What Helps Faith Take Root and Last?: Collin Outerbridge

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The Labels They Live By: Helping Kids Find Their Identity in Christ

Guest:Dr. Collin Outerbridge

From the series: Why Kids Leave the Faith—and Can Parents Do Anything About It? (Day 3 of 3)

Air date: September 30, 2026

Dave (00:04):

So job one for every Christian parent is what?

Ann (00:09):

Raise your kids to love Jesus.

Dave (00:11):

Yeah. I mean, I think every Christian parent—oh, you lay in bed at night, you pray, you fret, you worry, you’re anxious, especially in this day and world: “What do I need to do? How do I need to be to have a son or daughter who, when they’re 20, when they’re 18, when they’re 16, they’re standing for Christ?”

Ann (00:27):

And I think every parent longs for, prays for it, and so this is your segment today. You’re going to be really excited about our series.

Dave (00:41):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann (00:47):

And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave (01:00):

Okay, we’re talking about parenting; raising the next generation.

Ann (01:03):

I love these topics.

Dave (01:04):

Yeah. And we got Dr. Collin Outerbridge back with us. You’re an amazing dad. I just got to tell you, listening to you, I haven’t met Stacy. I don’t know your kids.

Collin (01:15):

I think she’s an amazing mom, and I’m happy to be a part of her family. That’s the way I put it.

Ann (01:19):

That’s very humble of you.

Dave (01:20):

Seriously, the wisdom, the strategies you guys—I guarantee parents that have been listening the last couple days are making decisions that are different than what they’ve been doing based on a model that you’ve been giving us, which is awesome.

Ann (01:34):

And if you haven’t listened, go back and listen to them. This is going to be gold for you, as a parent, things that you can implement in your home.

Dave (01:41):

Yeah, and I love it. It’s really in some ways coming from a series you did at your church, Kids These Days, really teaching parents and families how do we raise the next generation to love Jesus as adults? The last couple days, you’ve been talking about, okay, King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel in Babylon. There was a strategy that King Nebuchadnezzar used, the enemy used to indoctrinate these young men. So we’ve been talking about that. Somehow, you got to give us a review of what that strategy was because, as parents, there’s a strategy in our culture that’s influencing our kids. And if we don’t know that, we’re doomed. If we do, we can counteract that.

Collin (02:16):

I think it’s “new days, old plays.” And if you know the playbook of the enemy, you have the advantage in your home and in relationship with your kids. And so often we feel like we’re playing this game and we don’t know what the enemy’s going to do, but it’s the same thing every single time, generation after generation.

Ann (02:34):

Because he’s not creative.

Collin (02:36):

Right. He’s not a creator. He’s a copycat. When we know what the playbook is, we can then scheme to win this war that the enemy is waging against the next generation. And so it really does involve five key plays. And we’ve talked about four so far. The first one is to fictionalize the faith: if I can get the faith to be just a part of a child’s life, but not key to a child’s life, I’ve won. What one generation believes, the next generation forgets, and the third generation denies. The second element is to gather the influencers. I don’t have to get everybody on board. I just have to get the influencers on board. And as parents, we have a responsibility to make sure that we have influence over who is influencing our kids. The third element is to reeducate them, to change their imagination of who God is.

(03:26):

And we’ve got to be involved and engaged as parents when it comes to the education of our kids. And the data points to the fact that there’s a lot of room for many of us to grow in this particular area. And then the fourth one that we talked about was keeping our kids dependent upon the King’s table. And that one of the key elements that leads to resilient faith in kids is being the kind of parents and the kinds of leaders in their lives that remind them and give them an imagination for the world that is beyond simply getting to next week or what the next assignment looks like, but reminding them that we are made for eternity, that we are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and we belong to a great King.

Dave (04:05):

Wow. So give us number five.

