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Don Wildmon We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character hope. This is At the The Core on American Family Radio.
Welcome to The Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green
Walker Wildmon Welcome to the The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on this live edition of the program. Once again, this is the American Family Radio Network. This program, this show is hosted each week by myself and Rick Green, or to be more formal and proper, Rick Green and I, we're your host each week on the program. Glad to be with you. As a brief reminder, if you want to listen to the show in past episode format, you can subscribe to the podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, just type in the name of the program At the The Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green or any of those key words should cue up the program in your podcast library. Once again, glad to have you with us.
Acts chapter 16 is where we're going to look at this week
Acts chapter 16 is where we're going to look At this week on the program. Acts chapter 16 looking At verses 1 through 5. Then he came to Derbe and Lystra, and behold, a certain disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a certain Jewish woman who believed, but his father was Greek. He was well spoken of by the brethren who were At Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted to have him go with him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region. For they all knew that his father was Greek. And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and the elders in Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in their faith and increased in number daily. this is a jam packed. Someone could probably preach for about an hour just on these five verses. But for the sake of time and simplicity and the fact that I'm not, called to be a pastor per se, what I drew from this Acts chapter 16 verses 1 through 5 is a follow up really of what we studied last week in Acts chapter 15 and where Paul and Barnabas were basically debating in Jerusalem that one not need to be circumcised to be saved because that was a qualification that some were trying to place on NewSong Testament believers and by saying, oh well, you got to be circumcised in order to be saved. So they were trying to add to the word of God, add to the teachings of Scripture and add qualifications upon salvation and what it means to be saved that were extra biblical if you will. And so here in Acts 16 we see that Paul recommends and circumcises Timothy before they begin their work and their missionary journey. But Paul does it here. If you look At the context, Paul doesn't do it, participate in the circumcision of Timothy because he thinks it's going to save Timothy or bring about salvation. He does it more out of respect for the traditions in the region in which they're ministering. And so the point of this that I draw is that Paul was willing to do reasonable, pragmatic things for the sake of maintaining a good reputation amongst the people that he was witnessing to and teaching the gospel to and establishing the early church with. but when it came down to people, back in Jerusalem trying to add things, as far as qualifications for salvation that were not clearly taught by Jesus himself and in the Scriptures, Paul was willing to dispute that and debate that and ensure that core doctrine was upheld. And so, it's quite the balancing act. But Paul had to choose his priorities and adding something like circumcision to requirements for salvation. Paul knew that that was wrong, it shouldn't happen, and he was willing to dispute over it. All right, That's Acts chapter 16, verses one through five.
Leftists and the secularists move against parental rights
turning our attention to the news of the day. One thing I want to make sure we get to is something I've had queued up since late last week when I came across this story. And that is, the overarching topic is the lefts and the secular, humanists move against parental rights. This has been in the workings for a long, long time, for decades, where the political left in our country have wanted to undermine and cast doubt upon the role of parental rights, not just in, in common law or in biblical fashion, but also cast doubt upon our modern laws and our modern statutes, that establish the primary, or reaffirm rather something that God has given and that is the primary authority of parents over their children and the upbringing of their children, the well being of their children. And so this was actually a podcast with the NewSong York Times and not often that I play clips from the NewSong York Times podcast on the program. But this was an interesting conversation, one that should bring about good discussion here with us on the program. And that is a Yale professor, Samuel, Moyn. He's a Yale Law School and history professor, talking about how we ought to just, give more weight to the votes of young people. And basically, you know, let's just forget the parents, let's downgrade their votes if you will, in society. Let's listen for proposing we consider overweighting the votes of younger people or assigning the youngest eligible voters proxy votes for the unrepresented children of our country. so those are edgy. Ah, why not assign them to those children's parents? Well, because there's a divergence of interest between parents and children. And I think it's likelier that young people, not people, who are raising families, will have the best insight into the, interests of children. Whereas if you were awarded five, I think it's absurd to imagine that a, 24 year old recent college graduate has a better assessment of the interests of my own children than I do. And I say this with all Due respect to 24 year old recent college graduates of whom I hope to be the parent of in nine years or so. I think parents generally confuse the interests of their family with the interests of their children. And part of our goal, I think as parents, but also as a society, is trying to make sure that children aren't the hostages of their parents as much as we rely on parents to raise them. number one, I want to know, how many children Samuel Moyn is, raising. That'd be good to know. We'll look that up here shortly. folks, the problem here is this presumption, that parents don't know what they're doing and that parents are not looking out for the best interests of their children. This is the fundamental dispute here. And then secondly, this notion that someone outside of the parents knows what's in the best interest of the children. I mean there's so many different angles we could come At this. But this disdain for parenthood is, has been going on for a long time because we've played the clips of multiple left wing advocates undermining parental authority. But what I want to highlight is this hypocrisy on the, this is purely ideological based. And let me explain I'm trying to put a lot of different thoughts together in real time. But the hypocrisy is this. If you're a conservative ideologically, if you're a biblical Christian, which I know the two mean the same, but if you're a Christian, if you're a faithful Christian, or you're quote maga, I'm just throwing out a bunch of demographics here in categories of people and ideologies, then, well, you're not really good At parenting and we ought to raise doubts and questions about your parenting authority and ability. But if you're a left wing radical that wants to gender transition your child and do sex cha. Cross sex hormones and radical LGBT propaganda, and take them to Pride parades, we ain't got no problem with that. This is, this is, the hypocrisy is either we have parental rights or we don't. Either we have the best interest of our children or we don't. And it's not subjective, by the way. There may be certain things in society that are subjective. You know, what should the sales tax rate be? Let's debate that. 7% or 8%, somebody says 0%. But when it comes to the well being of our children and this radical left wing ideology that is destroying our young people and our children, there's no subjectivity here. There's no moral equivalency. The biblical worldview is one that embraces God's design for marriage and family and wants what's in the child's best interest from a biblical, scientific and natural law perspective. To the contrary, we have the pagans in the unbelieving world and the secular humanists that believe that they are God, they are the ultimate standard bearer, and that they can do whatever they want with their kids and our kids. And some of the things that they want to do are absolutely horrendous. And we highlight them on the program. And so this is the double standard, this is the hypocrisy, and this is why they only want to target parental rights when it comes to you and me. But when it comes to them, there's no problem, there's no qualm, there's no worry, don't worry about it. And so this is the Yale professor. But this gives you a glimpse into how they think, right? They want to go after and target their regressive, Christian mindset of the 19th century, and they want to enlighten us and bring us into the 21st century. And one of the ways to do that is to target the family target the biblical family model target parental rights, brainwash our children, turn them against their parents. This sounds like scripture. I mean, isn't there scripture passages about how in the end times children would turn against their parents? And this is what's happening here. And so this is why it's so important to constantly fight, not assume that parental rights is a thing, not assume that parental rights will always be priority, but fight for this day in and day out. and this story is going to dovetail well into what we're covering in the next segment about this massive settlement and admission of guilt with the Texas Children's hospital system, and the Trump administration over their gender transition. they had a whole program set up through Medicaid reimbursements to defraud families, to victimize children. And they got busted over it. There was whistleblowers investigations and they got busted over it. And now they're having to reach a huge settlement and offer detransition services. And so they. The threat to our children to put a bow on this specific clip, this specific subject on parental rights and children being held, quote, hostage by their parents. And by the way, if you didn't catch that, what the Yale professor was proposing was basically a overly weighted grading system in the voting system terms, an overweighted vote for children for young people. He said they need, they need to have more. They need to have proxy votes to basically counteract their parents. So let's rig the voting system so that we can make it easier for children to subvert their parents. Well, this sounds like a great idea. What could go wrong with this? To have a TikTok 14 year old telling the parents what to do? No, thanks. Absolutely not. Not one day under the sun, as long as I have a say. also, to answer your question, he has two daughters, both in college. One is in Portland. Yeah. The other one is in NewSong Haven, Connecticut. Yeah. Bless their heart. yeah. So we got two kids and they're both out of the house. And so now we want to put forth the idea, now that my kids don't live under my roof, I'm gonna let everybody else's kids subvert their parents and cancel out their vote in elections. What an insanely stupid idea. What could go wrong? So many things I can't even list in the next 30 seconds. We'll continue this discussion after the break. You're listening to At The Core,
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Walker Wildmon The Core on American Family Radio.
