Let me say something with love in my voice and urgency in my chest.
The war came for your children. It didn’t ask permission. It didn’t knock on the door. It slipped in through the screen. Through the school. Through the silence of a church that was too polite to say what needed to be said.
The most dangerous place your kids could be right now isn’t the street corner. It’s a home where Mom and Dad are too busy or too exhausted to be their first and best disciple-makers.
That’s not an accusation. That’s a confession. Because I’ve been there too.
The Playbook Was Never a Secret
Charlie Kirk, whether you love him or not, said something that every parent cannot afford to ignore. Marxism, as an ideology, must destroy three things to survive: religion, private property, and the family.
It is two-for-three in America’s living rooms right now.
Karl Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses,” because a people anchored to God cannot easily be ruled by government. Private property? Abraham’s first real estate purchase at Hebron was grounded in biblical principles: stewardship, inheritance, and generational blessing. Marxist ideology has to abolish that.
But the most important target, the final fortress, has always been the family. History proves it. Mao’s China. Stalin’s Russia. When you can destroy the bond between a parent and a child, totalitarianism walks right through the front door, and the door they’re using today isn’t a tank. It’s a curriculum. It’s an algorithm. It’s a school board meeting you didn’t attend.
Kirk put it plainly to a room full of pastors: never before have we seen the family so under attack from so many directions.
Charlie is right, and Malachi saw it coming thousands of years ago. The very last verse of the Old Testament, the final word before Matthew begins, is a warning found in Malachi 4:6.
“He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”
God didn’t hide the stakes. He named them: the bond between parent and child is not a preference. It is a covenant line of defense. When that bond is severed, the land is cursed. When that bond is protected, the family flourishes, and so does the nation.
This isn’t politics. This is prophecy, and it’s playing out in real time.
The Hamster Cage
Here’s where I want to slow down and speak gently because I know most of you reading this love your kids deeply. You’re not failing on purpose. You’re failing because you’re exhausted.
Dr. Tony Evans has a way of telling the truth that feels like a firm handshake from a good friend. He calls it the hamster cage. We are spinning. We are striving. We are working two fists full of labor and chasing a wind that never satisfies.
He’s not wrong.
Ecclesiastes 4 describes it plainly: two fists full of work, striving after the wind. That’s emptiness. Yet the other extreme, folding both hands and doing nothing, that’s foolishness. The biblical sweet spot, Evans says, is one hand working and one hand resting. Productivity with peace. Purpose without exhaustion.
I have to be honest with you. That hits close to home for me.
I love what I do. I get up early and stay up late. I’ve had to ask myself hard questions: Why this new thing? Why this next program? For what? For whom? Because even good work, done for the wrong reasons, becomes an idol.
Jesus said it directly in Luke 12:13-21 (The Parable of the Rich Fool). A man had a bumper crop. His solution? Build bigger barns. Retire. Then enjoy life. Then, God showed up that very night and said, “You fool! This very night, your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”
Don’t wait to live the life God gave you. Don’t wait to be present for the children God gave you. That future day, when you’ll finally slow down and pour into your family, may never come.
The Shema Was Never Optional
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is called the Shema. It is the foundational confession of the Jewish faith, and it is the operating system for every Christian home.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Then, immediately, God tells you what to do with that love.
“Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
Not Sunday mornings. Not youth group once a week. Not a devotional app you open when you remember to.
All the time. Every day. In every ordinary moment.
The dinner table. The car ride. The bedtime tuck-in. The walk around the neighborhood. This is the command. You are not the supplemental faith resource in your child’s life. You are the primary disciple maker. The church was designed to come alongside you, not replace you.
Here’s the heartbreak: we handed that role over. We outsourced it to schools, to screens, to social media platforms built by people who do not share our values. While we were grinding, chasing the second fist, keeping up with the Joneses, the enemy walked into the gap we left open. He came for the children, and too many parents weren’t home.
Harmony Is a Spiritual Discipline
Not long ago, I was sitting with a long-time client, a brother in Christ as much as a business partner. We weren’t talking about insurance renewals or risk management. We were talking about life. He said something that has stayed with me.
He said he was learning to master the management of the relentless demands pulling at him from every direction. However, what frustrated him most wasn’t the demands themselves; it was the word people kept using to describe the solution: balance. He said he hated that word. Balance implies a scale. Something is always tipping. Someone is always losing.
What he wanted, what he believed God designed us for, was harmony.
Harmony is the solution, not balance. He was right.
Harmony isn’t mechanical. It isn’t a scale you manage. Harmony is the condition of a soul in right relationship with God. It is the quiet, sustainable resonance that flows from following Jesus, not sprinting ahead of Him, not lagging behind Him, but walking with Him.
Paul names the fruit of that walk in Galatians 5:22-23: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” That is not the fruit of a workaholic grinding toward emptiness. That is not the fruit of a fool folding both hands. That is the fruit of a disciple, someone who has surrendered the grasping, wind-chasing hustle and said, Lord, I want Your pace, not mine.
When Dr. Evans says one hand working and one hand resting, he is describing a life resonant with God’s will. Not lazy. Not frantic. Calibrated. Purposeful. Free.
A parent who lives in that harmony has room to breathe. Room to pray. Room to sit down at the dinner table and actually ask how your child’s heart is doing, not just how their grades are or what their friends are up to.
That parent becomes what the enemy fears most: a disciple of Christ who is also a disciple maker.
You cannot fight a spiritual war you don’t have the margin to show up for. You cannot impress God’s commands on your children if you’re never home long enough to see their faces. You cannot protect a bond you’ve been too busy to build.
The Shema commands presence. Presence requires margin. Margin requires the courage to put down the second fist, to choose a smaller house with peace over a bigger house with strife, and to choose the vocation that pays well, but not more than the job that requires the climbing of the corporate ladder.
Your child doesn’t need your resume. They need your time. They need your faith. They need to hear you say, not just once, but a thousand ordinary times, “God is with us. He is good. And He loves you.”
Feed Your Good Wolf
The Native American parable of the two wolves is where MindWolves® was born.
Inside every one of us, two wolves are fighting. One is fear. Striving. Competition. Exhaustion. Comparison. The other is faith. Rest. Purpose. Love. Presence.
The one that wins is the one you feed.
Right now, the culture is feeding the wrong wolf in your children, one swipe, one click, one classroom lesson at a time. Marxist ideology doesn’t announce itself. It just quietly starves the good wolf until your child doesn’t even know what they’re hungry for anymore.
You are the antidote.
Not the government. Not the school. You.
Moses didn’t hand Deuteronomy 6:4-9 to the priests and say, “Handle this.” He handed it to parents. He looked Israel in the eye and said: This is your job. Teach them. Talk about them. Write them on the doorframes. Bind them on your foreheads.
Make faith so woven into the fabric of daily life that the enemy can’t find a clean edge to pull.
Come Home
Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood had a gift. He looked into the camera, looked right at you, and made you feel seen. Known. Worth something. He didn’t need to shout to be heard.
You have that same gift with your children. You just have to be present enough to use it.
To the parent reading this who feels behind, come home. Not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.
Put down the second fist. Let the Joneses go. Your name isn’t Jones.
Open the Word. Gather your family. Pray together. Eat together. Look your children in the eyes and tell them the truth about who God says they are, so they are equipped to know what the world tells them is a lie.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is your battle plan. Malachi 4:6 is your warning, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is your weapon.
The war came home. Be prepared and equipped.
Awaken your family to God’s Word. Get your free copy of The Family Wins Devotional and begin today.
– Marc Casciani (aka Coach C), MindWolves®
MindWolves 