Collin (04:07):

Yeah. I think number five is the most important one, in that if we can identify this and see it happen ahead of time, we can have a significant impact on the outcome for our kids. And the fifth one is what we find in Daniel chapter one. It’s around verse seven where King Nebuchadnezzar tells Ashpenaz to rename the four Hebrew boys. So you maybe know them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Well, those are the Babylonian names that are given to three Hebrew boys. And then Daniel was given a name as well, the name Belteshazzar. What’s interesting is that the four Hebrew boys, their birth names all pointed to the goodness, the mercy, the kindness, the compassion, and the justice of God. Their names had meaning. And what the Babylonian empire did was rename those Jewish boys and give them Babylonian names that were connected to their gods.

(05:08):

And I think that in this cultural moment, our children are consistently being bombarded with different versions of what it means to be human that is under the framework of something lesser than their ultimate call, which is to be an image bearer of God. So God gives us a name. God gives us value. God gives us dignity. And I think we’re in a culture right now where lesser things are the primary voices that are trying to identify kids today.

Ann (05:42):

So you’re saying our kids are in an identity crisis—

Collin:

A thousand percent.

Ann:

—because they have no idea who they are because the world’s trying to shape their identity.

Collin (05:51):

Absolutely. And it can be as simple as a kid thinking, “I’m a volleyball player,”

(05:57):

or “I’m a football player,” as opposed to “I’m the beloved of God, made in His image, who happens to play football.” That’s as simple as it could be. And it could be something broader than that. It could be, “I’m smart.” Well, that could be true, but there’s going to be a moment in your life where being smart isn’t going to be enough. But what is always enough is “I’m the beloved of God.” I think as parents, we have to be very, very wise about what we celebrate in our home. And so we can’t just show up for our kids’ achievements. We need to love them the same in their failures. One of the things that I thought about is when our kid succeeds—let’s say they make the play or they make the team—we might go out for a celebratory lunch or get ice cream or something like that.

(06:48):

But what happens if they fail? What if they get cut? What if they don’t make the team? Do we still go out to celebrate? And we still get ice cream, right?

Dave:

No, we transfer to another school.

Collin:

We transfer to another school. That’s what we do these days. We blame the coach and we transfer to another school. I think—

Dave (07:02):

You’re saying still go out.

Collin (07:03):

Oh yeah. I think that we can unintentionally hammer home a message that our kids are already experiencing, that you are only as good as what you do. The culture is right. What we’re communicating to our kids is, your popularity, your success, those are the most important things about you. And those might be parts of you, but the most important thing about you is that you are unconditionally loved by the God of the universe who knows you by name, did not make a mistake when He made you, and brought you into this world to make a real difference. That’s the greater identity that our kids need to step into. And we’ve got to recognize that the culture has a different vision for our children than that one. And so if we can do everything we can to anchor them to the truth of God’s unconditional love for them, I think we create the conditions for their flourishing when life inevitably gets hard.

Ann (08:04):

How are you doing that with your four kids?

Collin (08:05):

Yeah. I think a couple of ways that we’re trying to lean into this, we do really simple things. As an example, when we travel, our kids know that when we call in to say goodnight, they all place their hand on the phone, and we give them the Numbers 6 benediction. We speak that over them. And the last word in it is, “May the Lord give you peace,” and they all yell “Peace.” Every night we walk into our kids’ rooms, we place our hand on each of their heads, and we remind them of this. “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.” And so our kids have that anchored in their heart, in their spirit. So one is just the simplicity of redundancy.

(08:50):

My kids know that word for word, and they roll their eyes sometimes when they hear it. I’m okay with that because they need to know that they belong to God. I think the second piece is leaning into our own life and our own stories and asking ourselves the hard question: what do I need from my kid to fill a gap that I had in me?

(09:13):

So oftentimes we can live vicariously through our kids, and their success becomes our success; their failure becomes our failure. And if we’re not careful, we will place a burden on our kids to ask them and demand of them something that they were never designed to do, which is to fulfill a point of pain that we have in our own life. And really, we need to do some work on our own to get before the Lord and make sure that we’re in a healthy and healed place, especially if our kids begin to jump into the things that we loved doing when we were young, too.