The war on America's children and America's families is anti-Christian
Welcome back to the The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you back with us on the second segment of today's program. While we're talking parental rights and, and the war on America's children and America's families and if you piece all this together, what you have is an ideology and a movement that ultimately is satanic and anti God. and the reason it's targeting you ask like why will they target parental rights? Why would they target children and try to create division amongst families? Well let's look At it this way. What are God's primary institutions that he established? Well, one of them is the family. Now we could talk about the church more broadly, we could talk about civil government and how God established that as well. But we know biblically and we know historically that the family, as God intended it, is vital to civilization itself. There's actually no example, At least that I'm aware of in human history of a society that flourishes, that does well without a strong nuclear family model. And obviously America's one of the primary exhibits. It took high marital rates, high childbearing rates and strong families to build the nation. And so if you want to destroy a civilization, if you want to destroy a country, a people, well you just go after the families, you start breaking the families apart, you start having children, you know, disrespecting their parents, you have high divorce rates, you have high out of wedlock rates. I mean this is the playbook, the template that if you want to destroy a civilization nation, this is what you do. And one of the things you do is you tear apart the families. And so it's no surprise to me that you've got left wing advocates wanting to do just that, wanting to usurp the parents. But as I mentioned in the first segment, this is a one way street, alright? as long as the parents, according to the left wing perspective, as long as the parents are woke enough, as long as the parents are transgender enough, as long as the parents are all about climate change, then we're good. There's no problem with parental rights. As long as the indoctrination is happening, as long as we are making more Democrat left wing Marxist disciples, there's no problem here. But it's when you and I raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, that's where they, all of a sudden have a problem. When we teach our children that there's only male and female, that we're all created in the image of God, That's when there's a problem with parental rights. And if you think about it from a purely political perspective, the way the Democrats and the Marxists can disrupt. One of the primary ways to disrupt consistently reliable conservative ways of thinking is to disrupt the natural family model. Because when you look At demographics, most of your people that grow up in stable, loving biblical families and homes, those people typically statistically lean more conservative politically. But it's the divorce, it's the wrecking ball to the marriage, it's the out of wedlock births, it's the fatherless homes that are bringing us so much of this brokenness and so much of the brokenness politically as well. It's very sad. The human toll just cannot be overstated.
Texas Children's Hospital settles claims it billed Medicaid for transgender treatments
And speaking of the human toll, Texas Children's Hospital just reached a massive settlement that I alluded to coming into the break that is terrible what they did to, an unforeseen number of children. But this all happened under the Biden administration. So the Biden administration was running these Medicaid, program, specifically the one that this Texas Children's hospital was operating under was a, they were running basically a transgender transition facility for minors At the Texas Children's Hospital. And it was a very shoddy business. It was a very sketchy operation. the decisions were being made rashly and there was a ton of money tied up in this, that this hospital system was getting. And let me just read a little bit of background to here before we play this clip here, but here's the headline on a Fox 7 in Austin. Texas Children's Hospital has just a few months to create the nation's first detransition clinic to reverse gender transition care, according to a settlement finalized with the Attorney General's office. Under the terms of the agreement, the clinic must open within 90 days and its service must be provided for free. The settlement was first announced in May. The hospital will also pay 10 million, more than 8 million going to the state to resolve claims they billed Texas Medicaid for illegal gender transition interventions. They will also pay 1.7 million to the whistleblower Vanessa Savage, or Sivage, for her, claim as well. And so, this is, this is a big deal because one of the ways you combat the left's war on our children is to combat this transgender falsehood, this false notion that boys can be girls and girls can be boys. And this is the debate even amongst the WNBA right now, believe it or not. But listen to this cat. This is just a glimpse into this phenomenal investigative reporting piece from Catherine Renfro Herridge on the Texas Children's Hospital scandal and their 10 million dollar settlement Cliptube. One of the things that strikes me about this case is that we're talking about Medicaid dollars, we're talking about low income families.
Catherine Herridge Interview Clip Did these families have the resources to challenge the hospital to give informed consent for these treatments? Absolutely not. So these families, would come in under Medicaid. Many of them don't speak English. They're very confused. It's a very confusing process. There's doctors in white robes telling them on their first, second appointment that these kids need to go down this path. And once you put them down it, it's very hard to get them off the path. And the doctors would remove the parents from the conversations. Very complicated, very confusing. And they would cite to medical authorities which have since been debunked, but At the time they would tell parents, if you don't do this, the child could commit suicide. So it's suicide or treatment, suicide or surgery. And these are, these are families that do not understand. They are taking verbatim, word for word what the doctors are telling them. Is it fair to assess that some of the doctors At Texas Children's Hospital took advantage of families that were low income M families and did not have the resources to understand the treatments that were being advocated for their children? Yes, it's the nature of Medicaid that you are treating underserved and underprivileged families. And so absolutely, when those families come in, I would say the standard of care is higher for those families to explain, especially the consequences of actions. And instead that was exploited by these doctors.
