The Intentional Parents Podcast

Our culture is highly individualistic, but is this the way of the Kingdom? When we look at the early church in Acts, there is a marked difference in how they lived beyond themselves. They lived for their community and God. In today’s show, Phil+Diane and Brook+Elizabeth talk about three key elements to living a life counter to our culture and our natural desires. Enjoy!   Three Things to Live Beyo...

We probably all have experienced a poor apology or even given one. On today’s show Phil+Diane and Brook+Elizabeth all sit down to discuss what a good apology looks like. It is so much more than the words you say or don’t say, although they are important. They unpack God’s heart for forgiveness and how it goes hand in hand with apologies. They also go through the 5 steps to apologize from the book,...

A.J. Swoboda is back on the show today! A.J. and Brook sit down to talk and laugh about deep thoughts that are vulnerable and real. Their conversation gets into desires and how critical it is to live in a place of satisfaction in Christ. In this topic of desires, the conversation covers so many facets, from unwanted desires, practical desires, the balance of naming our desires and knowing when to...

Brook, Elizabeth, and Phil are here today to answer more of your questions. They cover three that range from how to align our bodies and emotions with the truth that our hearts already know, what true repentance looks like as a parent who wants to teach it to your children, and how to navigate church hurt. With each of these questions, they dive into scripture and practical wisdom that has helped...

Dallas Willard said it so well when he said, “Feelings are good servants, but they are disastrous masters.” We live in the “I feel, therefore I am” culture and no longer live in truth. In today’s show, we discuss how our emotions are tools given to us by God. God values emotions and feelings, but we must have them in the right order. We discuss how parenting is a space where emotions come up often...

Today’s show explores the question, What is God’s Heart with our capacity? Just because we are capable of something doesn’t mean we have the capacity for it. The questions we discuss in today’s show will challenge you in self-awareness to help you discover your gifts, your capacity in them, and the season in which God is asking you to use them. We dive deeper into more areas around this topic, lik...

We have Michael Handler, the Chief Innovation Officer at Awana, on today's show. Brook and Michael talked about becoming emotionally healthy and safe parents when this was not the model they grew up knowing. Michael reminds us that Christ is in the business of redeeming our stories and how God often uses our children in this formation process. In this conversation, you will hear about how mult...

Marriage is hard, but it is worth the fight. On today’s show, we talk about marriage and things we can do or not do that will allow your marriage to thrive. Phil and Diane have been married for 45 years and Brook and Elizabeth just celebrated 17 years and they have some helpful insights that they have learned along the way to share with you today. Grab your spouse, take some notes, and be ready fo...

How long has it been since someone- anyone- poured into you?   In 2023, over 600 mothers gathered together to learn, to worship, to grow, to encourage, and to be encouraged. We are still in awe of what God did!   The Spirit moved, the Father spoke, and Jesus healed. It was so incredible that we can’t wait to do it again!   We want to invite you to join us October 3rd - 5th, 2024, for a three-day r...

On today’s show, we are asking some questions to get us thinking about conflict in a helpful way. What does conflict bring up internally for us and What do we do when we are overwhelmed with the feelings that surround conflict? We not only take a deep dive into what we feel when conflict arises but also how to see others in the conflict and how it affects them. When we interact with each of our re...

Welcome to our living room! Today is our first Intentional video podcast! We hope now more than ever you feel like you are sitting in our living room conversing with us and that you leave with hope and encouragement to keep stepping into the person God sees you becoming.   Today, we sit down to talk about mentorship and our influence in our families and out in the world. We discuss why mentorship...

We have a fun show for you today. All four of us recently traveled to a great church in San Diego called Rise City, and we got to sit down at the end of the conference to do a live question and response time. Their community asked many fantastic questions that many of you have asked us, so we thought we would share this with you today. We cover questions about discipline, parenting children with s...

Today we are covering the topic of one of the eight primary emotions, anger. Anger reveals what matters to us- both good and not good. Anger becomes a warning signal, compelling humble people to look inside to identify what emotion they are experiencing and why. Fear? Hurt? Sadness? Resentment? Anger is possibly the most important feeling we experience as emotional and spiritual beings because it...

