What if the education your students receive Monday through Friday is actually undermining what you’re teaching them on Sunday? For Christian educators, this sobering reality has become impossible to ignore—40% of Christian high school graduates abandon their faith in college, and Lesley Russell discovered the shocking reason why. In this transformative episode, Lesley shares the one pivotal insight that completely changed how she approaches teaching and student development.
About Our Guest
Lesley Russell is the President and Founder of Equip 210 and Revelate Learning, organizations dedicated to integrating biblical worldview into K-12 education. With a passion for transforming not just what students learn, but *how* and *why* they learn it, Lesley has become a leading voice in Christian education reform.
What You’ll Discover
In this eye-opening conversation, you’ll learn why traditional transactional teaching models fail to develop the whole student, how to recognize God’s fingerprints throughout your curriculum, and the powerful framework Lesley developed to transform her students’ identities and spiritual foundation. Discover practical strategies for moving from knowledge transfer to life transformation—and why your students’ eternal foundation depends on it.
Key Takeaways
✦ The faith crisis is real: 40% of Christian high school graduates who grew up in Christian homes leave the faith because Sunday church isn’t enough to counter a secular educational worldview during the week
✦ Teaching must transcend transactions: Moving beyond the teacher-as-knowledge-keeper model creates space for genuine identity transformation and spiritual formation
✦ God’s design for cognition: Students are created with the capacity to conceive of God’s fingerprints throughout all of creation—a capacity most curricula completely ignore
✦ Worldview matters more than you think: How students learn about science, history, literature, and math either reinforces or undermines their faith foundation
✦ Every student has a calling: Education should equip students to discover and develop their unique purpose within God’s design, not just pass tests
Notable Quotes
“Education through God’s lens transforms lives.”
“When they learn and they can see that God’s fingerprints are all throughout creation, they grow up to value that versus having a different worldview.”
“He gave us cognition so that we can conceive of the things of him, not learn without him.”
“I wanted to paint a picture of something bigger and greater—transformation of really being able to transform that child’s life to have such an impact.”
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Ready to reimagine what education can be? Tune in to hear Lesley Russell’s vision for schools that don’t just educate minds—they transform hearts, strengthen faith, and equip students for the calling God has on their lives.
Subscribe now to ensure you don’t miss this essential conversation for Christian educators.
FULL PODCAST Transcript
Lighthouse Therapy (00:01.079)
Hello everybody and welcome to the brighter together podcast. I am so excited about this episode. I have with me today, Lesley Russell and Lesley is the president and founder of equip two 10 and revelate learning. And she is located in California and Lesley and I met at America Fest in October in December in Arizona. So Lesley, thank you so much for bringing bringing here.
and for being on the show and, and yeah, yeah, I’m so excited. I can’t even get my words out. I’m so excited.
Lesley Russell (00:32.034)
I’m so excited. I know, I’m excited. Thank you so much for having me. It was so much fun to meet you there at AmFest and I loved getting to meet your family and all the other people. There were like over 30,000 people there, right? It was…
Lighthouse Therapy (00:39.627)
Absolutely.
Lighthouse Therapy (00:49.261)
Yeah, 33,000 of the number I heard 33,000. was crazy. It was beautiful. Yeah. All these people coming together. Yeah. All trying to do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Lesley Russell (00:53.975)
Yes.
Lesley Russell (00:58.764)
Yeah, and it takes a lot for people to leave their homes and fly and or drive and get a hotel. And it was just like a really great time of community and of, you know, all going for the same thing. And like we love our country looking to, you know, to reform things, change things and also our heart for the Lord. So it was really special.
Lighthouse Therapy (01:21.549)
Yeah, yeah, and and people that just really care about America and want America to thrive and I think that that is the most beautiful thing is that people you know people just we are a nation founded on people that just care and love Jesus and want to continue to see that that grow nothing against anybody that’s on the other side of the aisle because I always try really hard to say we love you all
We love you all and we want, we want this to be this. We want America to come together. We really do. It needs to, it’s broken and it needs to be fixed. Yeah. Yeah.
Lesley Russell (01:58.03)
Yes, yeah, and that’s why we have reformers like us, right? It’s like you go, you want to do something, you go do it, you go fix it.
Lighthouse Therapy (02:01.421)
Yes, yes, absolutely. And that’s why we’re here. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And some of that is what you’re doing. So let’s talk about equip two 10 and relevate learning and give us a little bit of your background and where, you know, a little bit of your journey to start with. Let’s just lay that foundation first.
Lesley Russell (02:24.192)
Yes, so I have an interesting background because when I graduated college, I actually went into corporate America and I had a really, I had a great job. I sold titanium plates and screws for reconstructive facial surgery. I used to go right into the operating room with doctors, with plastic surgeons, oral surgeons, maxillofacial surgeons. And I would have these little workshops with my black and decker drill.
Lighthouse Therapy (02:45.132)
neat.