Walker Wildmon Folks, this is nothing short of demonic. There's no other way to put it. This is nothing short of demonic. The war on America's children is real. And the transgender phenomenon is one of the most wicked things outside of abortion that I've ever seen. And so we have a multi pronged approach, a multi front war on America's children. And this is in the midst of precipitous reproduction, our childbearing decline At the lowest birth rate arguably ever in our nation's history. That's on the abortion front, that's on the reproductive rights front is what they call it. And then, and then once they're once children, the ones that do survive abortion, the ones that do live now we're targeting parental rights and we're going after them with this transgender ideology and all of the other wicked stuff that is percolating in America's culture, American culture. And we wonder, why America's children are struggling with record levels of anxiety and depression. All these other diagnoses, adhd, fill in the blank. I mean, we virtually, when I say we, the left has virtually set up a multi front war on America's children. And one of the most ironic things about it all is people who identify politically on the left are some of the most lowest reproducing people in our entire demographic in America. And so they're not having children. I mean, I just watched the clip of aoc, why she's doing this on social media. But Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Democrat, Socialist of America member in NewSong York City chapter is taking online videos of her freezing her eggs and talking about how, you know, I may, may want children in the future, but not now. I mean, this is all that's wrong with America At this moment is we've deprioritized the things that actually matter and we've prioritized the things that actually don't matter or the things that are anti God. And so there's a couple problems all merging together At one time to create what ultimately is a demographic crisis in America that not enough people are talking about. And so I introduced this segment with this Texas Children's Hospital, operation. This, this shoddy operation taking millions of Medicaid reimbursements to give these children these cross sex hormone treatments, these surgeries, absolutely demonic. But folks, the Texas Children's Hospital isn't the only one doing this. This was going on At Vanderbilt till they got outed over this. This has been going on all around the country. I mean, I don't understand how someone in a white coat with a PhD with an MD who went to medical school for 6, 8, 10 years with a clean conscience can cut on a minor under the guise of transgender treatment and sleep and deal with themselves and live with themselves. It's just beyond me. And this is a, this is a offshoot of the homosexual agenda. Let's not confuse it. I mean, we started back, my grandfather started this work back in the 70s trying to combat the homosexual agenda because they were trying to normalize homosexuality. And then we went from that to Obergfell in 2015. You know, quote, two consenting adults just want to get married. Yeah. Well, number one, two men, two girls can't get married because God created marriage between a man and a woman. So you can call it whatever you want to call it, civil union, whatever, but two dudes can't get married. It just doesn't work according to God's design and according to nature. So then we went from that. This just shows you how quickly the devil pivots. We went from that to North Carolina boys and girls, bathrooms debate. Remember that? 2016. And then they went from that in less than five years to having surgeries, mutilating little kids. And so we see the logical conclusion of the godless agenda, and that is the destruction of our families and the destruction of our children. You pair that with abortion on demand, folks, we have a major demographics crisis. They can run headlines saying, oh, it's so unaffordable to have families, whatever. We're aborting a million plus kids a year. So you can pull all the excuses you want, but At the end of the day, the problem, folks, is we have an unbiblical populace that are putting their own desires, their own adult desires first and not following God's design of procreation, of being fruitful and multiplying. And so if we want to combat this precipitous demographic drop that we're having this below 2% reproduction rate that we're dealing with in America, which is a symptom of a godless move against America's families. If we want to combat that, we have to teach people God's blueprint for marriage and family. And we have to combat and halt the war on America's children. We have to combat and halt the abortion on demand. And we have to combat and halt this notion that adulthood is just all about fulfilling our worldly desires, all about fulfilling the desires of the flesh that couldn't be more wrong. And this leads us all back to a place that teaching, teaching God's principles, God's truth to the masses, is one of the only ways that we're going to address this moral decay that we're dealing with in America. All right, folks, we got one segment left. We got a special guest coming up in the next segment speaking of raising America's children. We'll have an author on next, segment to talk about that very topic.
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Pew surveyed adults 50 and older on major reasons they don't have children
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us. This last segment, well, just to put a bow on the topic that we've been talking over, talking about last two segments, this war on America's children and America's families. This, Pew research is, quite shocking. but if you cover this frequently, you're not so shocked. But nonetheless, listen to this. This is a poll done, some research done and released in 2024. But nonetheless, Pew asked the adults 50 and older that don't have children to state the major reasons that they don't have children. And of course, there were options given, such as, concerns about the state of the world. Didn't, find the right partner or the right spouse. but here are your top results. And remember, I'm giving you this to combat this narrative that, well, people aren't having children because they can't afford them. Well, I would dispute that whole logic line of thinking, but nonetheless, this is what Pew says on the reason people aren't having children. The top reasons. Listen to the first reason. Quote, it just never happened. End quote. 39% of respondents said, quote, it just never happened. top two reason. Didn't find the right spouse. That's a quote. Didn't find the right spouse. 33%, 31%, which is quite like, I'm sorry, point number three. Answer number three, quite like answer number one. Quote, they just didn't want to. 31% of respondents quote, they just didn't want to.
Answer number four on why adults 50 and older didn't have children
All right, here's the fourth reason. These are ranked by, you know, most popular to least popular answer. Answer number four on why adults 50 and older didn't have children. 21 of respondents said they wanted to focus on other things. So it's not until point number four or point number seven that we even get anything about the economy or infertility issues or anything like that. So basically the top four to five things are self centered reasons. They have nothing to do with external factors beyond our control. And so that proves that this is a moral and a cultural problem and not a problem as much about the economy and about infertility. Even though the issue of infertility is an issue, is a problem that many couples deal with. But I'm just giving you the top respondents, the top number of people. Those issues aren't even in the top four or five. This just comes down to people just don't want to have children is what the top four reasons come down to. Very, very tragic results, very tragic outcome that we're seeing in America today. And we are going to have to combat, this trend that we're seeing.
Jeff Lukich is the author of Long Way Home. He's author and speaker one
Ah, welcoming to the program now is. I didn't have time to tell me to have him tell me how to pronounce his last name. So we're going to give it a shot. but Jeff Lukich. Lukich is with us now on the program and he can tell me if I got that wrong. He's author and speaker one. He, has just, he's written a book, the Long Way Home. And we're going to talk about the question every parent is afraid to ask their kid as they head off to college. Jeff, how did I do on the last name?
Jeff Lukich You did perfectly. Walker. I hope you can hear me okay.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, we got you loud and clear. Glad to have you on the phone with us.
Jeff Lukich left his Catholic Christian faith when he left for college
Well, hey, give us, Jeff, give us, a little background about yourself and then we'll jump into the book.
Jeff Lukich Yeah, of course. and thanks for having me on. So I had a 30 year career in, public, child welfare and state government here in Georgia. I retired back in 2018, and have done some writing. I'm an endurance coach, coaching runners, triathletes, that sort of thing. And the holy spirit put this book on my heart a few years ago. So My story aligns perfectly with some of the things you're talking about and what you just mentioned. Because I left my Catholic Christian faith when I left for college. Even though I went to a small liberal art arts Christian college, in South Carolina, where I'm from, my faith still faded. And so as we are entering the end of summer, early fall, as kids leave for college, I think it's a great time to talk about this topic. So I came back to my faith about three and a half years ago and then wrote a book about it to help others come back to their faith. So that's where I'm At today.
Jeff: What happens when children leave the home and head off into adulthood
Walker Wildmon Let me ask you this, Jeff. in your kind of research and studying this topic of what happens when basically children leave the home and, head off into adulthood, what are you finding as far as are these young people, Was it never really a good, healthy home situation to begin with, as far as respect for the parents, respect for their faith, or were these young people genuinely on a good path and then they go off to school and the wheels fall off? What are you finding as far as a common occurrence here?
Jeff Lukich Yeah, I think there's a little of both. I think both your points you're making. And so we know formation in the Christian faith, our churches, our local churches have a lot of responsibility in that, but so do, so do our parents At home. And I think if you don't have both of those, if there's any weak link, then you're not going to have a child that can withstand, the forces that happen out in the world when they leave. And the other thing you mentioned, when kids leave for college, and I'll point myself as an example, this may be the first time someone's not telling them to go to church or reminding them to do things. But At some point we know our faith has to become our own. And when you go off to college, this may be the first time that they're around other people with different ideas. And so you have a lot of things pulling At them At the same time. So I think there's some truth to both points you make.
Jeff Luckic writes about return of faith into adulthood in his book
Walker Wildmon All right, let's talk through. once again, we're talking to Jeff Luckic with, his book the Long Way Home, talking about his return of faith into adulthood. Jeff, let's talk about what we're doing wrong as parents and some of this. I know people and you know, people that the parents seem to be doing everything right according to the scripture and checking all the boxes on being a good Biblical parent. But then the children go off the deep end and you're like, what happened there? and then there's other instances where the parents don't have it all together and then the children turn out okay and they end up coming to faith and living Christian lives in honor of God. So what are some of the key things that you notice that parents do that help their children do well into adulthood?
