I just saw a Good Morning America piece saying that 10% of child beauty pageant contestants are now boys who get their nails done & put on make up. They've been doing it since they were babies, but the mothers claim it's their choice. "Let them choose what they want to become."
Do we build cars without steering wheels or ships without rudders, or planes without yokes? That would be ridiculous! There would be no way to determine their course, and tragic things could happen as a result. So why do we think we can send children into the world with no covering and guidance to let them "discover" who they are, and think the results will not be just as disastrous?
NO! We have a responsibility as parents to teach, correct, guide, protect and advise our children into the right paths of morality, so that when they are older they will not make choices to damage their own life or the lives of others. God charges Moses with these words, and they are a charge to us, too:
Deuteronomy 11:19 (New International Version) - Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
It's no secret that there has and always will be an assault on children to sway them over to the ways of evil. I do think however that the tactics have become more subtle and harder to detect. We protect our kids from the cold in the winter by wrapping them up in coats, gloves and hats, or put sunscreen on them in the summer time to prevent sunburn. We even warn them to look both ways before crossing the street to keep them from getting hit by a car, and we caution them to never talk to strangers.
All of this is great advice and is necessary, but so often we are oblivious to the undertow of evil influences that are pulling against our children's minds and hearts. These are even more lethal, because they have the ability to shape their thinking and emotions, which in turn determines the course of their future and the future of others around them.
Why wouldn't Satan attack the very epicenter of our humanity and our ability to connect with our Creator and Savior? It's by the renewing our minds through Christ that we are transformed (Romans 12:1), and by staying our minds on Christ that we find our peace (Isaiah 26:3 & Psalm 46:10).
It's out of our thinking that our emotions flow, and from our emotions that actions are made. If that process can be derailed or altered, then we loose connection with the source of life - Jesus. Here's what Paul had to say about the intentions of false teachers in his day. I think these words still apply to all the self-proclaimed experts who parade themselves in front of us through every communication medium imaginable hoping to win a few converts to their misguided theories:
Galatians 4:17 (New International Version) -
Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them.
2 Peter 2:3 (New International Version) - In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
2 Peter 2:18 (New International Version) - For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error.
As believers, we not only have to guard our own hearts, but also the hearts of our children. This has never been more apparent than when you read through the books of 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles, and see the pattern of good king bad king. Bad kings produced good kings, because the sons found a way to connect with God in spite of the lack of good modeling from their fathers. That seems fairly obvious.
However, why did good kings produce sons who became bad kings? I believe it's because they did not do a good job of modeling their godliness and character to their sons in a personal way, so the sons disconnected from not only their earthly fathers, but their Heavenly father, and instead found other influences to guide them in wickedness. Our children and our spouse need to see us walking with God - reading our Bible instead of watching ESPN, praying instead of looking at Facebook, meditating and listening to the Holy Spirit instead of setting our fantasy sports line up, listening to worship music and praising God with our tongue instead of cursing at the traffic in front of us, etc. We have to model righteousness in tangible everyday actions if we expect our family to catch on and follow God.
As a father and a husband I feel it's my job to make myself a wall between the influences of the world and my wife and children. They have been give to me as a gift from God, and I take my responsibility extremely seriously.
I make it my job to be tapped into the thinking and emotions of my wife and children; to understand what's going on in their hearts and at any given moment. I listen to the Holy Spirit and ask for wisdom and discernment over all the influences that are coming into my home through - books, TV, movies, radio, music, the Internet, school, friends, etc. I want to head anything off before it gets a head of steam, breaches God's wall of protection around us and tries to grab a foothold in their hearts or mine.
Instead of "being shaped" by all that blows over us through external influences or tries to drag us away with deceptive undertows, we aggressively pursue God, His ways, His word, His Spirit, so that we are shaped only by Him. In this way, when the world (by world, I mean the evil systems of our adversary) pushes against us, not only will we not be pushed over, but instead WE WILL PUSH BACK (1 John 5:4, Matthew 16:33).
For too long the church has taken a passive and defensive stance against the devil and the ways of the world, but God has not called us to just stand and take it on the chin and wait for His return. No, he expects us to go after the devil to fight against evil, to advance against the kingdom of darkness, push it back behind it gates, and not stop there, but to tear down even the gates (Matt. 16:18). In the same way that king David when he was a shepherd did not not wait for the lions or bears to come back and attack, but instead he pursued them into the darkness (1 Sam 17:35), so must we as husbands and fathers pursue our enemy and route him instead of standing flatfooted and ignorant of where the next attack is coming from.
I will not abandon my children to the wind of the world, but instead guide them in God, so they can be influencers in the ways of goodness, righteousness and holiness.