Lesley Russell (02:51.576)
drill gun and plastic skulls and show them how to apply these titanium plates for reconstructive facial surgery. I worked in Brooklyn, New York. So the worse the crime area was, the more they needed these plating sets. And I would go into like King’s County Hospital and I was just in my like late twenties and I’d go right into the operating room. And it was like really, I learned so much from that, but
Every Thursday night I got to do something very significant and I would volunteer at a runaway shelter in the Bronx. And that is like where I just really saw my heart and passion was to help these children. They were always hungry. I would pick them up, take them to a diner, take them to play miniature golf, take them swimming. And they really had an amazing career change. I went to my husband and I just said, look it, I’m just feeling like I want to get out of.
what I’m doing and go back to school. And so I went back to school and got my master’s in education and became a middle school English teacher and worked outside of New York City. It was a suburb of New York, Manhattan. And I did that teaching in the public schools for a couple of years. And then my husband and started having our own family and we moved up to Connecticut and our next door neighbor homeschooled. I never heard of homeschooling before.
Lighthouse Therapy (04:12.621)
wow.
Lesley Russell (04:13.934)
And the realtor said they’re a really nice family, they, because my daughter grew up with the mom and they’re super great, amazing family, but they do something a little bit different. And I’m thinking like, you know, who’s this neighbor of mine that does something a little bit different? And she’s like, they homeschool. And I’d never, you know, I’m like, had my master’s in education, public school teacher. I’d never heard of the word homeschool before. This is like 28 years ago.
Lighthouse Therapy (04:40.258)
Yeah.
Lesley Russell (04:41.39)
So I couldn’t wait to meet her and these, even before I met her, her little girls were on my doorstep wanting to play and hang out with my daughter who’s only eight months old at the time. But I saw these little girls grow up and they were so precious. They’re still in our lives today as adult women with children of their own. And it was really amazing because I knew that I wanted to homeschool my own children.
Lighthouse Therapy (04:54.679)
Huh?
Lighthouse Therapy (05:02.199)
Wow.
Lesley Russell (05:09.23)
So fast forward, we moved to Georgia and we homeschooled in Connecticut and Georgia, then we moved to California like 16 years ago and I started a co-op in my home and the Lord brought 65 children to my home. only, I had said a prayer, I’m like, Lord, you bring every child that you want to have, be a part of it. And he brought 65 children, 23 families. I only knew like seven of the 23 families.
Lighthouse Therapy (05:21.759)
wow.
Lesley Russell (05:36.118)
And so 16 families were like new to me, new to my home. I did all of the language arts, apologetics, and then a handful of us got trained by Legoland and we ran all the competitive robotics teams out of the house. And it was this amazing year. All four of my own children were able to participate. My oldest daughter was like an eighth grade at that point. And then I had the other three were in elementary, upper elementary and lower elementary.
Lighthouse Therapy (05:49.307)
neat.
Lesley Russell (06:03.474)
And one mom trained the kids to run the LA Marathon and the Surf City Half Marathon. And it was just like this incredible year. I think it like rained once the entire year of our co-op. And it was called like Thursday Co-op. So at the end of the year, my husband and I, we prayed about it and we launched Next Generation Ministries, which is a nonprofit. And we had a DBA called Independent Learning Academy. like literally for about,
12 to 13 years, we ran that. We would have campuses that would have 1,000 students, 800 students, 500 students, 300 students. had campuses all over Southern California and Idaho. And then at the end of that time period, the Lord said, you know, to give that all away, I told my director, start your own campus, I’m giving this to you. And I’d gotten all these prophetic words that the Lord was calling us to a global impact.
and that we were going to be doing something different and that we were going to be reforming education globally. So we launched Equip 210 and we have our own flagship campuses in New York, in Washington, and then we have an amazing online program for eighth through 12th graders that partners with the university where I’m an adjunct professor. I’m getting my doctorate in organizational leadership right now. So I’m an adjunct professor there.
Lighthouse Therapy (06:59.341)
Lesley Russell (07:27.04)
at Kairos and it has partnered with them. And so our online virtual high school students graduate, they get their associate’s degree and they have their high school diploma. So it’s amazing with a Christian biblical worldview. And then I launched a book as well. And that’s what I’m excited to talk about because I know that you said you have a lot of educators on. And so that’s what do now is we have
Lighthouse Therapy (07:35.214)
neat, yeah.
Lighthouse Therapy (07:48.748)
Yes.
Lesley Russell (07:51.404)
our flagship campuses, but we train educators here in the United States and also globally. Every Friday, I train educators and leaders in Pakistan and in Uganda. I’m going to Pakistan and Uganda in person and training over 200 teachers there this spring. So I’m excited to get into Revelate Learning. That’s what my book is about, Revelations of God in Education, Learning Through the Lens of the Creator, because I really feel that there’s a lot of application for those who are listening.