Jeff Lukich Well, the first thing that comes to mind for me is, is praying together. I think that if a, and particularly two parent households. Now, unfortunately I was raised in a single parent, household and still my mother, had a strong commitment to the faith and so that helped me through high school until I left. But I think that what we see is, if it's a two parent household, then you definitely have a stronger chance. And, and that is not to say that single moms or single dads out there cannot raise their children in faith, because they absolutely can. But there is research, particularly around the Catholic Christian faith, because I've read a little bit of this that a strong ah, when kids see their father pray and a family can pray together with everyone, mom, dad and the kids, that really makes that, that connection a lot stronger. And then keeping kids involved in church related activities. you know, we raised our children Methodist and we were lucky enough to have, in the Methodist church, I should say. And we were lucky enough to have a church with a lot of activities here. And they were involved, Walker, in everything. Now my children are adults now and even they struggle with faith and had eventually, left their faith. So it can happen. You're right, it can happen to anyone. But what we have to do as parents is provide that strong foundation because once they leave the local communities and their homes and their local churches, there's a lot of forces out there in the secular world that are pulling them away from their faith. And we just have to do this together.
Walker Wildmon Amen.
Walker: Trend of young men returning to Christian faith is encouraging
Jeff, once again we're talking to Jeff Luckick with his book Long Way Home. Hey Jeff, the only reason I'm going to ask you this is number one, it's central to your book. Without this, you don't have the book. But also your publisher put this in there as a question and I think it's great. Tell us, let's get personal. What happened to you? what made you. How did God get your attention to draw you back?
Jeff Lukich Yeah, well, leaving, I use an analogy. If you could think about you're At the beach and you're swimming out in the ocean with maybe family and friends, and all of a sudden you turn around and you have this panic moment that you're so far from the shore and you didn't realize you had drifted so far. Well, that's what happened to me. I didn't storm out of the church and say, I'm never coming back. I just went to college. I had influences around me, and I ended up just fading. My faith began to fade. And then I had a 40 year gap where successful career, beautiful family, wonderful marriage. And I still have a. But I was still lost. And then, you know, God spoke to me over the course of six, seven, maybe eight years. And in my case, you know, I came back to my Catholic faith, which is the roots of m. My family. but it could be any faith, you know. And for me, God was tapping me on the shoulder for several years, Walker, and I just wasn't a very good listener. But it was on Christmas Eve in 2022 when really God looked me eye to eye and said, you need to go back to church because this is going to be that concrete first step for you as you walk back into your Christian faith. And that's what I did. I went to mass that night, went to church on Christmas Eve. And I knew then in that pew on that night that I was home. that's how I ended up coming to write a book. Because I know there are many people out there, Walker, who may, may be away from their faith, who just aren't sure how or if it's possible to come back. And, and they may have questions like I did. You know, have I waited too long? Will God forgive me? A lot of those, those questions I had, and I know others do too.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, this is, this is, definitely happening on, on a statistically significant scale. And that is. I know you're not probably in the classification, I would assume as a young man. I'm talking 20s and 30s. I know obviously you're a little older than that. But this trend, my point is the trend in men, either coming to faith in Christ or are being kind of adrift and revitalizing their faith and having a revival is going on At statistically significant scale in the country. I mean, we've all seen the headlines, we've seen the college campuses that are full of revival. And so, Jeff, it just seems like God is kind of waking up the men of our country and telling us, like, if you guys want to restore this country and rebuild our families and have a culture built on Morality and decency and honor, then the men are going to have to lead the way here. I mean, this is a biblical model of men leading the way during hard times.
Jeff Lukich Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I speak about this in my book. One of my biggest regrets is I was not a better spiritual leader in my own family. So, you know, I have adult children and two small grandchildren now, so I'm definitely trying to do that now and being a model. But I think you're right. Young men in particular are waking up and seeing that what's in the world now is just not working. and we're even seeing Walker people who would have considered themselves agnostic or atheist that are now coming into Christianity.
Walker Wildmon Yes.
Jeff Lukich And it's amazing to see the reawakening our awakening. I should say that we're seeing in America and it's very encouraging. Not just with men, we see young women, it happening to them too. But I think young people in particular are looking for something more than they're seeing today out in the world.
Walker: Jeff, what's your advice for men who wasted years not following God
Walker Wildmon Jeff, we've got a minute left. what's your advice to people and even men, fathers, grandfathers, who did waste some years not following God, but they've come back to the faith and they want to make things right to their family. What's your advice for men who have guilt over wasted years in their adulthood?
Jeff Lukich Well, I think that, Jesus does not hold on to sins, and neither do we. Once we ask for repentance and ask for forgiveness. We need to move on and live our faith, out loud. And I think praying is really important. But also people out there, including our family and friends and others. we often hear that we may be the only form of the Bible that people ever see or read. And so we need to make sure that we live our Christian faith out loud and not hide from it, not be embarrassed about it, talk about it, and be bold in that faith. As long as we're not shining a light so bright in people's eyes that they can't see what we're trying to accomplish.
Walker Wildmon Amen. Hey, Jeff, Luka, tell us, your website, how they can find more about your work.
Jeff Lukich Yeah, well, you can find my book in all booksellers, but if you visit jefflukic.com, that's my website, and you can learn more about my story and you can order the book there or you can just use, use the contact form to reach out and say hello. I'd love to hear from you.
Walker Wildmon That's, Jeff. L U K I C H That's the website, Jeff. L U K I C H. That's how his last name is spelled. You can check out his website, or you can just simply Google or go to the bookstore and type in the Long Way Home, and find his book there. Hey, Jeff. God bless you, brother. Appreciate you coming on the program.
Jeff Lukich You too, Walker. Thanks for all you do. Take care.
Walker Wildmon Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, folks, that's a word of encouragement. if you've been living your life away from God in rejection of God, whether blatantly or subtly, folks, you can repent. You can come to faith in Christ, and you can live the remaining years on this earth faithful to God, faithful to his Word, faithful to your family, and have forgiveness and restoration. It can happen to anyone At any time. That is the absolute beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We'll see you next time.
Jeff Lukich The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
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Welcome to The Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green
Walker Wildmon Welcome to the The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on this live edition of the program. Once again, this is the American Family Radio Network. This program, this show is hosted each week by myself and Rick Green, or to be more formal and proper, Rick Green and I, we're your host each week on the program. Glad to be with you. As a brief reminder, if you want to listen to the show in past episode format, you can subscribe to the podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, just type in the name of the program At the The Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green or any of those key words should cue up the program in your podcast library. Once again, glad to have you with us.
