PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 248: Preparing Your Children to Speak in the Gates, Part 2
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 248: Preparing Your Children to Speak in the Gates, Part 2
Kevin and Bonnie Kookogey are with me again today, and we continue talking about the importance of raising our children to speak, and, most importantly of all, to speak forth God’s Word. This includes memorizing lengthy passages of God’s Word and other powerful truths. Check out how Kevin and Bonnie have made this happen in their family.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: We are again with you, and today I have Kevin and Bonnie Kookogey with us again! I have some more questions to ask them and I know you’re going to want to hear more from them. Now, Bonnie, you didn’t get to say too much last week. Tell us, tell us how you started homeschooling.
Bonnie: We started in 2001. It was the day before 9-11, and we started simply teaching Chloe, the oldest, phonics and a little bit of math. Nothing really intense. Just maybe 30 minutes a day. But I was all excited. We had three children at the time, and we’d just got rolling. Then all of a sudden, this big event in the world happens! I’m like, “Oh, thank You, God. These children are home with me. I was so. . .”
Nancy: It was 9-11.
Bonnie: It was 9-11 in 2001. I was so thankful that we’d made the decision. Prior to that, my father had put a blessing on us that I should stay home. I was a nurse anesthetist. He told me I should quit and stay home with our children. I said, “But we just have one child! One six-month-old.” He said, “No, God’s told me you’re going to have many. They need you.”
That is what I did over the course of the next few years. I stayed home with them. We ended up having six in 10 years, I basically organized the math and the science and the history, that sort of thing. But Kevin was the over-arching, “This is our plan. This is what we’re going to do.” The memorization was his brainchild. I made pancakes every week, or bacon. We originally called it “Waffle Wednesday.”
Kevin: Wednesday Waffle Day.
Bonnie: Sorry, Wednesday Waffle Day. [laughter] We made waffles originally, and then changed into other breakfasts.
Kevin: We got bored with it after a while, so we went to other things.
Bonnie: Other fun breakfast menus.
Nancy: That’s so lovely! Kevin, we talked about your teaching your children memorization of the Scriptures and important writings. Tell us a little more of how you actually did that, because it’s very easy to memorize something, and then forget it.
IT TAKES DISCIPLINE
Kevin: As we discussed last week, the impetus to my doing this was that I had memorized in law school the entire book of Colossians. But then, because I didn’t keep it fresh, I lost it. I never wanted that to happen again. So, the goal was not only to memorize important passages and elements of Scripture and literature, but to retain those, so that you can use them for life. The way to retain those is discipline, discipline, discipline.
We would start on Wednesday. Short or long, no matter what we were memorizing on a particular week, we would always start off by reciting what I would refer to as “our inventory.” In the early years, our inventory would not take very long, because we only had a couple of passages. But as the years went on, some weeks we would say, “We can’t even do a new one now, because we’ve got so much inventory, it’s taking up an hour, an hour and a half, just to go through the inventory.”
At different times, we would require the different children to go around the table. Some weeks we would recite everything together at once. But frequently, and more commonly, I would go around the table, and I would call out from the list. Sometimes in order, sometimes out of order, and say, “Willis, your turn. Declaration of Independence. Naomi, your turn. Gettysburg address. Chloe, I want you to recite the Henry the Fifth Christmas Day Speech.”
They always had to be prepared. They didn’t know what they were going to be called on to do. They would have to recite it. But then, if I saw the other children doodling when one of their siblings was saying it, I’d stop and say, “No, just because your sister is saying this, it’s also your job to retain it, to make sure that in your head you’re going through the same part in the process.” Very, very important.
I still, to this day. I do that. Whether I’m traveling, whether I’m at home, I make sure that at least once a week I’m going through. Our list is so extensive that I can go through half of the list once a week. I do that with Sophia, our youngest. But that was the only way.
It’s still the only way to maintain that, because, as you know, when you speak publicly, you can think you know it, and you’ve memorized it, and you say it very comfortably in your bedroom, or maybe to your family. But when you’re called upon to speak it in public, suddenly that memorization goes! You’re like, “What? Why am I not able to retain this?”