Lighthouse Therapy (08:10.828)
Yes.
Lesley Russell (08:19.502)
and bringing this into your home if you’re a homeschool parent, if you’re a co-op or a pod or a Christian school, we help train existing schools and then we also help people launch their own schools through our Revelate Learning program where we train and equip them. We have three women who just came through and they’re launching their own schools, one in Texas and two in California. So yeah, I’m super excited to get into that.
Lighthouse Therapy (08:47.115)
Neat. So the schools, are they charter schools or are they private schools? How are they launching these schools? How are they organizing them?
Lesley Russell (08:58.126)
Yeah, that’s such a great question. So they are private, they’re like private hybrid schools. The three that just came through our training is a six week training and then it goes into a monthly training and then they can join our global network and interact with people all the way around the world and with teachers and we all get to revelate and I’ll get into the meaning of that word. So they are faith-based Christian alternative education schools.
Lighthouse Therapy (09:04.375)
Okay.
Lighthouse Therapy (09:27.957)
helps. I just wanted to make sure I understood. I wanted to ask you that about the schools that you that you left like you because you had a whole network of schools and then then the Lord just tells you hey I want you to give them away and do something different. That sounds like something he would ask me to do. So were those private schools as well? wow.
Lesley Russell (09:41.996)
Yes. Yes.
They were very large private homeschool hybrid programs with a thousand students, 500 students that were flowing through the.
Lighthouse Therapy (09:52.524)
Wow.
Yeah.
You’ve had quite the impact in the world already. And look at this. It’s just amazing. So yeah, so let’s go on to the next thing, because I just wanted to understand like how it all came together and, you know, just to be clear. So that’s very cool.
Lesley Russell (10:11.938)
Totally, and this is my family right here. These were my kids, they were little. And then they grew up in that program. And now they’re in their 20s and two of them are married. And that kinda leads into what I’m doing now because when your children grow up, and I know that you have older children as well. Yes. As a mother’s heart and as…
Lighthouse Therapy (10:19.671)
goodness.
Lighthouse Therapy (10:29.417)
Yep, they’re all grown up too, yep.
Lesley Russell (10:36.494)
someone who is truly an educational reformer, like that’s totally like what the Lord has anointed and appointed me to be and to do, is to reform education and to like redeem it, is that you want your children to grow up and know Jesus, to love him on their own, to have their own relationship with him, to have their identity, to be their identity.
Lighthouse Therapy (10:56.557)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (11:04.15)
not to be confused with any other identity other than their identity in Christ. And so that’s what revelate learning is. And, you I know we were talking a little bit beforehand, you know, this is just a statistic, a global statistic that the fastest growing like world religion right now in the Western hemisphere is actually humanism. It’s outgrowing all of our world religions.
Lighthouse Therapy (11:08.269)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (11:33.518)
And, you know, basically humanism is the exchange that took place in the garden when Adam and Eve, they had everything, right? They got to walk with God, talk with God, name the animals, and there was an exchange. They chose the tree of good and evil instead over the tree of life. And so with that exchange, we have basically our whole educational system is really about us, is about people.
and humanity instead of the wisdom of Christ. And God talks about it in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, 18 through 31. You can go and read that for yourself. He calls out the Greeks. He says, who are these Greek philosophers? Who are these brilliant scholars? This is just the knowledge of man. This is not the wisdom of Christ. And so the wisdom of Christ is what Revelate Learning is all about.
Lighthouse Therapy (12:20.439)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (12:29.536)
Reveille is a word that the Lord gave to me in my quiet time as I was writing the book because I’m like Lord I’m an educator. I have my masters. I’m getting my PhD and organizational leadership like my kids have are you know, some of them are getting their masters like I love education like we’re an education family I’ve had an educator I’ve had tens of thousands of students come through the program But I’m just seeing education through such a different lens of the things that you’re revealing and showing me and I said, what’s your word for?
Lighthouse Therapy (12:46.306)
Right.
Lesley Russell (12:59.352)
for education and he gave me the word revelate. And Martin Luther was the last person to use that word in the 1500s. And I went back into those manuscripts and actually found him using that word. And what it means is to learn through the lens of God. And that is like the pedagogy and the methodology that I’m excited to talk about because regardless of where you are and where you’re teaching, you can apply
this methodology and this pedagogy where you are. And that’s what we train on. And I love training teachers from all different spheres of influence and all different backgrounds. Possibly this summer, I was asked to go and actually speak to an association of public school teachers and actually training them on this, on this whole methodology and ethos of revelate learning. So I’ll kind of like start with,
Lighthouse Therapy (13:51.565)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (13:57.538)
the pedagogy, is, know, right, historically, we have a very transactional relationship with students, teachers and students, they come in, the teacher is viewed as the one who is the keeper of the the knowledge, it’s to be dispersed to the student, the student is to learn the knowledge and to be able to show performance and understanding of it and so through tests and
Lighthouse Therapy (14:13.089)
The knowledge.