Acts chapter 16 is where we're going to look at this week
Acts chapter 16 is where we're going to look At this week on the program. Acts chapter 16 looking At verses 1 through 5. Then he came to Derbe and Lystra, and behold, a certain disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a certain Jewish woman who believed, but his father was Greek. He was well spoken of by the brethren who were At Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted to have him go with him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region. For they all knew that his father was Greek. And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and the elders in Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in their faith and increased in number daily. this is a jam packed. Someone could probably preach for about an hour just on these five verses. But for the sake of time and simplicity and the fact that I'm not, called to be a pastor per se, what I drew from this Acts chapter 16 verses 1 through 5 is a follow up really of what we studied last week in Acts chapter 15 and where Paul and Barnabas were basically debating in Jerusalem that one not need to be circumcised to be saved because that was a qualification that some were trying to place on NewSong Testament believers and by saying, oh well, you got to be circumcised in order to be saved. So they were trying to add to the word of God, add to the teachings of Scripture and add qualifications upon salvation and what it means to be saved that were extra biblical if you will. And so here in Acts 16 we see that Paul recommends and circumcises Timothy before they begin their work and their missionary journey. But Paul does it here. If you look At the context, Paul doesn't do it, participate in the circumcision of Timothy because he thinks it's going to save Timothy or bring about salvation. He does it more out of respect for the traditions in the region in which they're ministering. And so the point of this that I draw is that Paul was willing to do reasonable, pragmatic things for the sake of maintaining a good reputation amongst the people that he was witnessing to and teaching the gospel to and establishing the early church with. but when it came down to people, back in Jerusalem trying to add things, as far as qualifications for salvation that were not clearly taught by Jesus himself and in the Scriptures, Paul was willing to dispute that and debate that and ensure that core doctrine was upheld. And so, it's quite the balancing act. But Paul had to choose his priorities and adding something like circumcision to requirements for salvation. Paul knew that that was wrong, it shouldn't happen, and he was willing to dispute over it. All right, That's Acts chapter 16, verses one through five.
Leftists and the secularists move against parental rights
turning our attention to the news of the day. One thing I want to make sure we get to is something I've had queued up since late last week when I came across this story. And that is, the overarching topic is the lefts and the secular, humanists move against parental rights. This has been in the workings for a long, long time, for decades, where the political left in our country have wanted to undermine and cast doubt upon the role of parental rights, not just in, in common law or in biblical fashion, but also cast doubt upon our modern laws and our modern statutes, that establish the primary, or reaffirm rather something that God has given and that is the primary authority of parents over their children and the upbringing of their children, the well being of their children. And so this was actually a podcast with the NewSong York Times and not often that I play clips from the NewSong York Times podcast on the program. But this was an interesting conversation, one that should bring about good discussion here with us on the program. And that is a Yale professor, Samuel, Moyn. He's a Yale Law School and history professor, talking about how we ought to just, give more weight to the votes of young people. And basically, you know, let's just forget the parents, let's downgrade their votes if you will, in society. Let's listen for proposing we consider overweighting the votes of younger people or assigning the youngest eligible voters proxy votes for the unrepresented children of our country. so those are edgy. Ah, why not assign them to those children's parents? Well, because there's a divergence of interest between parents and children. And I think it's likelier that young people, not people, who are raising families, will have the best insight into the, interests of children. Whereas if you were awarded five, I think it's absurd to imagine that a, 24 year old recent college graduate has a better assessment of the interests of my own children than I do. And I say this with all Due respect to 24 year old recent college graduates of whom I hope to be the parent of in nine years or so. I think parents generally confuse the interests of their family with the interests of their children. And part of our goal, I think as parents, but also as a society, is trying to make sure that children aren't the hostages of their parents as much as we rely on parents to raise them. number one, I want to know, how many children Samuel Moyn is, raising. That'd be good to know. We'll look that up here shortly. folks, the problem here is this presumption, that parents don't know what they're doing and that parents are not looking out for the best interests of their children. This is the fundamental dispute here. And then secondly, this notion that someone outside of the parents knows what's in the best interest of the children. I mean there's so many different angles we could come At this. But this disdain for parenthood is, has been going on for a long time because we've played the clips of multiple left wing advocates undermining parental authority. But what I want to highlight is this hypocrisy on the, this is purely ideological based. And let me explain I'm trying to put a lot of different thoughts together in real time. But the hypocrisy is this. If you're a conservative ideologically, if you're a biblical Christian, which I know the two mean the same, but if you're a Christian, if you're a faithful Christian, or you're quote maga, I'm just throwing out a bunch of demographics here in categories of people and ideologies, then, well, you're not really good At parenting and we ought to raise doubts and questions about your parenting authority and ability. But if you're a left wing radical that wants to gender transition your child and do sex cha. Cross sex hormones and radical LGBT propaganda, and take them to Pride parades, we ain't got no problem with that. This is, this is, the hypocrisy is either we have parental rights or we don't. Either we have the best interest of our children or we don't. And it's not subjective, by the way. There may be certain things in society that are subjective. You know, what should the sales tax rate be? Let's debate that. 7% or 8%, somebody says 0%. But when it comes to the well being of our children and this radical left wing ideology that is destroying our young people and our children, there's no subjectivity here. There's no moral equivalency. The biblical worldview is one that embraces God's design for marriage and family and wants what's in the child's best interest from a biblical, scientific and natural law perspective. To the contrary, we have the pagans in the unbelieving world and the secular humanists that believe that they are God, they are the ultimate standard bearer, and that they can do whatever they want with their kids and our kids. And some of the things that they want to do are absolutely horrendous. And we highlight them on the program. And so this is the double standard, this is the hypocrisy, and this is why they only want to target parental rights when it comes to you and me. But when it comes to them, there's no problem, there's no qualm, there's no worry, don't worry about it. And so this is the Yale professor. But this gives you a glimpse into how they think, right? They want to go after and target their regressive, Christian mindset of the 19th century, and they want to enlighten us and bring us into the 21st century. And one of the ways to do that is to target the family target the biblical family model target parental rights, brainwash our children, turn them against their parents. This sounds like scripture. I mean, isn't there scripture passages about how in the end times children would turn against their parents? And this is what's happening here. And so this is why it's so important to constantly fight, not assume that parental rights is a thing, not assume that parental rights will always be priority, but fight for this day in and day out. and this story is going to dovetail well into what we're covering in the next segment about this massive settlement and admission of guilt with the Texas Children's hospital system, and the Trump administration over their gender transition. they had a whole program set up through Medicaid reimbursements to defraud families, to victimize children. And they got busted over it. There was whistleblowers investigations and they got busted over it. And now they're having to reach a huge settlement and offer detransition services. And so they. The threat to our children to put a bow on this specific clip, this specific subject on parental rights and children being held, quote, hostage by their parents. And by the way, if you didn't catch that, what the Yale professor was proposing was basically a overly weighted grading system in the voting system terms, an overweighted vote for children for young people. He said they need, they need to have more. They need to have proxy votes to basically counteract their parents. So let's rig the voting system so that we can make it easier for children to subvert their parents. Well, this sounds like a great idea. What could go wrong with this? To have a TikTok 14 year old telling the parents what to do? No, thanks. Absolutely not. Not one day under the sun, as long as I have a say. also, to answer your question, he has two daughters, both in college. One is in Portland. Yeah. The other one is in NewSong Haven, Connecticut. Yeah. Bless their heart. yeah. So we got two kids and they're both out of the house. And so now we want to put forth the idea, now that my kids don't live under my roof, I'm gonna let everybody else's kids subvert their parents and cancel out their vote in elections. What an insanely stupid idea. What could go wrong? So many things I can't even list in the next 30 seconds. We'll continue this discussion after the break. You're listening to At The Core,
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Walker Wildmon The Core on American Family Radio.