Ann (09:44):

Have you seen parents do that?

Collin (09:46):

Oh, I mean, I’m a work in progress in that very place. I mean, let’s be upfront and honest, right? I grew up playing competitive sports. My wife did as well. And so when our kids jump into that space, it takes everything inside of us to remember, “Hey, what matters most here is not whether or not she’s the starter, or he’s the starter ,or he’s the quarterback or the point guard. What matters the most is that my kid knows that regardless of what happens when they’re competing or what grade they get when they get home, that they know that the love that Mom and Dad have for them is not conditional.” And there’s work that we have to do consistently to ask the question, “Okay, am I responding in a way because I feel disappointed, or because I’m struggling here, or am I responding in such a way where I can show up for my kid and give them what they need?”

Dave (10:35):

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Ann (11:16):

When our son was, he was cut from the Lions and then he was hurt and he decided I’m not going to keep going. And he said, “Dad, this is way harder for you than it is for me. I’m ready to move on, but you obviously are not.”

Dave (11:31):

Yeah. Well, okay. We don’t need to bring that up. No, I would just add, and Collin, you’re doing such a good job of this, but I think parents need to be reminded with this identity, speaking God’s identity in Christ into your kids, you can never say it enough.

Collin (11:49):

Correct.

Dave (11:49):

You think, “Oh, it’s like perfume. I put too much on, it stinks.” It’s like, no, they’re getting beat up out there. Nobody’s doing this. In fact, like you said, the culture’s speaking the wrong identity into them. They’re going on social media and seeing. They walk in your house, they should feel like it’s a haven. “This is a place where I hear who I really am from parents that know.” I think that’s our job.

Ann (12:11):

I think too, to gauge, listen to yourself. What are you complimenting your kids about? Because I know for me, it’s really easy just to do performance. “Hey, good job in school. Good job in your sport.” But to get into the identity of, “I love how God made you. I loved who you are. You are loved no matter what.” Those words are important. I remember a college girl came to our house because she went to our church and she had tried to commit suicide three different times. She was a freshman at Louisville. She’s a soccer player and she got hurt and that’s why she tried to commit suicide. And so she came to me and she was talking to me and my question to her was, “Who are you?” And she said, “I’m a soccer player. I don’t know who I am apart from that. I’ve been doing this since I was four years old.

(12:59):

I’m nobody.” And I remember saying to her, “You are a child of God and Jesus loves you, He died for you. You are so loved and you’re made in His image.” She had never heard anything like that before. And she did, after a while, she gave her life to Jesus. She’s serving Him, loving Him. But man, that is critical in a culture that we’re being raised in today. The kids are seeing a very different view of who they are.

Collin (13:28):

Yeah. And I think Daniel chapter one verse eight points to the reality that, for Daniel and his friends, they knew who they belonged to because in verse eight it says that Daniel resolved. He made some decisions that led to him saying, “I know that I am more valuable than what Babylon says I am.” And if we want to see our kids flourish in the world—because kids these days will become adults one day and they’ll have to make decisions when we’re not around. They’re going to have to make courageous choices in a world, in a culture that looks very different than the one that we grew up in.

(14:11):

They have got to be able to anchor their identity to something greater than what the culture is inviting them to anchor it to. Because if not, they will end up drifting away. So we have this golden opportunity as parents, golden opportunity to create an environment where they know without a shadow of a doubt who they belong to, what really matters, and that they belong to the God of the universe.

Dave (14:39):

Yeah. I just looked at Daniel 1:8, “But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine.” And I thought to a lot of people, it’s just little food. It’s not that big a deal. It’s like, no, no, little things can become big things. And he said, “I’m not going to compromise at all.” And as parents were like, “Man, I want my child as an 18-year-old, 17-year-old, not to compromise on the little things.” So here’s where I want to go with the last part we have, and it was your third week of your series, is you take Deuteronomy 6 and you say, “Okay, there’s a game plan here in scripture. Parents do this. This is what they did in the Shema.” Walk us through what that would look like. And we only have like 10 minutes, but I know you can do this.