I always say, “If you think you know it well, you’ve got to practice it three times as much.” If you’ve done it for a month straight, then you probably need a couple more months to make sure that when you step before a live audience that you don’t know, you have to assume the jitters are going to come. You have to assume the sound’s going to go out, the lights are going, something odd is going to happen.
The only way that you’re going to be able to deliver effectively is to have it so embedded in your spirit and in your brain, that it’s muscle memory. Even if the other side of your brain says, “I’m going to attempt to confuse you, I’m going to attempt to interrupt you, you’re going to stumble,” that the muscle memory will spit it out.
WE MUST GET IT INTO OUR MOUTHS
Nancy: That is so great. The Bible has it right in every situation. I love the way the Bible encourages, not only to get the Word of God into our minds, and then into our hearts, where we want it, but the Bible talks about getting it into our MOUTHS. You see, when you can speak it forth from your mouth, that’s when you know you’ve got it.
Kevin: Yes.
Nancy: You can say that Scripture in your mind, but can you actually speak it forth from your mouth? I love this Scripture. It’s one of my favorites. I think it’s a mandate that God has given to every family, to every parent.
Isaiah 59:21: “As for Me, this is My covenant with them, saith the Lord. My Spirit that is upon thee, and My Words, which I have put in thy mouth . . .”
You notice, it’s not only in our hearts. God wants His Word in our mouths. That means that we, as parents, we’ve got to have it in our mouths first. So, He says: “My words, which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy children, nor out of the mouth of thy children’s children saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever.” Isn’t that powerful?
Kevin: It is powerful. And it speaks to how we are created by God. We, as human beings, are unique in all the things that God has created, because we can communicate with words. Well, that wasn’t an accident. God gave us those words for a purpose. We can use our tongue for sinful purposes, or we can use our tongue to praise the Lord.
But those words, Nancy, are absolutely essential. It’s the difference even in a mission sense. It is the difference between a Christian mission and just a worldly charitable mission, because we have the Word to speak. That is our responsibility. Everything we do in a temporal sense is but an illustration, a shadow, of what the Word of God is and will be. We have a responsibility, a duty, as you point out in the Scripture, to speak.
CONTINUAL REPITITION
Nancy: Yes, and this is God’s mandate to us. We DO. It’s not a suggestion. We are commanded to get it into our children’s mouths, and into our grandchildren’s mouths. It really is a huge challenge. I notice too it also says: “It shall not depart out of thy mouth.” That’s where the repetition comes in, because you had learned the whole book of Colossians, but you forgot it.
I’ve learned many passages of the Word and forgot it. I’ve got to go back and memorize them again and get them into my heart and into my mouth. But even then, wow! It can go again. So, I’ve got to do it again! It’s continual repetition of getting the Word.
I think saying it out loud is a wonderful thing, with your family, that you have some time every week, just as Kevin and Bonnie do, where you’re speaking. Your children are speaking forth these Scriptures out loud. It is saying them out loud that gets them into you more than just in your mind.
Kevin: I would add to that, Bonnie and I have also had the privilege of teaching in homeschool tutorials in the middle Tennessee area for a number of years. In one of the tutorials, where I taught for six or seven years, no matter what course I was teaching, whether it was a course on Christian apologetics, which I love, whether it was a course on history and western civilization, I would always require my students, of course, to publicly speak, both first semester and second semester, as their final project.
I had a method for it, and I told them, “Look, it’s one thing for you to read it.” Some students think, “Oh, I read it, I understand it.” No that’s step one. Number two, then you must engage with what you’ve read by writing your thoughts, thinking it through, writing your papers, all of that part. But even then, you’re still not finished. That’s only stage two.
Stage three is, then you must get up and speak it, because not until you speak it, not only does it become part of you, but you also learn the defects of your thinking. You may say, “Wait a second. That doesn’t sound right. I don’t really understand what I’m saying, or what I read.”
Now it takes you back to step two, where you go and engage again. But that speaking process, there’s something supernatural in how God has created us, that the speaking is a necessary finishing part of the process. Think about Scripture. Before Scripture was written, it was passed down.
Nancy: Oh, yes!
Kevin: Through recitation, recitation. That’s how the Bible was passed on for generations.
Nancy: That Scripture, “into the mouth,” why was it into the mouth? To get it into the mouths of your children, and then into the mouths of your grandchildren. It was all by mouth. It is so important. Did you ever read that book, Ten Peas in a Pod, by the Pent family?
