you get to see kids' strengths as they grow up and go through school. Right. And you can steer them towards technical education, even when they're starting in their preteens, you know. So from there, we helped him just find a path to, you know, what are the steps that you need to take to get into an apprenticeship. And it differs by state or trade and things like that. Right. And the doors that are there are actually very surprising how many there are at this point for these kids, especially kids that have that foundation. Right. That know how to, you know, know how to work hard and want to do things well, do a good job. Yeah. So good. So step one is kind of, of course, just instill a good work ethic in them. Right. And then as they get older, step two, try to see kind of what their aptitudes are, what they like, what they not like. And that's going to be a lot of just taking them to work with you, right. Having them work with you alongside you. And then they have to realize that they just need a plan. And that's something that people don't realize a lot of times, you know, people will look at someone and they'll say, Oh, you know, there's a guy that owns a business. So there's, there's a general contractor. There's, you know, a master electrician. And they think, you know, they kind of just got there, but really that's not the case. People have to plan to get there. Absolutely. They have to prepare for that. There was, there were several steps that we helped him learn that he had to take to get into this first door. And then the cool thing that happened after that is once he gets into that, that door of that first, you know, apprenticeship, now he's seeing doors that I don't even know the doors that he's seen. He's telling me now he's so as, as homeschool kids will become self starters in their education. He's now becoming a self starter in his career. So it's really cool to see them identifying all those different opportunities and taking advantage of them. So, and obviously, you know, I think sometimes as parents, especially as his dads, we want to take our 13 year old and say, well, here's the path you're going to take. And here's every step you're going to take, but we're not God. We can't do that. But when you teach a young man to work hard, doors will open for them, you know, and of course we do want them to learn, like the Bible says, to work with their hands, to go to work, learn a skill, learn a trade, even if they're not necessarily going to use that their whole lives, that's always something to fall back on. You know, it's always good to learn more, but you know, the truth is that they shine. You know, I think of, I think of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the, in the kingdom of Babylon, where Nebuchadnezzar said he found them 10 times better, you know, and I often, that's what I think, because I look at the young men in our church and that's what I think of, you know, they go to work. It's not very hard to shine in this, in this day and age. I mean, would you agree with that? Absolutely. Unfortunately, if you show up every day and work hard, you're going to be ahead of 90 plus percent of people out there at this point. It's a, it's a serious advantage for our kids though, even though it's a sad state of the next generation coming up, it's a serious advantage if you get these kids started right. Absolutely, yeah. Unfortunately for them, fortunately for us, right? Because, you know, when, when we're trying to raise kids that are, that are smart, they're hard workers, they've got good people skills, they can look their boss in the eye, they can shake his hand firmly, they can show up to work every day on time, work hard, not steal from the boss and all that. That's where the Nebuchadnezzars of this world say, I found you 10 times better when those doors begin to open up. And those things are taught, you know, to shake a man's hand and look him in the eye and all those, those are the details that a father and a mother need to teach their children. Yeah, great, great. Praise the Lord for that. So, you know, we've been talking about young men, but how about young ladies? You've got a daughter, I've got several daughters. What are the thoughts there as far as preparing them for the future? Well, it's the same thought from my perspective, and it's just as important because when you think about teaching your daughter to grow up and be, be diligent in her business, how detailed she is and her work ethic and her character that, that she grows up to have will define how your grandchildren are educated. Right. When you think about it that way. So there's a whole spectrum of homeschooling, you know, out there and, and a mother who is a hardworking, detailed mother that was raised with that ethic as a child will produce world-class education at home. Absolutely. And obviously the Bible teaches that, you know, God's will, you know, Paul said, I will, that the younger woman marry, bear children, guide the house. The Bible says they should be keepers at home. So I know our goal for our daughters, our desire is that they'll grow up to be these proverb 31 virtuous women, these great wives, these great mothers that they're stay at home. We don't have a desire for them to go be the CEO of some company or, you know, whatever, but what people don't realize is that being a stay-at-home mom requires a lot of skill. There's a lot of skill that goes into running a home. And then of course, educating children because we also believe in homeschooling. So those are all things we want to be preparing young ladies for. What are your thoughts as far as like having your 16 year old daughter just go work at some fast food place or something like that? Yeah, that's never going to happen for me. My daughter will stay home and she will learn the business of the home, which just because society has put a shadow on that or a dark cloud over that, we know as Bible believing Christians how important that role actually is. And it is the role. I mean, they are the ones that define the next generation and how well they do that job. It means so much to the family. They're the core of the family. We want to protect all our children. When it comes to our daughters, we definitely don't want to be sending them out into these environments where some be all these worldly young men that have different motives and different intentions and the things that we want for them. And then of course, we've got our young men, the young men we're raising. And when they're young, we want to shelter them as well, but we are wanting them to go out into the workforce. So how do we prepare them for that? Well, as we build their work