Revive Our Hearts

Dana Gresh: The evils of society can be depressing for parents and grandparents. Jeff Keaton provides perspective by reminding us that it's actually been worse before.

Jeff Keaton: I do come across Christians who are very pessimistic. It's more like maybe there is no hope for our children, our grandchildren. I say stop it. If there was hope for Noah's children, there is definitely hope for our children today.

Dana Gresh: Welcome to the *Revive Our Hearts* podcast for September 30, 2026. I'm Dana Gresh. Our host is the author of *Adorn*, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

If you're a parent of a younger child, have you ever imagined the day that he or she will become a mature, godly adult? At times it may seem to you like that's never going to happen, but you can dream, right? And have you ever looked at society and thought, "Wow, there's such a strong current threatening to sweep my child the wrong way"?

Parents can easily feel pangs of fear. What if my son goes off the rails, or what if my daughter gets caught up in the devil's lies? Those are real concerns. Our guest today is Jeff Keaton, and he wants to provide hope to you as a parent or grandparent. He says, by God's grace, your child's story doesn't have to be a heartbreaking tragedy.

He's convinced that a big key is to help your child develop a biblical worldview, to think biblically about everything. On yesterday's program, Jeff defined a worldview as a person's core set of beliefs. Those beliefs inform the choices we make, so a biblical worldview is one that lines up with God's word.

When we left off, Jeff was talking about the importance of parents being authentic. He also mentioned prayer and what an important weapon that is in our arsenal as we ask God to rescue and redeem the lives of these young ones. Now let's listen to part two of this conversation between Dana Gresh and Jeff Keaton.

Dana Gresh: Jeff, I want to go back to when you were a child. Who was praying and depositing truth into your heart?

Jeff Keaton: My beautiful mom and dad. My mom and dad got married at 17 and 18. I was their fourth child born on their fifth anniversary. Then they had five more children after me, so we had nine kids. My dad preached in 38 different countries of the world. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who tried to manage the chaos of nine children with a husband who traveled a lot.

They're alive today. I'm going to take them out to dinner in a few minutes. They're 81 years of age. By the way, we gave them 41 grandkids, and just in the last month, they've had their 84th great-grandchild born. Nine kids gave them 41 grandkids, and 90 of us are in full-time vocational ministry. That includes moms and dads and kids right now.

Eight of us nine kids went into full-time vocational ministry for the last 30 plus years. We did have—I say this to encourage people because sometimes people get enamored with a big family in the ministry—one brother who went into full-blown rebellion. He served 24 years in the U.S. military. We're very proud of him. Today, he makes a profession of faith. He comes to church with us a lot.

The bottom line is this: they were 100% sold out to Jesus. I don't like to overcomplicate it. Dr. Josh Mulvihill, who leads our church and family division at Renewanation, has written incredible books like *50 Things Every Child Needs to Know Before Leaving Home*. When I read Josh's book, I told him, "Josh, I could have done a better job. I didn't do it just like you do it."

However, my parents didn't even have James Dobson. They didn't have all these tools that people have today. But I tell you what they had: they were utterly sold out to Jesus Christ. They loved Him with all their heart, and there was no thought in their mind that any of us children would do anything but follow Him with all our hearts. Even though my dad was busy in ministry, he was masterful at taking us children with him.

We were involved in all of his ministries in some form or fashion. So everything was about Jesus and His kingdom on earth and eternity. That's all I can say. Yes, we had family devotions, but not every single night. We didn't have a real massive discipleship program. My dad would read the Bible, we would get on our knees and pray, but then every moment of every day was discipleship to mom and dad.

It wasn't in some weird way where we always felt like we couldn't have any fun. It wasn't like that. I remember going down the road as a boy, and my dad would reach over and pat me on the leg and say, "Son, you are destined for leadership in the kingdom of God on earth. Don't you ever let the devil mess that up." What did that do to a little boy's heart? I didn't know what that meant, but I felt like I had a grand purpose in this world.

That's how my dad passed that on to me. Then my dad preached a zillion sermons. I never heard him complain one time about having to preach or prepare. It was his calling; it was the love of his heart and life. So I'd say it was somewhat more caught from my parents than it was taught. We just saw them in action.

I will say this: modeling for parents, even though I absolutely believe parents should be intentional about teaching their children at home, I'm going to tell you something. You can teach all you want to, but if your life is not authentic and you're not a good example truly in the home, your words will be blown away by your example.

Dana Gresh: You're talking about what God instructed to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6, which is this whole lifestyle of discipleship. I'm going to paraphrase, but it says teach my commandments to your children when you walk, when you sit, when you stand, when you lie down. This isn't quality time discipleship. This is every moment of every day you bump into your child when this experience happens, you turn it into a discipleship moment. That's what you're talking about. It's all life, every day, modeling and teaching.

