Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying Free Now, and you're listening to the Flying Free

podcast, a support resource for Women of Faith, looking for hope and healing from hidden

emotional and spiritual abuse.

Welcome to episode 83 of the Flying Free Podcast. Have you ever been accused of not

trusting God because you had to make a decision about something and someone didn't like the decision that you made.

Recently I had to make a decision about something that involved

oh things like COVID, my kids, and school.

I won't go into any details,

but one of my teenagers informed me

that I probably wasn't a Christian because I didn't trust God.

Now, this child was motivated by a very strong desire for something that I wasn't giving her,

and she was pulling all the possible arguments

out of her toolbox to see which one might be the magic key that would turn the lock

and get her mother to give her what she wanted.

Teenagers can be very astute when it comes to manipulating their parents.

They instinctively know which buttons to push for the very best effect.

But they learned this from watching other grown-ups do it.

When you hear your kids using Christianity

or the Bible or principles like trusting God as manipulation tools to get what they want,

you know they probably picked up those tactics from other

religious grown-up people. Here's the thing. All the humans

want what they want, whether they are religious or secular.

...