The war on America's children and America's families is anti-Christian
Welcome back to the The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you back with us on the second segment of today's program. While we're talking parental rights and, and the war on America's children and America's families and if you piece all this together, what you have is an ideology and a movement that ultimately is satanic and anti God. and the reason it's targeting you ask like why will they target parental rights? Why would they target children and try to create division amongst families? Well let's look At it this way. What are God's primary institutions that he established? Well, one of them is the family. Now we could talk about the church more broadly, we could talk about civil government and how God established that as well. But we know biblically and we know historically that the family, as God intended it, is vital to civilization itself. There's actually no example, At least that I'm aware of in human history of a society that flourishes, that does well without a strong nuclear family model. And obviously America's one of the primary exhibits. It took high marital rates, high childbearing rates and strong families to build the nation. And so if you want to destroy a civilization, if you want to destroy a country, a people, well you just go after the families, you start breaking the families apart, you start having children, you know, disrespecting their parents, you have high divorce rates, you have high out of wedlock rates. I mean this is the playbook, the template that if you want to destroy a civilization nation, this is what you do. And one of the things you do is you tear apart the families. And so it's no surprise to me that you've got left wing advocates wanting to do just that, wanting to usurp the parents. But as I mentioned in the first segment, this is a one way street, alright? as long as the parents, according to the left wing perspective, as long as the parents are woke enough, as long as the parents are transgender enough, as long as the parents are all about climate change, then we're good. There's no problem with parental rights. As long as the indoctrination is happening, as long as we are making more Democrat left wing Marxist disciples, there's no problem here. But it's when you and I raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, that's where they, all of a sudden have a problem. When we teach our children that there's only male and female, that we're all created in the image of God, That's when there's a problem with parental rights. And if you think about it from a purely political perspective, the way the Democrats and the Marxists can disrupt. One of the primary ways to disrupt consistently reliable conservative ways of thinking is to disrupt the natural family model. Because when you look At demographics, most of your people that grow up in stable, loving biblical families and homes, those people typically statistically lean more conservative politically. But it's the divorce, it's the wrecking ball to the marriage, it's the out of wedlock births, it's the fatherless homes that are bringing us so much of this brokenness and so much of the brokenness politically as well. It's very sad. The human toll just cannot be overstated.
Texas Children's Hospital settles claims it billed Medicaid for transgender treatments
And speaking of the human toll, Texas Children's Hospital just reached a massive settlement that I alluded to coming into the break that is terrible what they did to, an unforeseen number of children. But this all happened under the Biden administration. So the Biden administration was running these Medicaid, program, specifically the one that this Texas Children's hospital was operating under was a, they were running basically a transgender transition facility for minors At the Texas Children's Hospital. And it was a very shoddy business. It was a very sketchy operation. the decisions were being made rashly and there was a ton of money tied up in this, that this hospital system was getting. And let me just read a little bit of background to here before we play this clip here, but here's the headline on a Fox 7 in Austin. Texas Children's Hospital has just a few months to create the nation's first detransition clinic to reverse gender transition care, according to a settlement finalized with the Attorney General's office. Under the terms of the agreement, the clinic must open within 90 days and its service must be provided for free. The settlement was first announced in May. The hospital will also pay 10 million, more than 8 million going to the state to resolve claims they billed Texas Medicaid for illegal gender transition interventions. They will also pay 1.7 million to the whistleblower Vanessa Savage, or Sivage, for her, claim as well. And so, this is, this is a big deal because one of the ways you combat the left's war on our children is to combat this transgender falsehood, this false notion that boys can be girls and girls can be boys. And this is the debate even amongst the WNBA right now, believe it or not. But listen to this cat. This is just a glimpse into this phenomenal investigative reporting piece from Catherine Renfro Herridge on the Texas Children's Hospital scandal and their 10 million dollar settlement Cliptube. One of the things that strikes me about this case is that we're talking about Medicaid dollars, we're talking about low income families.
Catherine Herridge Interview Clip Did these families have the resources to challenge the hospital to give informed consent for these treatments? Absolutely not. So these families, would come in under Medicaid. Many of them don't speak English. They're very confused. It's a very confusing process. There's doctors in white robes telling them on their first, second appointment that these kids need to go down this path. And once you put them down it, it's very hard to get them off the path. And the doctors would remove the parents from the conversations. Very complicated, very confusing. And they would cite to medical authorities which have since been debunked, but At the time they would tell parents, if you don't do this, the child could commit suicide. So it's suicide or treatment, suicide or surgery. And these are, these are families that do not understand. They are taking verbatim, word for word what the doctors are telling them. Is it fair to assess that some of the doctors At Texas Children's Hospital took advantage of families that were low income M families and did not have the resources to understand the treatments that were being advocated for their children? Yes, it's the nature of Medicaid that you are treating underserved and underprivileged families. And so absolutely, when those families come in, I would say the standard of care is higher for those families to explain, especially the consequences of actions. And instead that was exploited by these doctors.
Walker Wildmon Folks, this is nothing short of demonic. There's no other way to put it. This is nothing short of demonic. The war on America's children is real. And the transgender phenomenon is one of the most wicked things outside of abortion that I've ever seen. And so we have a multi pronged approach, a multi front war on America's children. And this is in the midst of precipitous reproduction, our childbearing decline At the lowest birth rate arguably ever in our nation's history. That's on the abortion front, that's on the reproductive rights front is what they call it. And then, and then once they're once children, the ones that do survive abortion, the ones that do live now we're targeting parental rights and we're going after them with this transgender ideology and all of the other wicked stuff that is percolating in America's culture, American culture. And we wonder, why America's children are struggling with record levels of anxiety and depression. All these other diagnoses, adhd, fill in the blank. I mean, we virtually, when I say we, the left has virtually set up a multi front war on America's children. And one of the most ironic things about it all is people who identify politically on the left are some of the most lowest reproducing people in our entire demographic in America. And so they're not having children. I mean, I just watched the clip of aoc, why she's doing this on social media. But Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Democrat, Socialist of America member in NewSong York City chapter is taking online videos of her freezing her eggs and talking about how, you know, I may, may want children in the future, but not now. I mean, this is all that's wrong with America At this moment is we've deprioritized the things that actually matter and we've prioritized the things that actually don't matter or the things that are anti God. And so there's a couple problems all merging together At one time to create what ultimately is a demographic crisis in America that not enough people are talking about. And so I introduced this segment with this Texas Children's Hospital, operation. This, this shoddy operation taking millions of Medicaid reimbursements to give these children these cross sex hormone treatments, these surgeries, absolutely demonic. But folks, the Texas Children's Hospital isn't the only one doing this. This was going on At Vanderbilt till they got outed over this. This has been going on all around the country. I mean, I don't understand how someone in a white coat with a PhD with an MD who went to medical school for 6, 8, 10 years with a clean conscience can cut on a minor under the guise of transgender treatment and sleep and deal with themselves and live with themselves. It's just beyond me. And this is a, this is a offshoot of the homosexual agenda. Let's not confuse it. I mean, we started back, my grandfather started this work back in the 70s trying to combat the homosexual agenda because they were trying to normalize homosexuality. And then we went from that to Obergfell in 2015. You know, quote, two consenting adults just want to get married. Yeah. Well, number one, two men, two girls can't get married because God created marriage between a man and a woman. So you can call it whatever you want to call it, civil union, whatever, but two dudes can't get married. It just doesn't work according to God's design and according to nature. So then we went from that. This just shows you how quickly the devil pivots. We went from that to North Carolina boys and girls, bathrooms debate. Remember that? 2016. And then they went from that in less than five years to having surgeries, mutilating little kids. And so we see the logical conclusion of the godless agenda, and that is the destruction of our families and the destruction of our children. You pair that with abortion on demand, folks, we have a major demographics crisis. They can run headlines saying, oh, it's so unaffordable to have families, whatever. We're aborting a million plus kids a year. So you can pull all the excuses you want, but At the end of the day, the problem, folks, is we have an unbiblical populace that are putting their own desires, their own adult desires first and not following God's design of procreation, of being fruitful and multiplying. And so if we want to combat this precipitous demographic drop that we're having this below 2% reproduction rate that we're dealing with in America, which is a symptom of a godless move against America's families. If we want to combat that, we have to teach people God's blueprint for marriage and family. And we have to combat and halt the war on America's children. We have to combat and halt the abortion on demand. And we have to combat and halt this notion that adulthood is just all about fulfilling our worldly desires, all about fulfilling the desires of the flesh that couldn't be more wrong. And this leads us all back to a place that teaching, teaching God's principles, God's truth to the masses, is one of the only ways that we're going to address this moral decay that we're dealing with in America. All right, folks, we got one segment left. We got a special guest coming up in the next segment speaking of raising America's children. We'll have an author on next, segment to talk about that very topic.
