The fact that we do 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 from about the age of 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.

God is the creator of all things, the breath of life. He is the beginning and He is the end. He has written every chapter of the book of everyone’s life and He placed in us a desire for adventure, a desire for a journey, a desire to win, a desire to make something of ourselves.  As a society, we do a pretty good job of teaching children how to be strong physically. It is a priority in our culture, as it should be; to teach our young people how to make their physical bodies strong. Yet we have a very difficult time teaching kids how to be strong on the inside. If a young person wants to be a wrestler we teach them endurance.  We teach them strength and wrestling moves that can be effective. We tell them that their core needs to be strong, so crunches are in order. We teach them deliberately all of the things it takes to be a good athlete. But do we tell our kids what it means to be a leader?  Do we know how to train them to be leaders?  Do we train them to share Christ with their friends?  Do we train them to teach or to show compassion?  Do we train them to practice self-control or perseverance?  Oh that our children would have perseverance!  Everything does not come to us fast and easy.  Often times the things that we work the hardest for, bring the greatest reward and fulfillment. 

I think it’s high time we started to declare to our kids who they are. I intend this week to tell my bush that it’s a bush and I intend every day to tell my children that they were created for something great because they couldn’t be created for anything less. They were created by Almighty God who saw fit to place them in our home, to give them the struggles that they have unique to them, strengths unique to them and the talents that they need to fulfill a plan, to fulfill a purpose that has their name on it. I will declare to them that they are children of God and that they can accomplish all that he has laid out in advance for them to do.  I pray that you will do the same.

Can you imagine the difference in our culture if we raised our young people to be strong on the inside and out?  What if we raised a generation that loved adventure, practiced self-control, compassion, and perseverance…a generation that took God at His Word and took up the full armor of God? They would run their race with strength and honor.  My heart is so full of emotion as I image it! 

I want my own children to run so hard that they lose their breath. I want them to strive for things that sometimes they attain and sometimes they fall short because there is great benefit to both. I want them to dance in the rain and enjoy a sunset. I want them to love deeply and keep their word. I want them to influence their friends and point them to Christ. I want them to go to bed and sleep soundly because they lived the day fully. I want them to run their race and use everything that God has placed in them for His glory. I want them to leave it all here, to crawl across the finish line with dirt under their nails because they dared to truly live. I pray the same for your children. 

My love,