Jeff Keaton: That is one of the most powerful passages of Scripture for parents ever. I really love Deuteronomy 6, and it's in another place or two in the Old Testament, the same words. One of the reasons why I actually ended up getting into education as a pastor was because I read that passage and I thought, how could we segment seven hours a day and say, "Okay, we're supposed to teach them God's truth all day long except for those seven hours"? Literally as a pastor thinking about how do you best disciple children, that's when I began to get into this whole idea of the importance and the value of education because of that very command right there in Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Dana Gresh: Life-changing. I want to talk to you about—your family is a testimony of encouragement in a world that's pretty nutty right now. It's pretty crazy. There are some really radical identity issues alive and well in our world that—I mean, just for example, pronouns are—they don't make sense. At least let's find a singular pronoun to describe you if you don't like him or her, right? But not a plural pronoun. This does not—it's not logical.

There's a lot of insanity, I think, in what's happening in our culture. But Noah raised a family through a culture that was so insane that God said, "I just want to wipe you out. I can't even with you anymore." But then He finds Noah, and He finds one man and one family that He says, "I have some hope here." So I guess Noah is sort of evidence—you say this in your book—that he's sort of evidence that it is possible to raise a family with a biblical worldview in a world gone crazy. Can you talk to us about that?

Jeff Keaton: Think about it. How much harder did Noah have it than we do? We have the Bible, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us—and obviously, the Holy Spirit was working with Noah back then as well—but we have millions of Christians surrounding us in this world to encourage us and to help us and to give us hope. One of the reasons why I like to focus on Noah is because I do come across Christians who are very pessimistic.

It's more like maybe there is no hope for our children, our grandchildren. I say stop it. If there was hope for Noah's children, there is definitely hope for our children today. I just spoke in a church on Sunday and gave my speech on Noah called *Saving Our Children in a World Gone Crazy*. How did he do it? I start off, first of all, he did it because he was right with God.

The hardest young person to reach with the truth of the Gospel, for me, in 35 years of straight ministry now, is that young person who lives in the home with Christian parents where one or both of them are inauthentic in their walk with Jesus. My niece said to me—she's a pastor's wife down in Texas now—"Uncle Jeff, did you know there's seven kids from our church/school setting my age who are divorced already?"

She was 32 or 33 at the time. I said, "From our church and school?" She said, "Yes." We had hundreds and hundreds of kids, so I didn't even know. I said, "Name them for me." She named them. Six of the seven came from a home with one parent who was totally not walking with God. It was complete dysfunction. What I try to say to parents in my book is listen: first and foremost, before you think about how you're going to train your children, make sure you are in an intimate relationship with God.

Because you can't fake it to children. If you're not in an intimate relationship with God, your desires will not be for the things of God and for the Lord Himself, and you'll have passions and desires that will lead your children astray. I talk to dads a lot about sports. Travel sports is dominating. Pastors and heads of schools tell me all the time that parents are literally taking their kids out of church.

I knew of one dad who took his son out of church at 11 years of age for 22 straight weeks to play travel baseball. When the boy was 17—happened to be my brother's church—his dad had the audacity to come to our student ministries pastor and say, "There's something bad wrong with this student ministry because my son has no interest in church." The bottom line is this: parents must be right with Jesus. They must have a right relationship with Jesus and live it authentically in the home.

I like to say, too, he saved his children because he knew God's plan for his family. God said, "Okay, to save your family, you've got to stop whatever else you're doing and build this massive ark." How drastic is that? And yet Noah believed God enough to do what He said. He knew what God's plan was for his family.

I'm going to be honest with you. I'm a little bit old school. I didn't grow up with all of these thoughts. I've grown into all these thoughts as I've studied the Bible more. I believe Christian families are violating God's good design for the family when it comes to the roles of husbands and wives. It troubles me to see young mamas having to drop their six-week-old babies off at daycares and go and do their job while somebody else tries to influence them.

God wants parents to be the primary influences of their children, to raise their children. The bottom line is I think Christian families have to rediscover what is God's good design for the family, what are the roles of husbands and wives. If we would readopt that—the crisis in America is the crisis of the breakdown of the family. That is the crisis. Seventy-five percent of every person in prison basically grew up without a healthy father or grew up without a father.

Why? Why does that happen? Because it's God's good design, and you can't break God's laws without God's laws breaking society and breaking us. So anyway, that's another reason Noah saved his family because he knew what God's plan was and he followed it 100%. He was willing to be different. If parents today are not willing to be different, your kid is going to become locked into screens and devices.

If we're not willing to buck the trends of our kids being locked into screens and devices all day every day, we're not going to raise healthy children who are going to fulfill their purpose in this world.

Dana Gresh: And also we've got to not be locked in ourselves.

Jeff Keaton: Exactly. We have to set the example. And it's hard. We all live in this world.

Dana Gresh: But in early 2026, there were a few landmark court cases—one in California, one in New Mexico—where the court found in favor of families who came up against the social media giants and creators and said, "I think you knowingly damaged my child." And the court said, "Yes, they did know. They did know that they were creating addiction. They did know that they were manipulating the mental health of these children for the sake of their algorithm."

