As I said earlier, this evil fell on our laps when it came into our homes; into the lives of the people that we love most. When a problem is in someone else’s house, it hardly has the same impact on you as it has on them. But when it comes into your home and you experience it first hand, it will open you up to all kinds of ideas on how to deal with it. You will be surprised that at this point, you will throw all reasons out the door, and welcome all kinds of compromises.
This strategy has been thoroughly utilized by the devil. Even so, there is something that every parent can do.
The word of God says we should train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are grown, they will not depart from it. Here is where the work begins for all parents. We have a responsibility to not just raise a child, but train them. Training requires that we be present and participate in their growth spiritually, emotionally, mentally, academically, and physically. It requires that we offer the necessary and true instructions, guidance, and opinions as per the word of God, and not as the world dictates. It requires that we also walk in the path that we are leading them in so that we do not preach water and drink wine. If we preach water and drink wine, they will ultimately choose the wine because they will see the manifestations of the effects of the wine and not the water; effects they will live with until they assume it is the way of life. Training up a child requires that we watch them closely, engage them, teach them, and
create room for them to express what they are learning. It demands that we expose them to what is necessary, useful, beneficial, impactful, edifying, and virtuous as well as shielding them from everything negative. Shielding them does not entail hiding them in the house with nothing around them apart from the bible. Shielding them is all about raising their standards so high by the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the word so that everything negative becomes of no effect against them because they know better. Ultimately, in training a child as parents, we are not just concerned about feeding them, educating them, and clothing them. We are concerned about every little detail of their growth all around, and it is not the work of the nanny.
As mentioned earlier, there is an agenda to push perversion down people’s throats, and they are not leaving kids out. Long gone are the days when you could buy a nice cartoon for the kids to watch without worrying about the content. It is just the other day when Santa got a boyfriend, and not only that; superheroes' cartoons are now filled with unnatural relationships and the display of unnatural affection. These two are being marketed left, right, and center. So, as parents, we need to be extra careful with everything that is intended to entertain and even educate our children. All is not well. Once we carb all these inlets of unworthy and perverted content from our children, we give them some room to grow up before all these hits them. We give them room to learn the truth about life and the word of God and build stamina to stand in these evil days where all kinds of evil are being flaunted around.
It is also the parent’s responsibility to pray for their children even when they are not yet born.
You pray while declaring that they will always have the capacity to choose what is right before the eyes of God, and they will never be compromised. You start speaking the word of God into
their lives and aligning them to the word as early as possible. You start detaching them from the wrong associations as early as possible, and decreeing that the word of God will always be the authority in their lives. As a parent, you must program a spiritual atmosphere around your kids, the right circumstances, and the right people around them from their tender age up until they finish their purpose on earth. That is the work of the parent; to step into the situation early enough and be the spiritual authority over them as ordained by God. In this generation, we do not have the luxury to be spiritually careless with our kids. The devil does not care that they are kids because they will not remain kids forever. He cares that he gets to them at a tender age and consequently indoctrinates them because he knows that parents have become too busy to train their children. He has them preoccupied with other things and the cares of this world that we have a generation of parents who are busy chasing money to provide the best lives for the children they never spend sufficient time with because of unavailability.
It is also the parent’s responsibility not to embrace or tolerate perversions in the name of civilization, acceptance, tolerance, or showing the love of Christ. God loved us while we were yet sinners but He never left us in our sin. He sent His only begotten son to come and die for us so that He may deal with the issue of sin and reconcile us back to Himself. The love of God leads to salvation. Therefore, the love of the parent should lead to the salvation of the children that are already lost or seem to gravitate towards perverted lifestyles. It is the work of the parent to stand in the gap for their children and deal with the problem spiritually; rebuking those demons and breaking their influence over the minds, characters, and hearts of their children. It is your work to stop the maneuvers of the devil over your children. Am I saying that you should call out your children and rebuke them while calling them all sorts of names and condemning them?
Emphatically no. I am asking you to go to your secret place and handle the matter there. I am asking you to lovingly hold your children and pray over them and lay your hands over them.
Pray over them and with them as long as you need until you have victory. This war is against spirits that are not of God; expect a fight back to a certain degree, but make sure you win. Do not stop at only praying, expose the children to the word of God and the love of God. Show them their identity through the word of God to transform and renew their minds.
When there is a constant and consistent feeding on the word of God, a permanent transformation will happen in their lives. If you just pray and do not engage them in the word of God, you will have a hard time. Remember what the bible says, when a demon is cast out, it goes to the desert places seeking rest, and when it finds none, it purposes to go back to its house. When it comes and finds the house swept and clean, it goes and comes back with seven spirits more wicked than it. The end of that person becomes worse than the beginning. When you pray, rebuke the devil, and break his influence, do not leave the children empty. Do not leave them exposed to talks, situations, people, and programs that will brood evil around them again because that will be an open door. You must introduce something new because the old things will still be calling them back into bondage. Stand in the gap for your children until Christ is formed in their hearts by faith. Stand until they can stand for themselves and others.
As parents, we have a lot to do for the proper growth of our children. We must put an end to this culture that is creeping up where we are too busy to be deeply involved in the lives of the children we sire. You may need a nanny at one point or the other, but you are the parent. The word of God, talking about us as the sheep of His pasture, says that a hireling will always flee in
the face of trouble. A hireling cannot lay down their life for the sheep, but a good shepherd can effortlessly do it. In the same way, a nanny may not care so much about training up your child and being deeply involved as you would because that is not their child. Therefore, be that good shepherd that you can be, and let us watch over our children. God is counting on us for the salvation of this generation and the ones to come, and this generation will need parents that are watchmen and women who will culture them in the ways of the Lord from a tender age.
When they are all grown, they will not depart from it.