Lesley Russell (14:27.352)
projects and everything else. And then the teacher assigns a grade based on that assessment of the knowledge that has been taught. And so that’s really like a transaction, right, between the teacher and the student. But I wanted to paint a picture of something even bigger and greater. And that’s transformation of really being able to transform that child’s life to have such an impact.
Lighthouse Therapy (14:40.173)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (14:56.366)
on that child recognizing that the Ephesians 2 10 for we are God’s masterpiece created new in Christ Jesus for the good works that he prepared long ago, that there’s a calling on that child’s life that only he or she can fulfill and that you as a teacher that you get to actually play a significant part in the fruition of that. And so it’s such a different mindset and having that transformative
Lighthouse Therapy (15:21.869)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (15:25.272)
pedagogical outlook when you go in to prepare your lessons and when you go in to teach.
Lighthouse Therapy (15:32.333)
Mm hmm. Yeah, I’ve seen a little bit of that. And I don’t know that they’re using the same words when I’ve talked to other people, but it’s child centered, child centered education, where we’re looking at individual, you know, an IP is an individualized education plan, right? That’s what we have for special education. We’ve had it as part of the IDA, the Individual Disability Education Act, right? And IEP helps the child looks at the child looks at everything that that
Lesley Russell (15:56.173)
Yes.
Lighthouse Therapy (16:01.751)
they’re struggling with and then helps them to access education, right? Access the learning, whatever. And what you’re talking about is looking at that child from the lens of God, right? But helping them to become all that they can be based on how they’re wired and based how God gave them the gifts that he’s given them. And is that kind of, am I right? Yeah.
Lesley Russell (16:26.67)
Oh, that’s so good. Like you, you stated that so, so well and so effectively because, um, you know, IEPs are IEPs. A lot of times when they come into more of an alternative educational model, a lot of times the IEPs go away because all of a sudden they’re learning the way that they were like, that they can learn. It’s hard when you’re in a classroom of 30 students.
Lighthouse Therapy (16:47.531)
Yeah, that they were gifted. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Lesley Russell (16:54.39)
You might not be learning visually. You might be kinesthetic. You might be, you all know, you know, you know this. Right. All kinds of things. So there’s all different ways of teaching that, but you’re absolutely right. And that’s the, there’s five essential elements of revelate learning. And they’re all, they all start with P. The first one is perspective. And that is that when we learn math, English history, and the reason why God gave us cognition is to conceive of him.
Lighthouse Therapy (16:57.805)
Yeah. Neurodivergence for sure. Yeah.
Lighthouse Therapy (17:49.858)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (17:51.456)
and I’m able to run the company and do all the other things and speak that I do. I’m busy getting my doctorate. So by God’s grace, all of these things. And I’m also a mom and a wife, but as we know, we are able to do these things because God makes it possible and he brought this to us to do. So I get to actually create lesson plans and be hands-on. So these aren’t just like concepts. This is like actually being able to go in.
Lighthouse Therapy (17:53.825)
You’re busy.
Lighthouse Therapy (17:59.393)
Wow, yeah.
Lesley Russell (18:19.756)
and do these things. So the first is the P is the perspective that learning is through the lens of God. The second P is personhood, a mago day. Like the children really know that their identity, there’s only one identity and it’s in Christ. And then the next P, we have our seven pillars of children need to know how to like treat people. they don’t, you know, they don’t, if you’ve had a child, you know, they don’t come out knowing how to share and knowing how to love and get along and.
Lighthouse Therapy (18:44.653)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (18:46.93)
those things. So our seven pillars are love, grace, honor, obedience, excellence, kindness, and courage. And then the next P is principles, biblical principles. What, you know, how do you want to raise your family? What’s your mission and vision? How do you want to run your company? Like I’m in organizational leadership right now. There’s a lot of, you know, secular methodologies and ways in which companies are formed and interaction. And, you know, some of it are things that are that
you can find in the Bible that are like biblically based and other things are like well I can understand why there’s church splits and why you know there’s companies might have a revolving door and because it’s not grounded biblically in the way in which you want to be interacting and treating people in a transformative way and then and then we make 30,000 decisions a day that’s a lot of decisions like how do I make those 30,000 decisions a day
Lighthouse Therapy (19:30.647)
Mm-hmm.
Lighthouse Therapy (19:40.545)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lesley Russell (19:45.154)
you know, what are the biblical principles that I want to be able to make those decisions? And then the last P is the pedagogical, is the pedagogy of how you actually get to teach.