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Pew surveyed adults 50 and older on major reasons they don't have children
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us. This last segment, well, just to put a bow on the topic that we've been talking over, talking about last two segments, this war on America's children and America's families. This, Pew research is, quite shocking. but if you cover this frequently, you're not so shocked. But nonetheless, listen to this. This is a poll done, some research done and released in 2024. But nonetheless, Pew asked the adults 50 and older that don't have children to state the major reasons that they don't have children. And of course, there were options given, such as, concerns about the state of the world. Didn't, find the right partner or the right spouse. but here are your top results. And remember, I'm giving you this to combat this narrative that, well, people aren't having children because they can't afford them. Well, I would dispute that whole logic line of thinking, but nonetheless, this is what Pew says on the reason people aren't having children. The top reasons. Listen to the first reason. Quote, it just never happened. End quote. 39% of respondents said, quote, it just never happened. top two reason. Didn't find the right spouse. That's a quote. Didn't find the right spouse. 33%, 31%, which is quite like, I'm sorry, point number three. Answer number three, quite like answer number one. Quote, they just didn't want to. 31% of respondents quote, they just didn't want to.
Answer number four on why adults 50 and older didn't have children
All right, here's the fourth reason. These are ranked by, you know, most popular to least popular answer. Answer number four on why adults 50 and older didn't have children. 21 of respondents said they wanted to focus on other things. So it's not until point number four or point number seven that we even get anything about the economy or infertility issues or anything like that. So basically the top four to five things are self centered reasons. They have nothing to do with external factors beyond our control. And so that proves that this is a moral and a cultural problem and not a problem as much about the economy and about infertility. Even though the issue of infertility is an issue, is a problem that many couples deal with. But I'm just giving you the top respondents, the top number of people. Those issues aren't even in the top four or five. This just comes down to people just don't want to have children is what the top four reasons come down to. Very, very tragic results, very tragic outcome that we're seeing in America today. And we are going to have to combat, this trend that we're seeing.
Jeff Lukich is the author of Long Way Home. He's author and speaker one
Ah, welcoming to the program now is. I didn't have time to tell me to have him tell me how to pronounce his last name. So we're going to give it a shot. but Jeff Lukich. Lukich is with us now on the program and he can tell me if I got that wrong. He's author and speaker one. He, has just, he's written a book, the Long Way Home. And we're going to talk about the question every parent is afraid to ask their kid as they head off to college. Jeff, how did I do on the last name?
Jeff Lukich You did perfectly. Walker. I hope you can hear me okay.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, we got you loud and clear. Glad to have you on the phone with us.
Jeff Lukich left his Catholic Christian faith when he left for college
Well, hey, give us, Jeff, give us, a little background about yourself and then we'll jump into the book.
Jeff Lukich Yeah, of course. and thanks for having me on. So I had a 30 year career in, public, child welfare and state government here in Georgia. I retired back in 2018, and have done some writing. I'm an endurance coach, coaching runners, triathletes, that sort of thing. And the holy spirit put this book on my heart a few years ago. So My story aligns perfectly with some of the things you're talking about and what you just mentioned. Because I left my Catholic Christian faith when I left for college. Even though I went to a small liberal art arts Christian college, in South Carolina, where I'm from, my faith still faded. And so as we are entering the end of summer, early fall, as kids leave for college, I think it's a great time to talk about this topic. So I came back to my faith about three and a half years ago and then wrote a book about it to help others come back to their faith. So that's where I'm At today.
Jeff: What happens when children leave the home and head off into adulthood
Walker Wildmon Let me ask you this, Jeff. in your kind of research and studying this topic of what happens when basically children leave the home and, head off into adulthood, what are you finding as far as are these young people, Was it never really a good, healthy home situation to begin with, as far as respect for the parents, respect for their faith, or were these young people genuinely on a good path and then they go off to school and the wheels fall off? What are you finding as far as a common occurrence here?
Jeff Lukich Yeah, I think there's a little of both. I think both your points you're making. And so we know formation in the Christian faith, our churches, our local churches have a lot of responsibility in that, but so do, so do our parents At home. And I think if you don't have both of those, if there's any weak link, then you're not going to have a child that can withstand, the forces that happen out in the world when they leave. And the other thing you mentioned, when kids leave for college, and I'll point myself as an example, this may be the first time someone's not telling them to go to church or reminding them to do things. But At some point we know our faith has to become our own. And when you go off to college, this may be the first time that they're around other people with different ideas. And so you have a lot of things pulling At them At the same time. So I think there's some truth to both points you make.
Jeff Luckic writes about return of faith into adulthood in his book
Walker Wildmon All right, let's talk through. once again, we're talking to Jeff Luckic with, his book the Long Way Home, talking about his return of faith into adulthood. Jeff, let's talk about what we're doing wrong as parents and some of this. I know people and you know, people that the parents seem to be doing everything right according to the scripture and checking all the boxes on being a good Biblical parent. But then the children go off the deep end and you're like, what happened there? and then there's other instances where the parents don't have it all together and then the children turn out okay and they end up coming to faith and living Christian lives in honor of God. So what are some of the key things that you notice that parents do that help their children do well into adulthood?
Jeff Lukich Well, the first thing that comes to mind for me is, is praying together. I think that if a, and particularly two parent households. Now, unfortunately I was raised in a single parent, household and still my mother, had a strong commitment to the faith and so that helped me through high school until I left. But I think that what we see is, if it's a two parent household, then you definitely have a stronger chance. And, and that is not to say that single moms or single dads out there cannot raise their children in faith, because they absolutely can. But there is research, particularly around the Catholic Christian faith, because I've read a little bit of this that a strong ah, when kids see their father pray and a family can pray together with everyone, mom, dad and the kids, that really makes that, that connection a lot stronger. And then keeping kids involved in church related activities. you know, we raised our children Methodist and we were lucky enough to have, in the Methodist church, I should say. And we were lucky enough to have a church with a lot of activities here. And they were involved, Walker, in everything. Now my children are adults now and even they struggle with faith and had eventually, left their faith. So it can happen. You're right, it can happen to anyone. But what we have to do as parents is provide that strong foundation because once they leave the local communities and their homes and their local churches, there's a lot of forces out there in the secular world that are pulling them away from their faith. And we just have to do this together.
