I really am a pretty simple thinker.  I love to study the word and I love it when the Lord shows me deep truths… but in general, things are pretty simple to me.  The Lord often uses moments with my family or in my work to teach me things. One morning recently, I was leaving to take Jake and Madison to school and as we backed out of the driveway I looked over to the side of our house where we have two bushes. They are several years old and have certainly have had time to grow and look like bushes.  I’ll just say up front, being a green thumb is not one of my gifts, and as we looked over at it I wanted to chuckle. It is springtime and things are beginning to bud and bloom. Now the little bushes are blooming, but they basically look like sticks stuck in the ground. They have leaves and they’re trying to grow and flourish, but as we passed by, it just struck me funny because they have not taken the form of a bush. I said to the kids, “I think somebody forgot to tell them that they are bushes!”  and as we drove to school Lord just begin to speak to me about that. 

We declare things over our families, we tell our children who they are. We want them to grow into this certain type of person with certain values, morals, and giftings.  What happens to them though if we don’t tell them who they are?  If they don’t know the kind of person they are supposed to be?

Do we take time to tell them who they are? Are we taking time to declare over them that the word of God tells us that He gives his angels charge over them? He goes before and behind them. He covers them with his wings. The Bible describes them as being more than conquerors and equipped for every good work prepared in advance for them to do.

In our society and in this culture, we enter into the teenage years with great fear and anxiety about what might happen.  We hear stories of other people’s children and the difficulties they have had and the difficulties that the family has experienced during those years. It almost seems as though we need to close our eyes, take a deep breath and hold it for the duration of ages 13 to 18 and just hope that everyone makes it out okay.  What I can tell you from being the director of a pregnancy center is we aren’t making it out okay.  Our kids are falling to many different pressures and immoral actions largely because they don’t know who they are. Our children desire thrill and adventure and may I just say that the Lord places that desire in us? He does not want us to have a ho-hum, boring, safe experience. That is not the heart of God.

To be continued…