Kevin: No. I’m familiar with the title.
Nancy: Oh, my! I think it’s one of the most challenging books that I have ever read. We do have it on our webpage. You can order it. It’s about this family. The Pent family had eight children, so it’s called Ten Peas in a Pod. The father was an evangelist and loved to go out and preach the Gospel. They traveled through the USA. They traveled through Canada, preaching and teaching the Word.
He took his family with him. He was a family man. He didn’t leave his children behind. He took them with him. But he had such a vision to get the Word of God into their lives and their hearts, their minds, and their mouths.
Every single day he would read the Word of God to his family after breakfast at the breakfast table. You know they had breakfast. Then he’d read the Word for one hour.
At lunchtime, they’re all sitting there. He would read the Word again for another hour.
At suppertime, he would read the Word for another hour. And also, he would encourage his children, as they got to a certain age to have their time reading the Word of God on their own, before they got up. As they got to a certain age, they had to spend an hour! Wow!
Those children ended up being able to speak forth the whole New Testament verbatim. They could get up and speak the whole of the New Testament, and many passages of the Old, just because that Word was constantly going into their hearts.
But I remember reading in this book. Since then, I have met the guy who wrote this book, sitting right here in this chair I’m sitting in now. I did ask him, “Has this continued down the generations?” He’s now our age. He said, “Yes,” and shared the blessings.
He shared in that book that, as they traveled and stayed in different homes, people hosted them as the father was preaching, and so on. The father never, ever, deviated ever from his plan. He would say to the host, “I love to read the Bible to our children at the end of the meal. Would you be happy about that?” “Oh, yes! Go ahead!” Of course, they’re all Christian homes that he’s staying in. And then he would say, “Would you like to join us?” [silence] Not one ever joined him.
Kevin: Really!
Bonnie: Wow!
Nancy: “You just go ahead, but we’ve got this to do, and that.” Not one ever joined them. That was just too much out of their day. “We’ve got too many other things to do.” But this father had a vision. His children came forth speaking the Word verbatim. Great story. Oh, it’s very challenging.
Kevin: Yeah, talk about challenging!
Nancy: I admit, we don’t do that every day in our home. We have a precedent that twice a day, morning and evening, we have the Word. But my, we didn’t get to that. That’s such an amazing challenge.
TWICE A DAY
Kevin: Do you know, Nancy, also that our heritage as Americans, was rooted in that? Harvard’s Rules and Precepts, when Harvard was founded, it was founded in 1626, and this was written in 1636. It’s a passage which emphasizes, first of all, Harvard was founded for the training of Christian ministers which people would never imagine today. They tossed Christianity to the curb and teach everything except the Word of God.
But that passage was instrumental in the foundation of the intellectual heritage of America, because they required that Scripture be read TWICE A DAY, and that they check what they’re reading with their tutors. It was emphatic. The writers of that emphasized the importance of everything else you’re learning is rooted in the Word of God. This discipline specifically says TWICE A DAY you must read the Word of God. Harvard University! Can you imagine saying that today? You’d get kicked off campus.
Nancy: Yes. Very interesting, because that twice a day comes from the Word. It comes from the type in the tabernacle where it talks about how every morning and every evening they participated in the things in the tabernacle, which all speak of Christ, and speak of our walk in Christ. But it was always a morning and an evening. They took on that twice a day. It is a very Biblical principle.
Kevin: Amen.
Nancy: And I love this Scripture. We all know Psalm 127, of course, but we often overlook it. Psalm 127:3: “Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, a warrior, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall SPEAK with the enemies in the gate.”
What are we training our children to do? The Scripture tells us. We are preparing them to speak. And where? To speak in the gates, even with the enemies. I believe that this is a vision we need to have as Christian parents. We’re not just raising our children to be lovely people. No, we’re raising them to be filled with the truth of God, so that it’s in their mouths, and they will come out speaking it. They can speak it in such a way that they can even speak in the gates of the city, the gates of the land!
Kevin: Amen.
Nancy: That’s the vision! Here it is! It tells us right here.
Kevin: Yes. We love that Scripture. We actually have all of Psalm 127 on a giant sign. You know who Richard Oding is, who makes all of these signs? He made us four signs for our house, and one is that Scripture.