When we teach our children to accept the word no, we give them a gift to help them as they mature into adulthood. On today’s show, Phil, Diane, Brook, and Elizabeth share some recent events where teaching the word no has proven challenging and has also provided a ton of fruit in their family. Join us today as they unpack the stories and lean into how God teaches us to accept the word no, how welco...

Today, we discuss all things digital. How does technology form us? How does technology influence our children? What is our responsibility? The primary thing technology does is change our minds, and God invites us into the renewal of our minds. If it feels hard not to be conformed to the culture around you, you are not alone. On the show today, Brook and Elizabeth share what a digital rule of life...

In today’s show, we have Diane, Elizabeth, and Sally Lemos Lpc sharing a conversation about Christmas and all the expectations and pressures that can come up. So often, we strive to do everything, but do we know why we are doing everything? Is it to perform for others or even to prove something to ourselves? It’s so easy to make Christmas about what we want instead of focusing on something far mor...

Today, we continue answering your questions. Thank you for sending in such great ones! The first one we respond to is how to parent children who have the opposite personality as you; there is a challenge and a blessing that comes with that. Then, we discuss what repentance can look like after you have responded in anger to your kids. Listen in for some hope and helpful practices, even if you blew...

Phil+Diane and Brook+Elizabeth respond to a few great questions in today's show. First, they talk about what to do when you feel overwhelmed with the load God has given you. Do you constantly feel like you are living outside of your capacity with no margin? Secondly, they discuss how to navigate the subject of death with your kids. This can be a tough subject when your kids feel afraid and eve...

It’s our pleasure to welcome back Katharine Hill on our podcast today. Katherine Hill is an Author, speaker, and director for Care for the Family. In our conversation today, we discuss challenges like busyness, distractions, striving, and the digital age. Katharine shares some brilliant thoughts on attentive stillness even when life is busy and the value of being interruptable. We dive deep into f...

Anger is a part of the human experience and can be unpleasant, but our anger can be a gift when we listen to what it wants to communicate. The incredible Sally Lemos, MS, LPC, is on the podcast again today. Sally shares some helpful ways to learn to be aware of our anger before it turns into rage. We discuss storytellers, limits, how to slow down to go faster, and the unforced rhythms of grace. We...

Our culture is fascinated with fear, but as Christians, how is God calling us to walk with him amid our fears? Today, the whole crew is here, and we talk all about fear, how we naturally respond to fear, how shame comes into play, how we can moralize our fears, and most importantly, how we fear not. We cover 4 points today to help you in your spiritual formation journey that God wants to use to tr...

Today, we have Matt Markins on the show. Matt is the president and CEO of Awana. Some of you may have grown up in Awana, and others have never heard of it; Awana is a child discipleship and formation program that focuses on helping parents thrive in the daily mundane formational process with their children. In this episode, we talk about the three pillars of discipleship, how to work these into ou...

Today, We have Elizabeth Smith on the podcast. Elizabeth Smith is a professor at Moody Bible and an author. In this conversation, Brook and Elizabeth cover transparency with your kids, humility, and allowing shame to propel us to repair our relationships. Elizabeth shares the question she is researching in her doctorate: Is the Church a spiritually supportive community for children or families rec...

Today, we have ALL the speakers from our recent Motherhood Retreat sitting down and responding to your questions! There were hundreds of questions to respond to, but some to highlight in this episode are "How do I connect with boys emotionally"? "How do I interact with my parents when my maturity has grown past them"? "When it comes to saying no, how do we gracefully decline wi...

Today, we are diving into the waters of resentment, the pleasure principle, and what happens when we operate from a place of busyness and not rest. Often, in our very full lives, we can forget our end goal, Christ-likeness and being people of love. We walk through the pleasure principle and how we can move to become people who embrace maturity and not resentment. Enjoy   How to move towards maturi...