(15:25):

You’re a preacher, man. You can do it any amount of time.

Collin (15:28):

Absolutely. I’m used to a clock. So I want us to, just for a moment, imagine that we’re a teenage boy, ripped out of our culture, our home, taken apart from our parents, placed in a lavish place with endless food, temptation we cannot even begin to think through or imagine. And no one’s going to know. No mom or dad’s going to be disappointed. No book has to be written, right? Daniel doesn’t exist unless Daniel chooses to follow God and then document what happens. He has every reason to walk away from faith, walk away from God, at the very least for his own survival, and he doesn’t. And that has left me wondering “Why? What was it about Daniel and his friends that kept them tethered to God?” And as you research the Old Testament, what you know to be true is God has always had a remnant.

(16:32):

There’s always been a generation of faithfulness, even in the midst of countless people walking away. There’s always a group that stays faithful. And when you look at it, the reason why they stay faithful is because God put in the Old Testament this ancient playbook for us, that is better than the enemy’s playbook, that allows us to win the game. And Deuteronomy chapter 6 serves us the Shema. And the Shema lays out this, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your strength. Impress this upon your children. Talk about it when you lie down and when you get up. Talk about it when you walk along the way and when you stand at the gate.” And in those three or four verses, we have a three-part game plan that, as parents, we can utilize to win the game against the enemy.

(17:26):

And the first step has to do with investing. We have to invest in our own personal walk with God. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord.” You, right? He’s not talking to kids. He’s talking to the adults in Israel. “You shall love the Lord your God.” Oxford did a study of 3,500 people, 350 families over a hundred years, and they asked the question, “How is faith transferred?” And what they found is the primary way that faith is transferred is through the parents of the family. And it wasn’t, “If you’re super spiritual, your kids will be super spiritual.” It was regardless of what your energy is towards faith, whatever that energy is, is what your kids will pick up. So as preachers, there’s this old quote, right? “A mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew.” Well, I think that’s also true when it comes to our walk with God.

(18:23):

If our kids don’t see us energetically in love with Jesus, the message they hear is, “He’s not that important;” but when they see us clearly in love with Him, passionate about Him, it has an impact on their life. So the first step here is mom, dad, do you love Jesus? Are you convinced that He’s good? Is your life leveraged towards Him? One of my good friends says that every morning when he walked downstairs, he smelled one thing and saw another. He always smelled hot coffee, and he saw his dad with his Bible open, from the time he can remember. And this young man is in love with Jesus and reads his Scripture every day. Why? Because he saw a dad who loved God. Parents, what are your kids seeing you do? If they don’t see you in the Word, they’re not going to think that the Word’s important.

(19:17):

If they see you on your phone, they’ll think the phone’s important. If they see you rushing to the office before you spend time with God, they’ll think that work is important. We’ve got to model for our kids what it looks like to love Jesus if we want them to love Jesus too.

Ann (19:31):

This is going to be a risky thing for me to say, but if you have teenagers, ask them, “Do you guys think I love God?”

Collin (19:37):

Yeah.

Dave (19:38):

What’s most important to me?

Collin (19:39):

Yeah.

Ann (19:40):

And be careful because your kids are going to tell you the truth, but I think it’s a good gauge.

Dave (19:44):

All right, that’s the first one.

Collin (19:46):

Second step is impress. We have to be intentional. We have to impress the good news of Jesus in the life of our kids. We oftentimes think that they’ll just catch it. We have to be intentional. And the way that we can be intentional is I think parents need to ask three questions. It’s around conviction, competency, and community. Conviction, what do I want my kids to believe? Ask that question and write it out. What do I want them to believe? Competencies, what do I want them to know how to do? If I want them to know how to hear God’s voice, I’ve got to create space where I ask them, “Hey, why don’t you pray about that?” And then ask them, “What did you hear God say?” And maybe what they heard God say is not what you wanted them to hear God say. If it’s not going to be something that ruins their life, we should let them act that out.