Lighthouse Therapy (19:55.615)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love the the perspective of of the business too because you know lighthouse therapy our center core value is faith and I actually had in he didn’t stay very long. I’ll tell you that and I don’t you know We we hired this guy who was gonna help us with Organization and help us to move the the business forward said he believed he was a believer But he didn’t you know, he was any long story short he eventually
Eventually we had to let him go because it was just he was poison. I mean it was just poison in our company and he actually told my director of finance that God has no business in business that God shouldn’t be and it was like wow I’m so sad for you, you know because that’s so not true. I mean that’s it’s just it’s one of those things where I was like it was good though. I mean God actually wanted him here. He wanted us to witness him because I hired him because God told me I needed to hire him and I did and
And it was it was tough though. I mean it was it was it was one of those things where it’s like, what are you doing? You know, it’s like, why are you? Why are we going through this? What do you what? What is what is my outcome here? And there were many. There were many positives and negatives, but I also learned the firm foundation that I have in my business in is in Christ and that it’s OK to be a Christian business and still work in the schools and work for schools and work.
Lesley Russell (21:01.421)
Yeah.
Lesley Russell (21:13.635)
Yes.
Lighthouse Therapy (21:21.695)
with people that are not Christians and work towards making a better place, making the world a better place through the children that we serve. You know, we don’t go out and, and do things specifically to push one way or the other. We are here to serve these kids because they need our help, you know, and, and, and because we’re, we, we, we walk a line, we walk a fine line. have to, because, you know, it’s, it’s just,
It’s just how how it’s how it is right now, unfortunately But I can still say I love Jesus and I want people to know that it’s okay to say I love Jesus and that I am I can and I’ve had people who have have been on my show who are in the public realm and they’re like these kids need Jesus and they do they do need Jesus they need the love of God in their lives and You know every time he opens the door boy. I’m running right through it
Let’s just talk about it. Let’s talk about how God loves you and why God loves you and why that’s important for you to know and that Jesus is there for you. And so it was really, was a stage, it was like six, seven months of my business where it was like, hmm, that is really the worldview of how business, so when you were talking about the worldview of business, it’s like you do not, and we pray corporately, you know, it’s just like, it’s so…
Lesley Russell (22:41.219)
Yes.
Lighthouse Therapy (22:46.559)
And it’s refreshing for my staff because they know that it isn’t. well, the flip side of that too is that yes, it’s business and it’s important, but there’s nothing more important than your family and the people in your lives that God has given you. And so I always tell them, you know, if someone says to me, my daughter is sick, see you later. Go take care of your child, you know? And we have a family business, so.
Lesley Russell (23:02.178)
this.
Lesley Russell (23:11.992)
Right.
Lighthouse Therapy (23:14.313)
I say the same thing. My kids work for me and my daughter has learned and you met her. You met my daughter at America vest, but, I we’ve we’ve, we have agreed at always that if she needs me, I’m gone. I will go. Everything else will, it’ll be there when I get back and she’ll just say to me, I need my mom today. And it’s like, okay, you got your mom. I’m always her mom, but you know, there we do. We work together. We work together. We do a lot of work together.
Lesley Russell (23:20.12)
Yeah.
Lighthouse Therapy (23:42.537)
So, you know, we have learned to define the fact that I’m mom first, always, always. and you know, God comes first even before them. So having, having the business and, growing it and explaining and showing them that this is, this is okay. And it’s a beautiful thing and boy has he blessed it. So anyway, I’m sorry, I went down that road, but it’s just, it’s really cool to, be able to.
Lesley Russell (24:06.326)
Yes, he has. Yeah.
Lighthouse Therapy (24:12.581)
to share, you know, the things and see what he’s doing with you. look, let’s move forward. Sorry.
Lesley Russell (24:18.956)
Yeah, no, you’re right. See, like the biblical principles, like when you run your organization like that, it thrives. And that’s so significant. And so what I, I had gotten this assignment as a, as a doctorate student and I was able to modify it. And I’m like, this is like just going to show students that regardless of what age and level you are, the significance of how, you know, you can take the Bible and everything comes from here. Like our founding fathers.
Lighthouse Therapy (24:25.003)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (24:46.594)
you know, were able to use the Bible to come up with the foundation and the framework of the Constitution. It was like, it was like their book that they that they went to and that they found solitude or that they found solace in and that they found understanding. And it’s interesting. It’s like they wanted to get away from a monarchy, right? And it’s like way back here in Judges, God made it really clear that you shouldn’t have kings. So it’s like, he’s already in here, but it took, you know.
Lighthouse Therapy (24:52.812)
Yes.
Lighthouse Therapy (25:08.663)
Mm-hmm.
Lighthouse Therapy (25:12.886)
Right, yeah.
Lesley Russell (25:16.366)
a of millenniums to like be able for them to finally reach that for themselves. So anyways, the assignment was to read Proverbs 31, woman and wife of noble character, and to like pull out and extract all of her qualifications and her characteristics. And it’s really amazing. And then I had them create a company based on that. So.
Lighthouse Therapy (25:26.253)
Yeah.