Bonnie: His company is called Revelation Culture.
Kevin: It’s a seven-foot-tall sign. That entire Scripture passage, starting at the beginning, which is, of course, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” I love how all that Scripture sticks together. It’s inter-related. In the middle, he switches and starts talking about the blessing of children.
At the beginning he’s talking about building. But they are inter-related, because this is how we build our family and how we build a society and culture. It does not happen unless the Lord is at the root of it.
You should come to our house and walk up our stairs and turn around, because you can see this giant sign! It took us like three hours to put it up on New Year’s Eve last year with my son-in-law, and my son, and a couple of daughters and my wife.
Bonnie: Yes, I was holding the ladder for the men. Willis was the lightest of them. He climbed to the top to drill the holes.
Nancy: Oh, that is so great!
Kevin: But that Scripture, I’m so glad you cited that, because that’s one of our favorites.
Nancy: So, we are training our children to speak, and speak clearly. So many children today can speak but they mumble. They don’t speak clearly. If we are preparing them to speak in the gates of the city, in that place where the decisions are made and they have an impact, even to speak with the enemies . . . Now, we have enemies in the gates of our cities, every city. We have enemies right up there in the White House. This is where our enemies are. We’ve got to prepare children to speak with their enemies, who can come forth and tell the truth, and can combat the lies of the enemy.
Kevin: Yes, and I think the reason that most people do not have the belief that they can speak is purely because they don’t believe. They haven’t spent their time in the Word of God. Therefore, they have not allowed the Spirit of God, through the Word, to fill them with truth. Because of that, I’m talking even about believers, they do not realize the power of God through the Word; that if they would speak truth in the gates, it would transform our society.
The enemy is afraid of truth. Remember, Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against Him, will not prevail against the Word of God. Yet, we have Christians who are constantly in retreat. “Oh, I’m afraid to speak in the gates because they’re talking about transgender. They’re going to cancel me!” No, you have the Word of God. Your word is more powerful than anything that they could say.
FROM THE TREASURY OF OUR HEARTS
Nancy: Absolutely! I think it is so important. I was just reading in my Bible reading yesterday that Scripture of how our hearts are a storehouse, and how we’ve got to store up in the treasury of our heart all good things. That is firstly the Scriptures more than anything else. They are our light. They are our treasure. They are everything we need to know to live.
Then, as you have also done, these great writings of people who had truth. We store them up. Our hearts are a storehouse. Then it says out of that storehouse, where there are good things stored in the storehouse, that will come out of their mouths.
Then there are those who store up evil things. So many of our young people today, their hearts are a storehouse. But their hearts are filled with all the lies and deceptions and the entertainment of this hour. That’s all that fills their hearts. Much of it’s just so evil.
So, out of their hearts it will come forth from their mouths. Out of the abundance of their mouths, they speak it out. But it’s all from the storehouse of their hearts. We’ve got to fill our children’s storehouse with all these good things so it will come out of the abundance. It just flows out of their mouths.
Kevin: That’s right. Jesus said that it’s not what we put in us that corrupts us. It’s what comes out from us; what we have in our hearts. The only way to keep those evil things out is to fill your heart with the Word, to fill your heart with all that goodness and truth, so that there’s no room for the enemy to happen to get a foothold.
BIRTHDAY SPEECHES
Nancy: Oh yes, yes. And we can even do this in little ways. As I shared last week, we’ve always been speechmakers in our house. Every little function, even every little family function, every birthday, we always have speeches.
OK, we did this. We started it with our children. Every time they had a birthday, everyone who was there would always have to give a speech to the birthday person. They would have to think of all the good things that they could say about them. Well, it was a beautiful thing for the birthday person, because if they wore a hat, they wouldn’t be able to fit it on by the time they finished! [laughter] Everybody sharing all the good things about them. It’s really wonderful!
But it was also practice for speaking. We did that as a family, but as other people would come in, we would say, “You can say something, too.” But sometimes they’d stammer around because they weren’t used to it. You have to get used to that. That was our life.
Then when our children began having their children, they carried it on. Right from little and I can remember, because our children, our grandchildren have grown now. Most of them are married now. But when they were little, it was quite hilarious. They’d give their little speech. Then they’d end with, “And you are my best cousin!”