Parents need to wake up and read about these court cases. In addition to that, there's just this constant IV drip of untruthful things and false teachers in the name of Christianity, but they're not saying things that are true from Scripture on those screens. Our children need to know that. The way they're going to know that is by being so familiar with God's word that when they hear those things occasionally, they're like, "That doesn't sound like it fits with the word of God. I don't agree with that." But they can't be constantly exposed to it and not be influenced by it and affected by it.

Anything else about Noah stands out as an example for us as parents and grandparents?

Jeff Keaton: I understand God's sovereignty in all of this, but I've often wondered how hard it was for him to convince his three sons to follow him onto the ark. The point I like to make when I think of that is that we must win the hearts and minds of our children. My dad was a strong disciplinarian, but he was also filled with love. I was a strong disciplinarian with our daughters and I made them follow the rules, but I also was full of love towards them.

Probably the coolest thing that happened for me was when they both went away out of state to college, three years apart. I had said to them all through the years, "I hope when you find a young man that you think you might want to date or marry, that you'll let your dad be involved in that." Both of my daughters called me from college and said, "Dad, there's a young man that wants to date me. Do you want to talk to him?"

Buddy, they laugh about it and I laugh about it, but I typed up a multi-page handout and I went and met with these boys. I literally took them all the way through it and laid it out, starting out saying God entrusted these girls to us. We only have one dream for them: that they will know, love, and serve the Lord Jesus Christ their entire lives. We realize who they marry is going to determine how well their lives go, and you're going to be the father of our grandchildren. We want a godly man.

It was pretty cool. My oldest daughter, Juliana, who now lives on a 2,000-acre farm with three boys and a little girl, is just an incredible woman. She's a hardworking farmer's wife. She's tough. She was tough on her dad. I'd preach at church, we'd be going home, and she'd say, "Dad, I'm not sure if you actually live everything you just preached." I was like, "What? You're kidding me."

However, she trusted me enough to let me help her make that decision. I didn't make the decision, but I vetted those young men, and I've got two fantastic sons-in-law now. My point is this, and here's where I'm at with my grandkids right now: I'm trying to win their hearts right now so they'll give me access to their minds as they get older. Yes, I'm pumping stuff into their minds now.

When I take Marshall with me on a speaking trip and my next one down, four-and-a-half-year-old Henry—he's begging to go, but he's a bit of a corker and I just can't take him—literally on recent trips, Marshall wanted to sit on the stage with me when I'm speaking to hundreds of people. And you know what I did? I let him sit on the stage with me. He thought it was so cool. He behaved like an angel until he got a water bottle and started crinkling up a water bottle in my last speech. I told him to stop.

But I'm just winning his heart so that when that time he starts thinking really logically in middle school, he and I can have those incredible discussions about worldview, etc.

Dana Gresh: So you're a man who's—you're a pastor, you started a Christian school, you have a few decades of experience in worldview here. Where does a parent start if they're like, "I like what you're saying, but it sounds impossible. It sounds difficult." Like, what resources and tools can we direct them to so that they can digest this one step at a time? How do you present a biblical worldview to your children? What tools do you use?

Jeff Keaton: Our mission, the way we sum up our mission at Renewanation, is to inspire and equip the family, church, and school to give the children in their care a biblical worldview. We've discovered that when you get the family, church, and school all teaching God's truth, that's a three-stranded cord that is not easily broken in the life of a child. The reason we lost so many children in evangelical Christianity over the last 50 years is one or two of those were not teaching God's truth.

What I would say is, first of all, they need to evaluate: how are we doing in the home? Are we teaching our children God's truth? It's shocking to me to find out how few Christian parents are actually sitting down and simply reading the Bible with their children. If somebody's listening today and you really haven't gotten started—you're teaching them basically don't do this because that's wrong—here's where I say start.

Literally at least three to five times a week, have a meal together in the home. Don't go out to eat. Have a meal together in the home. After the meal, open the Bible up and read a brief passage that you know you can have a good discussion around. Then let each one of your children, no matter if they're super young they can't, but as they get a little bit older, talk about that passage and what they understood it to mean.

Make sure they have a clear understanding of it, answer any questions they might have, and then you literally just pray. I like to have every member of the family pray. They don't have to pray long, but if you get your children praying, they'll get very comfortable with it. Yes, when they're three years old, my grandson Henry prays the funniest prayer. One of his prayers: "Lord, help me to be good." When we're eating every day, Henry needs that prayer desperately right now because he's not always behaving well.

The point is people overcomplicate this. I dare people to read the Bible three to five times a week with your children and discuss it openly. Now, a mom and dad should kind of maybe read from passages that you want to lead your children into, into some teachings you want them to have. I say start there. Then I would say make sure at your church that you're going to a church that's actually teaching God's truth.