Walker Wildmon Amen.
Walker: Trend of young men returning to Christian faith is encouraging
Jeff, once again we're talking to Jeff Luckick with his book Long Way Home. Hey Jeff, the only reason I'm going to ask you this is number one, it's central to your book. Without this, you don't have the book. But also your publisher put this in there as a question and I think it's great. Tell us, let's get personal. What happened to you? what made you. How did God get your attention to draw you back?
Jeff Lukich Yeah, well, leaving, I use an analogy. If you could think about you're At the beach and you're swimming out in the ocean with maybe family and friends, and all of a sudden you turn around and you have this panic moment that you're so far from the shore and you didn't realize you had drifted so far. Well, that's what happened to me. I didn't storm out of the church and say, I'm never coming back. I just went to college. I had influences around me, and I ended up just fading. My faith began to fade. And then I had a 40 year gap where successful career, beautiful family, wonderful marriage. And I still have a. But I was still lost. And then, you know, God spoke to me over the course of six, seven, maybe eight years. And in my case, you know, I came back to my Catholic faith, which is the roots of m. My family. but it could be any faith, you know. And for me, God was tapping me on the shoulder for several years, Walker, and I just wasn't a very good listener. But it was on Christmas Eve in 2022 when really God looked me eye to eye and said, you need to go back to church because this is going to be that concrete first step for you as you walk back into your Christian faith. And that's what I did. I went to mass that night, went to church on Christmas Eve. And I knew then in that pew on that night that I was home. that's how I ended up coming to write a book. Because I know there are many people out there, Walker, who may, may be away from their faith, who just aren't sure how or if it's possible to come back. And, and they may have questions like I did. You know, have I waited too long? Will God forgive me? A lot of those, those questions I had, and I know others do too.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, this is, this is, definitely happening on, on a statistically significant scale. And that is. I know you're not probably in the classification, I would assume as a young man. I'm talking 20s and 30s. I know obviously you're a little older than that. But this trend, my point is the trend in men, either coming to faith in Christ or are being kind of adrift and revitalizing their faith and having a revival is going on At statistically significant scale in the country. I mean, we've all seen the headlines, we've seen the college campuses that are full of revival. And so, Jeff, it just seems like God is kind of waking up the men of our country and telling us, like, if you guys want to restore this country and rebuild our families and have a culture built on Morality and decency and honor, then the men are going to have to lead the way here. I mean, this is a biblical model of men leading the way during hard times.
Jeff Lukich Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I speak about this in my book. One of my biggest regrets is I was not a better spiritual leader in my own family. So, you know, I have adult children and two small grandchildren now, so I'm definitely trying to do that now and being a model. But I think you're right. Young men in particular are waking up and seeing that what's in the world now is just not working. and we're even seeing Walker people who would have considered themselves agnostic or atheist that are now coming into Christianity.
Walker Wildmon Yes.
Jeff Lukich And it's amazing to see the reawakening our awakening. I should say that we're seeing in America and it's very encouraging. Not just with men, we see young women, it happening to them too. But I think young people in particular are looking for something more than they're seeing today out in the world.
Walker: Jeff, what's your advice for men who wasted years not following God
Walker Wildmon Jeff, we've got a minute left. what's your advice to people and even men, fathers, grandfathers, who did waste some years not following God, but they've come back to the faith and they want to make things right to their family. What's your advice for men who have guilt over wasted years in their adulthood?
Jeff Lukich Well, I think that, Jesus does not hold on to sins, and neither do we. Once we ask for repentance and ask for forgiveness. We need to move on and live our faith, out loud. And I think praying is really important. But also people out there, including our family and friends and others. we often hear that we may be the only form of the Bible that people ever see or read. And so we need to make sure that we live our Christian faith out loud and not hide from it, not be embarrassed about it, talk about it, and be bold in that faith. As long as we're not shining a light so bright in people's eyes that they can't see what we're trying to accomplish.
Walker Wildmon Amen. Hey, Jeff, Luka, tell us, your website, how they can find more about your work.
Jeff Lukich Yeah, well, you can find my book in all booksellers, but if you visit jefflukic.com, that's my website, and you can learn more about my story and you can order the book there or you can just use, use the contact form to reach out and say hello. I'd love to hear from you.
Walker Wildmon That's, Jeff. L U K I C H That's the website, Jeff. L U K I C H. That's how his last name is spelled. You can check out his website, or you can just simply Google or go to the bookstore and type in the Long Way Home, and find his book there. Hey, Jeff. God bless you, brother. Appreciate you coming on the program.
Jeff Lukich You too, Walker. Thanks for all you do. Take care.
Walker Wildmon Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, folks, that's a word of encouragement. if you've been living your life away from God in rejection of God, whether blatantly or subtly, folks, you can repent. You can come to faith in Christ, and you can live the remaining years on this earth faithful to God, faithful to his Word, faithful to your family, and have forgiveness and restoration. It can happen to anyone At any time. That is the absolute beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We'll see you next time.
Jeff Lukich The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
💬 Show Notes
In this episode of At the Core, we dive deep into the critical issue of parental rights amidst a growing cultural war on America's families. Join host Walker Wildmon as he unpacks the implications of recent discussions surrounding parental authority, particularly in the context of a Yale professor's controversial proposal to diminish parental influence in favor of young voters. Walker explores the alarming trend of undermining parental rights and the broader societal ramifications of such ideologies.
Additionally, the conversation shifts to a significant settlement involving the Texas Children's Hospital, shedding light on the dangers of misguided medical practices regarding gender transition for minors. The host emphasizes the urgent need for vigilance in protecting our children from radical ideologies and the importance of upholding biblical values in the family structure.
Stay tuned for an insightful interview with author Jeff Lukich, who shares his personal journey of faith and the lessons learned about guiding children through the challenges of adulthood. He highlights the importance of prayer, strong family foundations, and the role of parents in fostering a resilient faith in their children.
(00:00) - Preborn needs your help to provide ultrasounds for pregnant women
(01:04) - Welcome to The Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green
(01:50)- Acts chapter 16 is where we're going to look at this week
(05:20) - Leftists and the secularists move against parental rights
(16:11) - The war on America's children and America's families is anti-Christian
(20:55) - Texas Children's Hospital settles claims it billed Medicaid for transgender treatments
(32:57) - Preborn network clinics offer free ultrasounds to women facing unplanned pregnancies
(34:27) - Pew surveyed adults 50 and older on major reasons they don't have children
(36:22) - Answer number four on why adults 50 and older didn't have children
(37:42) - Jeff Lukich is the author of Long Way Home. He's author and speaker one
(38:15) - Jeff Lukich left his Catholic Christian faith when he left for college
(39:19) - Jeff: What happens when children leave the home and head off into adulthood
(40:57) - Jeff Lukich writes about return of faith into adulthood in his book
(43:43) - Walker: Trend of young men returning to Christian faith is encouraging
(47:58) - Walker: Jeff, what's your advice for men who wasted years not following God
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