Then that became the phrase. Every little grandchild with a birthday speech for their cousin, they’d say a couple of little things as they were learning to speak. And then, “You are my best cousin!” So now, it’s quite a joke. Sometimes (they have wonderful speeches today) and for a joke they’ll end with, “And you’re my best cousin!” [laughter]
Bonnie: I love that!
Nancy: But they’re a wonderful thing, for the person, and also for speechmaking. Whatever the occasion, let’s have some speeches! We do that on Thanksgiving and Christmas. We have a sit-down meal. Then, like Thanksgiving, we’ll have toasts. We encourage, well, not everyone, because we have about 80 or more people sitting down. Now it’s even grown to more!
But those who do get up will talk about someone who’s meant something to them, maybe in the last year, or even in their past life. Well, some person they want to talk about. The speeches we have are really amazing. Speeches! Once again, my favorite time of the whole Thanksgiving Day is speech time! We do it on all different occasions.
Kevin: And I think that it’s also important because it forces the people who are invited to speak, whether they be old or young, to really think about what it is that they feel or believe about everything. When you speak publicly, you are now exposing yourself, and what you really think and believe to be true.
In fact, the best speeches are always the ones, they don’t have to be prepared, they don’t have to be crafted, when they’re spoken from a heart of belief. When you believe that what you’re speaking is true, that’s what has an impact, because it’s authentic. It really touches the hearts of all of those who were there on that day.
But in thinking through and preparing to speak, or someone asks you to give a word, the reason it’s so important is because we spend so much of our time engaging in superficial conversations. We fill up a lot of space and time with that, especially with phones and whatnot. It’s ubiquitous today.
But when you’re asked to stop and to say something, if you’re going to say something, you want it to be heart-felt. It doesn’t need to be long. It doesn’t need to be something that’s earth moving as far as the people that are there are concerned.
But you do pause to reflect and think, “Well, I’m going to say something here that people are going to remember, for better or for worse, whether I embarrass myself. So, what do I really believe to be true about this occasion, about the person who’s having the birthday, or a person who’s graduated?” That’s why it’s important, because it gets us to think about the heart of the matter.
Nancy: Oh, yes, yes. I love to ask people, I hate just boring, superficial conversation. So often, I will say, “What has God been saying to you through the Word?” Wow! You ask that question today, and you don’t get any answers! People are not reading, or they’re not reading even to receive. Sometimes people have their daily Bible reading because that’s the thing you’re meant to do. But they don’t really even get anything.
I think we have to come to the Word looking, looking to receive. I’ve always been a great believer in writing down what God shows me. More understanding. I want to write it. I remember a little saying that I picked up when I was a teenager. I still believe it.
“Thoughts tend to disentangle themselves when they pass through lips or cross pencil tips.”
Back in those days, you would use a pencil.
But it’s true. When you write, you get more understanding. Or when you begin to speak it out, you get more understanding. That’s why it’s so good to speak about the Scriptures, or even something God is teaching you, or showing you. To speak about it, it disentangles, and you get to know what really is truth.
So, everything is speech. It’s speaking it out. God brought the whole world into being just through His Words. Words have such power, don’t they? We live our life by words.
Kevin: I know we’re short on time here, but that’s exactly what, I believe it’s in Peter, where he talks about having been at the Transfiguration, and the experience of seeing Jesus and Moses and Elijah. But he goes on to say, “But even your Word is truer than that experience.” The Word of God is more certain. That’s why Scripture tells us that everything else will pass away, and the Word of God will remain.
Nancy: Amen! Let’s just end this session with those words Jesus said: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Amen!
Kevin: Amen!
Bonnie: Amen!
“Lord, we thank You so much for your Word! Lord, this is Your Word. It’s a Word. We thank You that You are the Word. We thank You that we have Your written Word. We thank You that You want us to speak it out. You want it to be in our mouths. Help us, Lord God, to have it in our mouths.
“I pray for every one of these precious mothers, daughters, parents, who are listening, that, Lord God, we will take up this mandate, to have Your Word coming out of our mouths, coming out of the mouths of our children, coming out of the mouths of our grandchildren. We ask it in Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
Kevin: Amen.
Bonnie: Amen.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris * This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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