We don’t just follow a biblical sexuality We surrender our sexuality. What does that mean? Today we have Authentic Intimacy co-founder, author, and psychologist, Juli Slattery, back on the show to help us understand the difference as well as:  What do we do if we feel stuck in our broken sexuality and shame? How do we love people who want to fight us? How do you invite someone into bringing their full selves to Jesus? What if we don’t want to do this ministry work anymore? | Highlights | “Most Christians have a saving knowledge of Christ, but they don’t have an ongoing intimacy with Jesus that changes anything.” “The idea of offering your body to God when you have been sexually traumatized is terrifying. It could be helpful to remember that although God has every right to pull rank, He never does that. He is always inviting. He gives, and He invites.” “When I wake up and my job every day is to engage in sexual issues, I have no energy for that. Honestly. I don’t like it. When I wake up and I see that my calling is to engage people on the spiritual issues that sexually often represent, boy do I get energized.” | Next Steps | Join us in GR in November.  Join HIMH Live!  Get Juli's book here. Check out Juli's site here. Hear our convo on her pod here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG here.    

You aren’t making it easy for us today! Today, Laurie and Matt take YOUR questions including: + How should we navigate attraction—when it’s not to toward our spouses? (Single people, there is is stuff in this one for you especially when we speak generally about friendship/intimacy in friendships) + Is it hard to be married to someone who experiences same-sex attractions? + How do you protect your kids from violence while keeping them informed? + How did we talk with our kids about the shooting at Annunciation by someone identifying as transgender, and how did we talk with our kids about Charlie Kirk? (We recorded this before the funeral, FYI.) + How should we engage someone who attends our church and cross-dresses?   Find Out More: • The Nov 7-8 Raising Kids Event here.   • The Jan 31 HIMH Live Podcast Event Info coming soon!! • Preorder the Kriegs’ book here.  • Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. • Ask Laurie a Q on IG here. 

Many of us know that we were not made to be alone, but what if we don’t have good friends?  What if we don’t have friends who we can rely on in not just the good times but the hard?   Today, ministry leader, speaker, and author Toni Collier is back to help us understand why we need godly community and how to get it as well as: What if I feel too disappointed in God to even talk to him as my friend? What if I don’t access my emotions well enough to share with others? What if I’m an introvert?   Find Out More: • Get Toni’s book here.   • Check out her site here.  • Watch the last episode with Toni here. • Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. • Ask Laurie a Q on IG here.  

It’s hard to meet a parent of young kids today who isn’t desperately wondering how to equip their kids for this sexually broken world.   Thankfully, God is calling people to resource parents to equip their kids with a gospel vision for human sexuality, including a massive parenting discipleship project.   It is called Christian Sexuality: Raising Kids, and you can hear the behind-the-scenes details with friend, author, and theologian Dr. Preston Sprinkle today on the podcast!   Next Steps: • Preorder the series here. • Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. • Laurie’s IG here. • Watch here.      

Burnout. Maybe you’ve experienced it—or maybe you’re in it right now and can’t quite name it yet. All we see is: 1 . Emotional exhaustion2. Autopilot living or cynicism3. Loss of fulfillment Yup. That’s burnout. How can we heal from it? How does it affect our relationship with God? And how can we move forward with hope?   | Next Steps |  • Forbes article (with a quiz) here. • Psychology Today article here. • The app Steve mentioned here. • Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. • Connect with Laurie here.  

It’s our season wrap episode, and we could not have asked for a better guest. Ruth is a teacher and author, and she knows the real-life challenges of helping kids to and parents to turn their hearts toward God. How can we practice something like family devotions without it feeling too forced? What if husbands and wives are on different pages about how to lead the family spiritually? Is structure helpful or hurtful? Let’s dive in. | Next Steps | Ruth’s site here. Her IG here.  This book here. Her new book here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Sign up to get on the HIMH email list here. 

