Why Your Faith Feels So Exhausting

What is the fundamental difference between punishing a child's bad behavior, and lovingly disciplining them back into alignment with who they truly are? In this episode, Bill and Scott explore the difference between punishment and discipline, emphasizing that healthy discipline is intended to bring a child back into alignment with who they are, rather than simply punishing undesirable behavior. They discuss the vital role of truthful affirmation in helping children understand their identity, including how a lack of affirmation can create a hunger for significance and achievement that usually isn’t easily found. Bill and Scott demonstrate how parents can help their children feel deeply known and established in who they are. Topics Bill Thrall and Scott Boyd discuss in this episode: (00:15) How discovering grace gives the freedom to accept correction without feeling the need to justify yourself. (01:59) Connecting discipline and grace to scripture, and understanding what it really means. (04:38) How rigid rules and structures tend to incite rebellion, rather than guide behavior. (07:06) Punishment does not correct people. (10:02) Affirmation is a crucial counterbalance to correction and how children who grow up without affirmation can struggle to understand who they are. (13:13) Genuine affirmation must be rooted in truth. (17:02) Affirmation touches the heart, rather than the ego. This episode was brought to you by Bill Thrall, Scott Boyd, and the Living Influence team. Learn about Living Influence: https://www.livinginfluence.com/ Subscribe to the Living Influence podcast: * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LivingInfluencePodcast * Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4kP9Mm2 * Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2F2RSvXKfU08Q5LVTCyIYI Learn about Bill Thrall’s books: https://www.livinginfluence.com/books Follow and like the Living Influence podcast on social media: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livinginfluencepodcast * TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livinginfluencepodcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61576202821527 This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

How can you establish healthy consequences for your kids while maintaining a strong personal connection with them? In this episode, Bill and Scott explore how grace changes the way parents respond to their children's behavior. They share that grace does not remove consequences, but allows parents to remain connected to their children, without defining them by their behavior. They also talk about how grace is never soft on sin, but rather provides the relational safety necessary to discipline children while honoring their hearts, and protecting them from shame. Bill and Scott encourage parents to trust God with themselves, so their children can learn to trust their parents, their own hearts, and the relationship they share. Topics Bill Thrall and Scott Boyd discuss in this episode: (01:10) Grace is never soft on sin, but rather serves as the ultimate answer to sin while maintaining real consequences for behavior. (05:19) God's grace goes beyond trusting Jesus with sin and includes learning to trust Him with who you are. (09:04) How experiencing grace allows parents to love their children unconditionally. (13:20) The importance of creating a safe environment where children are not afraid to be known. (16:16) Allowing children to see a parent's genuine struggles creates space for them to exercise and trust their own hearts. This episode was brought to you by Bill Thrall, Scott Boyd, and the Living Influence team. Learn about Living Influence: https://www.livinginfluence.com/ Subscribe to the Living Influence podcast: * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LivingInfluencePodcast * Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4kP9Mm2 * Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2F2RSvXKfU08Q5LVTCyIYI Learn about Bill Thrall’s books: https://www.livinginfluence.com/books Follow and like the Living Influence podcast on social media: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livinginfluencepodcast * TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livinginfluencepodcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61576202821527 This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

How does viewing yourself as a saint instead of a sinner change how you parent? In this episode, Bill and Scott discuss how viewing yourself as a sinner, rather than a saint who sins, causes parents to parent out of shame and fear. This can lead parents to focus on compliance and behavioral control. As a result, children tend to respond by losing trust and developing resentment. Scott and Bill share a different, and Biblical, perspective by embracing God's truth of being a saint who is dead to sin. This allows parents to stop managing behavior, build deep trust, and extend genuine love to their children. Topics Bill Thrall and Scott Boyd discuss in this episode: (00:40) The difference between defining yourself as a sinner versus a saint who sins. (02:39) Bill describes how a theology based on self-control and willpower can convince parents that they are masters of their own behavior, ultimately allowing shame to define them. (06:38) Parents who do not trust themselves may parent from authority and raise children toward compliance rather than helping them mature into healthy adults. (10:22) How shame creates contradictory messages—telling people to try harder while simultaneously convincing them they will never be enough—and how this dynamic can affect parenting. (13:15) Hiding standardizes distrust, which prevents children from experiencing true parental love. This episode was brought to you by Bill Thrall, Scott Boyd, and the Living Influence team. Learn about Living Influence: https://www.livinginfluence.com/ Subscribe to the Living Influence podcast: * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LivingInfluencePodcast * Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4kP9Mm2 * Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2F2RSvXKfU08Q5LVTCyIYI Learn about Bill Thrall’s books: https://www.livinginfluence.com/books Follow and like the Living Influence podcast on social media: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livinginfluencepodcast * TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livinginfluencepodcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61576202821527 This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

Are your rules helping your children mature or keeping them dependent? In this episode, Bill and Scott talk about the vital distinction between child compliance, enforced by rules, and heart-level obedience rooted in trust. They discuss how parenting can gradually move from protecting children with rules toward giving them guidelines, choices, responsibility, and opportunities to participate in their own development. By fostering authentic trust, and allowing children to participate in choices and consequences, parents can guide their children toward true freedom, maturity, and healthy identity. Topics Bill Thrall and Scott Boyd discuss in this episode: (00:04) Whether children should be compliant or obedient. (02:38) How parenting should gradually move from rules to guidelines. (05:07) Obedience means acting upon the love, trust, and guidance of someone who is trusted. (08:33) Develop, rather than squash, children's individual tastes. (14:49) How guidelines can include consequences while allowing children to participate in determining those consequences, helping them take greater ownership of their choices. (16:11) Freedom is a byproduct of obedience, and grace is experienced through trust. This episode was brought to you by Bill Thrall, Scott Boyd, and the Living Influence team. Learn about Living Influence: https://www.livinginfluence.com/ Subscribe to the Living Influence podcast: * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LivingInfluencePodcast * Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4kP9Mm2 * Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2F2RSvXKfU08Q5LVTCyIYI Learn about Bill Thrall’s books: https://www.livinginfluence.com/books Follow and like the Living Influence podcast on social media: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livinginfluencepodcast * TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livinginfluencepodcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61576202821527 This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co/

What is defining you right now? Your shame, or what God says about you?