(20:32):

I’m a firm believer. I would rather my kids be wrong, trusting God than be right, not knowing how to hear Him. Because in the long run, I want them to be able to hear God’s voice. Convictions, competencies, and the last piece is community. Kids are not meant to walk with Jesus by themselves. They need to be in community. We need to identify churches and places where our kids want to be and then do everything we can to get them there. So we invest, we impress. And then the last piece is we integrate. The scripture says that we’re supposed to talk about God when we sit down and when we get up, when we’re walking and when we’re standing. And that’s not a literal statement. It’s a merism. It’s this ancient tradition that’s used in the Old Testament to describe wholeness and fullness. The goal is that the scriptures are teaching us, you should integrate God into all of life.

Ann:

Everything.

Collin:

We should be talking about God all of the time. And when our kids recognize that God is not just an activity that we do on Sunday, but He’s a person that we follow and walk with every day, we create the best opportunity for them to connect. And that’s not just the Scriptures, although the Scriptures alone would be sufficient. Christian Smith, who’s a PhD researcher at Notre Dame, did a longitudinal research study, and what he found is that the primary way that faith is transferred to kids happens to be with kids who believe that God has to do with every part of life, not just some parts of it. And so we’ve got to identify that as parents, what happens around the dining room table? What happens when we’re driving in our car? What happens when there’s failure and when we miss the mark at home?

(22:09):

Do our kids know that God is not just something that’s relegated to a box, but God is something that’s involved in every aspect of mom and dad’s life, their decision making, their money choices, their relational dynamics, how we forgive? Our kids need to see God involved in every aspect of life, because God’s interested in every part of life.

Dave (22:27):

As you look at Deuteronomy 6, you jump down to verse 7. It says, “Impress them, talk about them when you walk,” and everything you just said. What we often miss, you didn’t miss, verse 6, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.” He starts with the parents saying, “It starts with you.” And so many parents have come up to us, whether I was a pastor or now with FamilyLife and say, “Man, what book, what course do I need to take to be the parent, to help my kids be this way?” And you just want to go, “Those are important. I know they’re important. You walk with Jesus. They are going to follow your walk, not your point. They’re going to walk the way you walk.” And so it’s like parents, the best thing you can do to raise warriors for Jesus as adult men and women is, be a warrior for Jesus.

(23:15):

And that’s hard work. That means I got to fight to say this relationship with God is my priority and I’m going to clear out everything in my schedule and make sure that happens. Not that I’m doing it in front of my kids, so they see it. I’m doing it because it’s who I am and it’s going to be transferred. Again, no guarantees, but it’s going to be transferred better that way than anything else. Collin, I just got to say, as an older man, way to go. I mean, seriously.

Ann (23:39):

I want to applaud you.

Dave (23:41):

You are a man of God, a husband, and a dad that is impressive, not because all your gifts, which you obviously have, it’s because your commitment to Christ and being the man He wants you to be to lead your family to where He wants to be. You’re creating a legacy. Way to go.

Collin (23:58):

Well, thank you guys for all that you do. I am blessed by your ministry and super thankful that you’d have me on.

Ann (24:05):

I think this is a conversation with Collin Outerbridge that we have to be reminded of and we have to talk about it because our job as parents is to disciple them spiritually.

Dave (24:16):

Every single parent is thinking about this.

Ann (24:17):

Yes.

Dave (24:18):

How do I raise boys and girls who become men and women who walk with God?

Ann (24:23):

I hope we think about it because it’s our job to raise kids that love Jesus.

Dave (24:27):

Yeah. If you want to find out more about Collin, you can click on the link in the show notes at FamilyLifeToday.com. Or if you want a book about that very subject, our book’s called No Perfect Parents. You can get to FamilyLifeToday.com. Click on the link in the show notes. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Ann (24:45):

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