THIS EPISODE. We literally cried. All of us. And it led to a mentoring relationship between Matt and our guest, Michael John Cusick. Why? We were struck thinking about how to *actually live* in that tension between our faith and our experience. Join us? Next Steps:  Michael’s site here. His book here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here.

As ministry leaders and therapists (Matt and Laurie), we have often wondered: When do church leaders and pastors utilize therapists and para-church ministries and when do they care on their own? Do pastors always outsource? Do they never outsource? What role does the church have for families in crisis? Let’s talk about it with author and psychologist (and lover of the Church), Jennifer Ripley.   | Highlights | “The church…will bring you casseroles, but when a crisis shows up, we often don’t know what to do.” “Pastors have a role in a person’s life that a therapist or medical doctor does not have.” “A Church community can provide healing in ways that others cannot. I can provide that somewhat as a therapist…but a whole community that holds people and gives them opportunities for growth? That’s beautiful.” | QOTW | What was your favorite children’s book while growing up?   | Next Steps | Her book here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here. Sign up to get on the email list here.

If the average age of pornography exposure is between 8 and 12 years old, and the majority of Christians are looking at it regularly, we need to talk about it.    Specifically, documentary creator and author John Michael Bout helps us ask and answer:   How can we help our kids prepare to see it? How can we help them recover? What hope do we have?   | Highlights |   “Parents are often like, ‘We live in a technological world. I know there is pornography out there. I have no idea what to do!” We can throw our hands in the air, and bury our heads in the sand. I always want to say to parents, ‘Yeah, this is hard. This is challenging. We live in a unique time. But God has given you everything you need to talk about sexuality.” “At the heart of every situation where there is pornography going on, there are good and holy desires. They are finding their end in a counterfeit—in the wrong thing.” “There are good studies to show that the first person to teach on the topic will become the expert. As a parent, you want to be the expert when it comes to questions of sexuality.”   | QOTW |   What is something you have purchased off a cookie ad or As Seen on TV and it was actually good?    | Next Steps | The trailer here. The site here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here. Sign up to get on the email list here.

It’s so easy to identify as “I am what I do” or “I am how I feel.” The next generations especially seem to feel this pull. How can we help Gen Z and Alpha understand who they are in Christ? How can we start with our own identity so we speak from a place of firm-footing instead of hypocrisy? Author and therapist Jonathan Holmes is here to help lead us. | Highlights | “A gospel identity is one that is received and not achieved.” —Jonathan Holmes “All of us parents can struggle with wanting to make our kids into our image, rather than helping them fulfill and live into their image-bearing capacity.” “God’s first words about sexuality are ones of invitation not prohibition.” —Jonathan Holmes | QOTW| If you had the time and the desire, what sport would you want to get really good at? | Next Steps | His IG here. His book here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here. Sign up to get on the email list here. 

Many parents feel a mixture of emotions about screens: On one hand, we see they can be useful tools. On the other, we feel a lot of shame because we are probably addicted to them ourselves and we let our kids use them too often.   We feel shame, anger, and . . . gratitude?   How should we feel?    How can parents approach screen time with their kids—and move us all from fighting to flourishing?   Christian dad, tech-guru, and founder of Protect Young Eyes, Chris McKenna, is here to help us.   | Highlights | “Some of the loudest voices advocating for our children are coming not from the Church.” —Chris McKenna “There is no other issue on earth today that is at risk for darkening the hearts of our children than their digital spaces. It must be the thing we talk about second most to Jesus Christ.” —Chris McKenna “This is Brain against the Game—not Kid versus Parent. If our child acts wild after stopping a game or show, our instinct is to think, ‘This is my kid is fighting back against me and being disobedient.’ That stirs up anger and confrontation between us. But if parents can remember, ‘That game is harming them. I am going to be upset at the *game* because of what it is doing to my precious child.’ That pivots our anger into empathy.” —Chris McKenna | Next Steps | Follow Protect Young Eyes on IG here. Read Protect Young Eyes Resources here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here. Sign up to get on the email list here.