Lesley Russell (25:40.59)
they read it through that lens of like, wow, look at this amazing woman, but what can we learn from her? She was industrious. She was generous. She honored her husband. So there’s honor and there was obedience. She was a multiplier. She would buy something and it would multiply. So being a multiplier, she was a visionary. She had no fear of the future because she could see into the future and was prepared. these are like foundational principles that we can use for our family mission statement.
for how we want to build our companies. So how does this like point back to revelate learning? What we’re talking about in education is that children need to know the significance of the word of God and that they can find him in there and they can find him in all the subjects that we’re learning. So before I teach a math lesson, I’ll talk about Jesus Christ being the greatest multiplier there is. He said greater things you’re going to see on earth.
you know, greater things you’re going to see on earth now that I’m going because he’s sending the advocate, the Holy Spirit, who is the multiplier. And, you know, we would get in, we got into multiplication that way in how Jesus is a multiplier. And then we were able to talk about numbers because numbers are just a representation of everything that’s already in here. And if I’m going to teach a lesson on the trees, I’ll talk about the dead-dit trick.
branches and how the formation of the dentitrix and that fractal pattern can be seen in our lungs. It’s in our cardiovascular system along with our pulmonary system. It’s in the rivulets of like when you have an aerial view of like rivers that you see that and it’s a very effective pattern of dispersion and you know students will all of a sudden they just see that pattern like oh my goodness.
Lighthouse Therapy (27:10.762)
yeah.
Lighthouse Therapy (27:23.327)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (27:28.78)
that patterns in me and that patterns in nature and creation. And God says in Romans chapter 120, says, man is without excuse that the evidence of him is all throughout creation, which is so exciting. And then he says in Proverbs 25 to he says, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter. And then it’s the glory of Kings to reveal a matter. So it’s to discover it. So it’s like, want to be a kid and queen, like you get to discover what God has concealed.
Lighthouse Therapy (27:30.604)
Right?
Lighthouse Therapy (27:38.658)
Right?
Lighthouse Therapy (27:49.389)
to discover it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lighthouse Therapy (27:58.497)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (27:58.798)
So to search that out and then he says in Jeremiah 29 13 to draw near to draw near to him and he will draw near to you. So we find that the more that we seek him that he’s going to give revelation and reveal all kinds of things in creation and mathematics and in language and in history. And so I love teaching that I was just teaching Cory 10 booms book, the hiding place to my English 10 class.
Lighthouse Therapy (28:22.219)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (28:24.256)
And the students collectively were all blown away by her sister Betsy, Cory of course, but also Betsy. like, you know, she was praying, she was thankful for fleas. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that book. It’s an amazing book. It’s been a while, but she was thankful for the fleas because it kept the, you know, the Nazi men out of their barracks so that they could have a Bible study in the evening.
Lighthouse Therapy (28:36.717)
It’s been a while, but I know that I know our basic story. Yeah.
Lesley Russell (28:54.112)
And so that was just really a very big like, my goodness, look at how she was just so thankful for everything and how she was, and then how Corey was able to forgive the Nazi stormtrooper who was the one responsible. Like he was the guard at the concentration camp where her sister was killed. And there’s this very poignant scene at the end of the book where she forgives him by God’s ability and God’s grace.
Lighthouse Therapy (29:16.301)
Right.
Lighthouse Therapy (29:21.837)
by God’s grace and strength, yeah.
Lesley Russell (29:24.034)
that she was in strength. And so, you know, we had a whole discussion on forgiveness and how, you know, when we carry bitterness and unforgiveness and offense, how God can operate in our heart. And so by the end of the class, everyone, I’m like, is there someone that you need to forgive? And they all raised their hand and like, let’s pray and let’s like, you know, forgive that person so that you can be cleansed of that unforgiveness and God can like move in you like he was able to move, you know, in Betsy and Cory.
Lighthouse Therapy (29:44.215)
Yeah.
Lighthouse Therapy (29:52.365)
Yeah, because forgiveness is not forgiving. It’s not for the person that you’re forgiving. Forgiveness is for you so that you can move past it because it’s in your heart. You’ve been wronged, but you need to be able to let go of that so that you can move forward because it’s not gonna, they might not even be aware. It’s amazing to me how many people are hurt.
Lesley Russell (30:06.243)
Yes.
Lesley Russell (30:10.765)
Yes.
Lighthouse Therapy (30:18.655)
and are hurting themselves because they harbor unforgiveness in their heart. It’s a poison. Unforgiveness is really a poison that just will poison your whole and it causes illness. causes anxiety. It causes lots of horrible things in your system. And so being able to forgive others, loved Erica when she got, that’s going to make me cry, but she forgave. Excuse me.
Lesley Russell (30:24.803)
Yes.
Lesley Russell (30:43.832)
Yeah. Yes. No, I know, right?
