Welcome to the Breakpoint podcast. I'm Shane Morrison. I don't normally do this, but I want to get personal for a moment here. I really used to pride myself on my ability to talk with people about Christianity and even, you know, to get them to rethink their doubts on occasion. I thought I could pretty well deal with objections that they might raise and

that I might actually be something of an okay teacher. And then my wife and I had kids and I realized

that I'm actually woefully underprepared to teach and convey the things that I believe to another

mind, especially when that other mind is very easily distracted. And so I've been struggling.

And in that process, I've found some help that I want to share with you today. I'm joined by

speaker, author, and blogger Natasha Crane. She's the author of keeping your kids on God's side,

40 conversations to help them build a lasting faith and talking with your kids about God.

30 conversations every Christian parent must have. She's just released a new book for parents

entitled Talking With Your Kids About Jesus, 30 conversations every Christian parent must have.

And I want to talk about both of these outstanding books today. Natasha, thanks so much for joining

me on the podcast. Hey, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.

Hey, thanks so much for having me. It's great to talk with you.

Well, you open talking with your kids about God and talking with your kids about Jesus with two really helpful metaphors that I think kind of illustrate the plight that every parent finds themselves in.

In the first, you describe how your backyard is the place where plants go

to die. And this is due to lack of consistent watering and fertilizing and, you know, the sun

overdrying them and so forth. And then you say how when it comes time, when you realize how bad

the plants are doing, you go in and just overwater them and flood them and it kills them. It's like an all or

nothing approach. And then in talking with your kids about Jesus, you describe the frustration that

every parent knows of seeing how tidy other people's houses appear to be. And we fall into this

error of thinking that, well, they must just have better behaved kids or that maybe their parents

or super cleaners. And so we do

the same thing to our houses that we do to our plants. We overdo it in these bursts of fevered

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