Parents and caregivers of the next generation need help to lead their kids in an affirming-LGBTQ world.   Our guest and author, Rachel Gilson, said it well on today’s episode: “Even my friends who had great discipling moms and dads didn’t grow up in this cultural moment. Their moms and dads didn’t have to help them navigate these cultural questions.”   She continued: “So even they feel out on a limb: ‘No one prepped me for this.’ There is a panic of feeling without a guide and lost. That’s no one’s fault but it’s where a lot of us find ourselves now.”   Parents were not prepared for this. How do we live and teach the next generation wisely?   We also talk discuss:   How do we engage this topic not with a culture-warrior mentality but a Jesus mentality? When do we talk about sex and sexuality? How can we teach our kids a gospel identity?   | Highlights |   “We are made for love, but for love that is richer and deeper and thicker than our culture is currently telling us it is.” “If I talk about sex and sexuality in a way that is calm and confident, I am going to signal to my daughter that she is never going to be shamed for asking questions, and that she is not going to cause me to curl up into embarrassment and fear. “I worked as a campus minister with college students for a long time. I kept asking the kids who grew up in Christian households and came to university and who were strong in the faith, ‘Why did you not get inoculated to the gospel? How did this become real to you?’ The number one answer I heard over and over and over again was, ‘It was real for my parents. As in, when they did something wrong, they asked for forgiveness.’”** | QOTW |    What generation do you actually belong to and which one should you belong to?   | Next Steps | Snag Rachel’s book here See her site here: https://www.rachelgilson.com We talked with Rachel about temptation on the show here We talked with Rachel about friendship here We mentioned thinking through school systems with a certain lens. This is the episode Laurie was referring to.  

Discipleship is something Christians are talking about more.   It’s so important. But…what is it?   Today, author and pastor Eun (EK) Strawser helps understand what discipleship is as well as:   --How can we become a community that centers discipleship?   --How can we know if we are doing it “right”?   --How does parenting relate to discipleship?   | Highlights |   “Discipleship means to imitate Jesus within the context of a community for the renewal of the local place around you.” “If discipleship is centered within a community, then that also means within a family.” “The discipleship of deficiency develops because people self-disqualify themselves all of the time. Jesus set out and said, ‘Every one of you who are making an intentional decision to imitate me within the context of community, you are a disciple maker. Go and make more.’ If that’s the call, then that should not be a leadership call. Making disciples should not be a criteria for leaders. It should be a baseline criteria for every congregant.”   | QOTW |   What do you need to prepare for winter?   | Next Steps |   Eun’s book here Her IG here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here. 

This episode left us speechless.   Today, we are joined again by psychologist and author Dan Allender to talk about the most important part of parenting: Your marriage.    (If you are a single mom or dad, we bless you and intersperse much of the conversation with relating the conversation to close friendships.)   For those of us who are married, why is that the most important part of marriage? Dan tells us well:    “Our children are given the gift of watching the reality of love and life brokenness and beauty being played out in the theater of our marriage,” he says. “They are in the audience watching closely—far more closely than we presume. If our marriage doesn’t have the ability to actually name brokenness but also glory in one another, our children are going to be hungry souls looking for what they were made for.”   Okay, Dan. Help us out, friend. How can we lean in without setting the bar too high or low?   This episode is one we will be going back to again and again.   | Highlights |   “The process of growing in maturity is a family affair.” —Dan Allender “You can communicate well in marriage when you learn to suffer on behalf of the other.” —Dan Allender “My story needs to be known by my spouse well enough and deep enough to be able to engage it. Eventually, our kids need to know our stories. Each and every detail? No. Age appropriate.” —Dan Allender   | QOTW | What is your go-to birthday dinner?   | Next Steps | Talking with us about “Sexuality and Shame” here. We also talked with Dan and Cathy Loerzal about “Which of the Six Types are You?”  here. Check out Dan’s sites here and here. Snag his latest marriage book here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here.