Lighthouse Therapy (30:47.585)
the man that killed her husband, you know, assassinated Charlie and she forgave him and before, but she wasn’t forgiving him for him. She’s forgiving him for her because she didn’t need that in her life. And I don’t think a lot of the secular world doesn’t get that. They don’t understand how she could possibly forgive this man for the damage that he had done irrevocably to her children and to her life. And it wasn’t about her forgiving him.
for him, was about her forgiving him for her and for her kids and so that she could move past it because that’s a that’s a that’s a weight. That’s a huge weight that she was carrying and and most most people don’t understand that.
Lesley Russell (31:24.205)
Right.
Lesley Russell (31:31.84)
Yeah, no, that’s so true, right? And it’s liberating. so being able to read a literature book and be able to talk about that to high schoolers is like an example of how you can use literature to learn something from God’s lens. And where instead of just kind of teaching it from a historical standpoint, that it was so much more than that.
Lighthouse Therapy (31:34.955)
Mm-hmm.
Lighthouse Therapy (31:50.231)
Mm-hmm.
Lighthouse Therapy (31:56.982)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (31:57.536)
And so that’s how the science like biomimicry is another one. Like we were studying dragonflies the other day. And so the science was biomimicry and studying dragonflies and they have over 50,000 lenses. It’s fascinating. And they have a military that are actually trying to create drones based on their flight patterns because they fly backwards, forwards, upside down. Like they, they’re incredible. And even their, they have a credible ability where they’re
Lighthouse Therapy (32:16.287)
Yeah.
Lesley Russell (32:26.264)
predator is thinking that they’re stalking the dragonfly, but actually the dragonfly is able to make it seem like they’re stalking the dragonfly, but the dragonfly is actually flying now behind the predator and actually it becomes, the predator becomes the prey. And so it’s, and they have a military that’s looking at the biomimicry and there’s so many examples of biomimicry. mean, like even the planes that we fly in now, you know, the birds of flight that were studied.
Lighthouse Therapy (32:44.621)
Wow.
Lesley Russell (32:55.394)
as far back as Leonardo da Vinci and then modern day the Wright brothers. So when they learn and they can see that God’s fingerprints are all throughout creation and to learn from that lens, it’s exciting. And like they see it that way and then they grow up to value that versus having a different worldview because there’s the statistic that 40 % of your graduating high school seniors who were Christian
Lighthouse Therapy (33:06.093)
Because he created it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lesley Russell (33:23.66)
They grew up in Christian homes, but they didn’t learn through that lens that they lead the Christian faith because church on Sunday and youth group on Wednesday is enough to override a more of the secular understanding of their learning. And so that’s why it’s so important to bring in foundationally the understanding of seeing God in their learning. That’s like why he gave us a mind. just recently wrote a blog and I’m like, why did God even give us cognition?
Lighthouse Therapy (33:45.485)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Russell (33:53.09)
Don’t we want you talking about your daughter? Like, isn’t that so beautiful when she wants her mom, right? Like, he loves it when we want him and have a relationship. so like, he gave us cognition so that we can conceive of the things of him, not learn without him. So that’s like all of this is in my book. And the feedback that I’ve been getting is that as you read it, you get your own understanding and
Lighthouse Therapy (33:57.382)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Lesley Russell (34:22.19)
aha and revelation of it. When I train on Fridays, the Pakistani teachers and administrators and then the Ugandan, I have chancellors on their department heads and professors. And then I have my own teachers that join in. It’s really so much fun. We’re all together there. There’s about, you know, 35 to 40 of us on there.
And we’re all revelating and talking about what we’re learning from the book and the revelations God has given regarding it and how we’re applying this in our classrooms and learning from one another. And it’s not only just in our classrooms, but we can apply it into our individual lives as well. And I met a doctor the other night and he’s bringing it into his medical practice where he has so much revelation about the human body even. There’s laminin, which is
which is like the rebar of the human body that when you look at it under the electron microscope that it’s actually in the shape of a cross, which is like amazing. And then you look at the chambers of the heart and just like how the body has been set up, it’s been set up for discovery. Because we’re made in this image. So of course like our body isn’t just like, you know, there’s like, there’s so much to discover about our body, about creation and in mathematics.
Lighthouse Therapy (35:21.803)
It’s a cross. Yeah, I did know that. Yeah.
Lighthouse Therapy (35:33.353)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Come here.
Lesley Russell (35:45.994)
language, all of these things. They’re not meant to be individual subjects. They’re meant to collectively point back to the creator.
Lighthouse Therapy (35:52.877)
Because they interconnect. Yeah, they interconnect, right? They all they all are part of one big world that he’s created. That’s really neat. Yeah. my goodness. Yeah. So much so many things to absorb and take in and knowing that that he gave us all of this so that we could learn so that we could the mysteries of life, the mysteries of the world are are were
Lesley Russell (35:56.642)
Yes.