ethic, we also build their spiritual strength when they're growing up and they get stronger and stronger and stronger as they're in church, they're in the Bible. It's great to see them grow up spiritually as you converse with them. And as they grow into teenagers, they become more of your spiritual equal, and you can see that strength building. And we also are very concerned about the environment our son went into. I'm always, whenever he has started a new job, I'm always asking him, what are the people like there? How's your boss? How do they speak? What's the language like in the workforce? Because there can be environments for a Christian teenager that I would just not want my son in. And we've been blessed so far to, he's just been gotten into a group of, not everyone's saved. Most of them are not saved, but they're good men that are working hard to support their family. And that's the kind of environment, if he's going to be around unsaved people, we want him spiritually strong and we want him working with decent people. I like that you mentioned that because obviously they're going to work with unsafe people. They're going to work with worldly people. We understand that, but I know you'd mentioned this to me before. When your son is in a program that has a purpose, has a goal for him to become a journeyman, electrician, certified electrician, then he's working with other young men, worldly, unsafe people that are on that same program. You are going to find a different level of unsafe young men there versus just the guys working out wherever doing whatever. They're men that they have goals. They're young men that also have similar goals. They also want to own a business and perfect their skill and things like that. So they all have that in common, even though they're not all saved. I mean, we're going to work with unsafe people and it's how we conduct ourselves around those environments. We talk to our son every day about these details and make sure that we don't want him in an environment that would hurt his spirituality and that would weaken him. And at the end of the day, they're going to get married. They're going to leave the home. At the end of the day, we have to be producing Joseph's that can be out in the world and they're going to walk with God even when nobody's forcing them to. So that's the goal. That's where we're heading. So what about college? Because you brought up that the world looks down upon young ladies being trained to stay home. The world would say, no, you got to send those girls to college and even young men, send them to college. And in some ways they even look down upon men that just work hard with their hands and plumbers, electricians, construction guys, or whatever. But what are your thoughts on college? Well, I mean, there's so much here. You went to college. First of all, yes, I have a four-year degree. Yes. The culture of it is the main problem. Sending your kids there to live in this worldly, wicked culture of fornication and drug and alcohol abuse and just abuse in general. They're teaching a worse worldview than the public school is teaching. And many of the leaders and the faculty at the college, they're just wicked people. To send your kids into that is ridiculous. Even from a financial perspective, you almost have to be a person that doesn't know how to do math to think that this is a good idea at this point as we see the college debt crisis that's happening with kids. And I'm not against education. People may look at me saying things that I'm not sending my kids to college. And many people have generalized that as by the time Garrett is done and is past his apprenticeship and into his journeyman, he will have the equivalent of a four-year or even five years of education past high school. It's incredibly tasking and difficult. And I'm for furthering education. I'm not for dumping them into the university system. And that's a good thing. I mean, that's a good thing for us to realize the devil has done a good job at tricking our society. He's intertwined these thoughts, training for a job with this worldly beer pong culture. Like these two have to go hand in hand and they don't. You can train your children. You can train a young man for the future, prepare them for the future for work and not have to be in a dorm with a bunch of worldly people and not have to be in this party environment. So that's a very good point. Then you brought up the financial aspect. A lot of these kids going to college are getting student loans and they're coming out with college degrees that really mean nothing. I mean, there's very few college degrees that you could even really justify as you need this and it's going to actually produce a job that's going to make you enough money to justify what you've spent. Exactly. Most of these degrees are kind of worthless. Right. But that's my point. People aren't thinking. People, they see the status quo and they're just following it off the cliff. And these poor kids are just saddled with this debt that you can't get away from and they have a degree that's worth nothing or they were lazy and unmotivated going into college and they come out of college with a degree and they're still lazy and unmotivated. I mean, what's the point? Now they have a bunch of debt and they're lazy and unmotivated. So it makes no sense to just a plain thinking person, but from a Christian perspective, it's absolutely insane. I agree. So imagine there's a 17-year-old kid, 18-year-old kid and he's trying to decide what to do. He's asking you and you have this leading Verity Baptist Church Fresno. You've got young men. You're helping them and make these decisions and all of that. What do you tell them? What's the advice? Well, the advice is that there's the trades out there. There's so many doors opening and the more young men that I send in this direction, the more doors they are finding that I didn't even know were there because the baby boomers have left the workforce and all the other young people have gone to college to do nothing for six, eight years and there's nobody to take over. So all these industries and these companies, they are just throwing opportunity out there and all you have to do is just look around or talk to somebody and they will literally pay you to teach you a trade, a skill that will take you into a job that will support your family or more. I mean, my goal for my kids is to have their own business and to be autonomous, but you have to know how to do something and these companies, these industries are training people and paying people to learn these things at this point. Yeah. Well, amen. Praise the Lord. I agree with all of that. Thank you.