To launch our spring season focused on parenting and discipling the next generation, we are starting with YOUR QUESTIONS. We toss around:  “What parts of ‘the sex talk’ were helpful for us when we were growing up?” “How can we protect our kids’ bodies without being a helicopter parent?” “How can we approach school systems that don’t agree with our beliefs?” “Should we talk to our kids about p*rn even if they don’t have unlimited access to the internet?” Pull up an earbud and join us! | Highlights | “My parents taught me, ‘You are not defined by your behavior by your sin. It does not identify you or define you.’ That was very helpful in critical moments.”—Steve O’Dell “One of the biggest indicators for how well people will recover from trauma is if they know they have a place they can come in the event that something does happen.”—Matt Krieg “If our kids are going to hear an unbiblical worldview of marriage and sexuality in their schools, they need to hear the gospel vision of marriage and sexuality in our homes ten times more.” —Laurie Krieg | QOTW | Do you have a word, a focus, or theme for the year? | Next Steps | Jay Stringer’s book we cited Julia Sadusky’s book My friend, Phylicia Masonheimer who talks a lot about parenting from the home here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here.  

Happy new year! Let’s talk about friendships?    Author and pastor Bryan Loritts joins us today to discuss:   Are friendships seasonal? (Should they be?) How can we make and keep lifelong friends? How should we think about boundaries with friends?   | Highlights | “The reason so many of our relationships are superficial is we are too scared of taking the time and the risk to walk in truth with each other.”  “There is a place to draw boundaries. I am just cautious against that being our reflex reaction the first time someone does something to us.” “Many people confuse transparency with authenticity. We have to be authentic with everyone but transparent with few.” “We are so busy so we don’t make time and margin for the longing of our souls for friends.” | QOTW |   What is your go-to quotable movie?   | Next Steps | His site His book His IG Connect to O’Neill Asset Management here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here.

If you care about the gender conversation at all, we believe this conversation is critical. Dr. Abigail Favale wrote Laurie’s favorite book on gender this year called “The Genesis of Gender,” and the conversation about it is—*chef’s kiss*—rich and practical. Together, they talk about: —Is sexual difference an afterthought of the Bible? How can we define woman and man? Is the fact that intersex people exist the proverbial “trump card” for more than two sexes? How can people walk alongside those they love who wrestle with gender? (And what if we wrestle ourselves?) | Highlights | “The gender-affirming medical model presents itself as a quick fix. It is concrete. ‘I now have a very concrete, step-by-step process that I can follow that will speak to this misery I am undergoing.’ That is a very compelling narrative, so I have nothing but compassion for people who go down this road to try to manage their suffering. I have less compassion for people in authority who should know better.” —Abigail Favale “Yes, boys can play with these toys, but they are still boys because of the kind of bodies they are…You  have a body where you could grow up and be a daddy one day.” And: “You have a body that could grow up and be a mommy one day.” —Abigail Favale “There was never a time where the medical establishment said, ‘The cure for anorexia is liposuction or to affirm young women’s views of themselves…’ Now we have adults in authority telling distressed young women [who wrestle with gender], ‘You are right about how you feel about your body, and let me help you to radically change it.’” —Abigail Favale | QOTW |  What is the best pickle? (Oh, my word…Matt writes a haiku against pickles hahaha)   | Next Steps | Abigail’s new memoir here. Her gender book here. Her Twitter: Twitter/X @FavaleAbs Connect to O’Neill Asset Management here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here.