Lighthouse Therapy (36:21.901)
created by God so that we could and then I love the fact that I live in 2025 26 with 2026 now because we get everybody that has gone before us for the last 2000 well it’s 4000 years right I mean if you go back to creation right go back to creations 4000 about 4000 years but even if you just take modern times of the last two thousand and twenty six years you know
Every single discovery is something that I benefit from and I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I didn’t create it. I didn’t make this microphone. I didn’t figure out how to have a conversation with you. I’m in Texas and you’re in California. How would we have done this previous to today? You know, to the last, mean, even when did video technology become a thing? You know, it’s like, and this is
Lesley Russell (36:57.454)
Yeah.
Lesley Russell (37:13.742)
Right.
Lighthouse Therapy (37:19.917)
and blogs and podcasts and podcasts are amazing because now access to information is and not just from podcasts, but access to information is so much more readily available across the world because of the technology that we have and you know, technology and it’s like, it’s like, you know, talk about the root money is the root of all evil. It’s, know, it’s the love of money.
Money itself isn’t inherently evil, but the love of money can be very evil. And that’s the same thing with technology. If you live only for technology and for the love of AI or the love of whatever is that is that and whatever you focus on and whatever you think about and whatever is most important to you in your life. If it’s not Christ, that’s your God. And knowing that and understanding that
is so important and I think that’s part of what you’re teaching them is to understand that these things of the world are good things. They’re not bad things. They’re not inherently bad, but you cannot let them be your God.
Lesley Russell (38:33.89)
Right. Yes. Yeah. And so much of our society’s maladies and challenges and just the very sad things that just happened that we’re all aware of. You know, we’ve all have something common. We’ve all been educated in some way, even like no education is like, it’s like still like education and you still learn. so learning is universal. And if we get learning right,
Lighthouse Therapy (38:52.727)
You’re still gonna Yeah, yeah, you’re still gonna learn. Yeah. Yeah.
Lesley Russell (39:03.054)
then everything else, you know, falls into place. have, we have, we have children who grow up to be loving mothers and fathers and husbands and wives. And, um, they, know, whether they’re called to run for government, to be government officials, or they go into arts and entertainment, or they go into medicine or law or whatever, they do it with, um, a foundation, a foundation that is rooted in Christ, um, versus growing up.
in a humanistic way where everything is all about them and we just know and see how that goes. It doesn’t go well. So yeah, I’m really excited about what I get to do, the Lord’s given me to release and I love speaking about it. Our high school teachers are trained on it. So if you have an eighth through 12th grade student who’s really looking to plug in overnight and be
taught like this, can go to equip2ten.com and all of our high school classes for fall 2026 are available. You can even join this spring if you have a student that you’re just really ready to pull or to train or teach differently. Our spring semester just started and then also we have our fall 2026 schedule that is available now that they can register for and they would get their associate’s degree.
So with the entity that we’ve partnered with where I’m an adjunct professor. And so that’s a separate choice if they want to do it. It’s a separate day that they meet virtually. But our program is Monday, Wednesday. It’s Pacific time. And you can just take one class or you can take all four of your classes. And then if you want to be trained in Revelate Learning and start your own school, you can go to revelatelerning.com and sign up for that.
And if you are in New York and you want to go to an amazing our Equip2ten campus there, we’re right outside New York City. And that’s on our Equip2ten website as well as our second flagship campus, which is in Spokane, Washington. So there’s something for everyone. And then the book itself is really an amazing, it’s amazing for families, parents, anyone who wants to see a whole new perspective and understanding of why God gave us cognition.
Lighthouse Therapy (41:30.707)
Mate, very cool. Well, thank you. Gosh, Lesley, it’s just been it’s your wealth of knowledge. I’m so inspired by you. I love talking to I love hearing you talk. I love just how you’ve been gifted and what God has given you. and you’re not just taking it and and just, you know, hoarding it, you’re giving it back and you’re showing the world. And I’m just I love it. I love it so much. So I appreciate that you were willing to come on.
to the podcast and talk to us about what you’re doing and where do they go if they want to get the book?
Lesley Russell (42:09.89)
You can go directly to Amazon. It’s there and it’s all set to go. there’s the cover of it, Revelations from God and Education. It’ll come up. And the two websites that we have are equip210.com and revelatelerning.com. And you’ll be able to find me. You can make appointments to schedule calls, but I love what I get to do and I love being able to share it and…
Lighthouse Therapy (42:11.788)
Okay.
Lighthouse Therapy (42:26.39)
Awesome.
Lesley Russell (42:35.906)
Thank you so much, Janet, for what you do and the platform that you provide for people to come on and be able to share what they have been given to release.
Lighthouse Therapy (42:45.461)
Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s exactly it because you know, the podcast is called brighter together and it’s called brighter together because as you have shown so eloquently, we are brighter in Christ together by what we do. So keep up the good work. I’m hoping that at some point in the future, we will definitely be able to collaborate on something because I just, I just, I love watching and seeing what you’re doing and it’s just, it’s inspirational. So thank you.
Lesley Russell (43:13.368)
Thank you so much, Janet.