We LOVED this conversation.   In the midst of divisive ... everything… in the world today, it reminded us about what really matters: JESUS. THE GOSPEL. And that sharing Jesus (evangelism) is an absolute joy when you love Him.   Theologian, author, and our friend, David Bennett, is the one who reminds us of our first love (Jesus), and also helps us think through:   —Why should we tell people about Jesus? How can we make it less awkward? Should it feel natural to us? What if people respond poorly?  | Highlights |   “If I was married, I would tell people how amazing my spouse is all the time because I like to share good things with people. If you’re in love with Someone, you talk about them. That’s my favorite form of evangelism.” —David Bennett “Why do I love evangelism? Because I get to see God—Jesus—born in someone. There is nothing better than that in the world.” —David Bennett “When you realize, ‘I ain’t got nothing’—that’s when you’re the best evangelist. Because I don’t have anything. Even with all my degrees, who cares? What matters is that Jesus died and rose again and he’s awesome and there’s nothing better in life and people need that and are perishing and it’s urgent.” —David Bennett   | QOTW |   What was your youth group name if you had one—or what would you name it now?   | Next Steps |   David joined us twice before. Listen here and here.  David’s site here. David’s IG here.  Connect to O’Neill Asset Management here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here.

We’re trying something new called Laurie’s Book Club, where “she reads the book so you don’t have to.   Granted, we would love it if you read the book and “discussed” it alongside us on the pod, but if you’re anything like most of the world, you’d love to hear a summary of the book, any major nuggets, a little discussion, and call it a day.   That’s what we are starting today!   The book of focus is Jonathan Haidt’s instant NYTimes best seller, The Anxious Generation. It’s globally shaking up families, school systems, and even legislation around phones and screen times for the Gen Z—and we believe it’s shaking it in a good way.   How?   It names some of the problems for the massive anxiety and depression outbreak among Gen Z and it offers some solutions.   What are they? You’re going to have to listen in—but you don’t have to read the book.   | Highlights |   “I see the mindsets in p*rnography as in social media: They can be a means to control negative emotions, they can foster passivity to your real life, you can consume the image of another person, and you are always seeking novelty. The more we live out of these mindsets in social media, the easier it is to jump over to the more overtly negative ones like p*rn.” —Matt Krieg “If I was to summarize Haidt's thesis statement it would be: Parents, over-protect online, and under-protect in real life when it comes to real life, outdoor play with trusted friends.” —Laurie Krieg “I think that the ironic thing about this is that what we have been told the intent of mobile technology is that it is a point of connection, but the evidence is showing that it is creating this weird isolation. It is an ironic result.” —Steve O’Dell   | Next Steps |   Find Haidt’s book here. Connect to O’Neill Asset Management here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here.

Suffering, eh? Sounds … super … fun.  Ya know, the older we get, the more we realize just how important our theology of suffering is when we are … well, suffering. As Kelly Kapic said in today’s episode, “You don’t realize how flimsy your theology of suffering is until you use it as a resource to live on.”  For example, if we think suffering should be escaped, *when* we suffer we will try to outrun it. (Which is hard to do if we are enduring physical pain.) If we think suffering should be embraced, *when* we suffer we might try to make it our identity. Let’s get a proper theology of suffering with someone who isn’t just a theologian of suffering but someone who knows it personally: Author Kelly Kapic. Together, we talk about: How can we suffer with high hope and high lament? How can we deal with our chronic pain of the soul or body? What is up with the book of Job? Is God a bully or kind? How can we pivot our hearts to suffer well now or in the future?   | Highlights | “You don’t realize how flimsy your theology of suffering is until you use it as a resource to live on. It’s like trying to exist on saltine crackers, and you think, ’No, I need some real nourishment here.’” —Kelly Kapic “How we respond to suffering really does betray a lot of our view of God.” —Kelly Kapic “The unsettling thing about Job is that God never answers Job’s questions. He doesn’t. The answer to Job’s question is that God shows up.” —Kelly Kapic | QOTW | Space or ocean? Which is better? | Next Steps | Find Kelly’s book here. Find Kelly’s articles on TGC here. Connect to O’Neill Asset Management here. Join the HIMH Pod FB group here. Follow Laurie on IG (where she is the most active) here.