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Archbishop Gloria GraceMonday, October 6, 2014
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USA

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RAISING GODLY CHILDREN SERIES 2:
DEALING WITH TEEN REBELLIOUSNESS

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Thus says the Lord "Keep justice, and do righteousness,
For My salvation is about to come, And My righteousness to be revealed.
Blessed is the man who does this, And the son of man who lays hold on it;
Who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And keeps his hand from doing any evil." Do not let the son of the foreigner Who has joined himself to the Lord
Speak, saying, "The Lord has utterly separated me from His people";
Nor let the eunuch say, "Here I am, a dry tree. "For thus says the Lord:

To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant, Even to them I will give in My house
And within My walls a place and a name Better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name That shall not be cut off.

Also the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him,
And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants-Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant-Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices, Will be accepted on My altar; Also the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants-
Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant-
Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations
                    ------Isaiah 56: 1-7.

he above scripture was given to me in 2009 when I was preparing for a mission journey to Kenya and Uganda. The Lord was pointing to me why my prayers was being hindered at the time. He asked me to ask one of my daughters about her lifestyle in school and He directed me to read that scripture. What He pointed to me was immediately corrected.

The above scripture is what the Lord God meant for the families of His people to be. Our house, as He laid it out to me, is a House of prayer for all nations. Your house is a house of prayer, not a place where all kinds of people enter and pollute. It's a place where outsiders, foreigners will enter and find salvation and deliverance. My father's house use to be a city of refuge to many people. We had a very large house. During the war, my father opened the door to many people to live with us, and after the war the same. Later, the living room became a branch of a Church. As a Sunday school teacher, he would bring people that stay with us to the altar of prayers. The foreigners, the people that never knew God, as he was opening doors for them, he would also bring them to the altar of prayers and the word of God. Thus, the presence of God dwells in our families. Our families therefore are the holy mountain of God- a place of sacrifices of thanksgiving, worship, praises, prayers, and so forth. It is not a place of rebelliousness, gossip, strife or where we let the enemy enter and inhabit.

Teenage rebellion is unacceptable to God. As parents however, the Lord could use such situation to train us to acquire the precious characters of the Holy Spirit as we patiently allow Him to direct our responses and actions in dealing with the rebelliousness of our teens.

As a mother of three teens (one is now 21), I can say that most of what we see as rebellion in our children is a manifestation of internal crises they are going through. It could also be pure rebelliousness.

While struggling with my seventeen year old as she was getting ready to enter University few months ago, I read that a Nigerian seventeen who was caught cheating in an examination hall drown herself. After saying that she wished to go and drown in river, she excused herself and went to Harlem River, NYC and drown herself. People that saw her on daily basis said that she was always depressed, and walked with her head down. SHE WAS ALWAYS DEPRESSED.

Seventeen is hard in most children especially most children whose one parent abandoned them to be raised by the other. Besides, it is a gateway to eighteen. When we talk about gateways, we talk about an entrance. Seventeen is an entrance into eighteen - into adulthood. I once started a book I called Fifteen and Seventeen, the gates of Sixteen and Eighteen ( I lost the manuscript), but have much to say on these. Fifteen and seventeen are very critical in the lives of children. We might look into it next time.

Of course we know that teenage is an adolescent time. Many biological, physical, emotional and psychological transformation take place in the lives of children as they transition into adulthood. The devil is usually at work here. While most of them suffer identity crises at this time, most of them go through psychological traumas that make them think they are hated by their parents rather than loved, and so their attitudes become "rebellious" in nature. While they go through these, most of them become depressive and contemplate suicide. Since the devil does not want them to enter adulthood, he gets most of them killed at seventeen or before that.

Most teens suffer too much bullying in school, but will not let the parents know about it, or parents don't take them serious when they say it. They feel no one is listening to them. Thus, they suffer silently. At fourteen into fifteen, the pressures of the bullying begin to mount high. At fifteen if it goes unchecked, the thought of suicide and parental misunderstanding start getting out of hand, most of them commit suicide at sixteen (there is need to establish good communication and understanding with your children).

One day, I checked Miracle's school bag when she was sixteen and saw a razor blade inside it. I picked it in my hand and began to observe it, wandering what a razor blade was doing inside her bag. When I could not make anything out of it, I put it back. We continued to come together at the altar of prayers: shared the word and prayed each night. Miracle most at times has some encouraging and prophetic words to share, but I did not know that a lot was going on in her life, which she would not communicate to me. Through discipline and prayers, we overcame some of the struggles which were directly revealed to me. But one day, she held me and began to cry, confessing to me that she had been trying to slice her wrist with a razor blade in the bathroom in order to bleed to death. She was a Bio-Med student, and so she knew the very artery to cut. Why were you trying to kill yourself, I asked? She answered me that it was because of too much bullying in school. I had no clue that she was going through so much bullying in school. She got tired of it. The only reason she never succeeded killing herself was because of fear of going to Hell. She said her friends told her that if she kills herself, she would go to Hell. This is what is happening to many of them, and some of them endure these without letting parents know about it. At a certain age, around seventeen or so, they start manifesting their bitterness and become very rebellious. Most of the things they endured early begin to manifest in their late teens as the devil do not want them to enter adulthood and fulfil their God-given destinies in life.

There are some other things that cause rebelliousness in the children. Some of such could be as a result of parental strife, bad friends and sense of "am a grown up now, and I can take care of myself". Many of these group of 'grown ups' have crashed and died with that attitude. They cannot take care of themselves. Rebelliousness in the lives of the teens could become very extreme to the point that many parents begin to grieve a lot as nothing the parents say or do could move them, and they do just anything they like to the point that some of them even get pregnant, go out at nights and get the parents into trouble, or even crash with daddy's car. How many times many of them die together in a car accident at once here in America when they all jump into someone's car and drive off? The situation keeps repeating itself. One Sunday morning, it was eight of them starting from fourteen and ending at nineteen years. The ninth one survived. The nineteen year old driving the stolen SUV was on high speed around 7: 45 am and crashed on a bridge and all of them went under water. How they all left their homes and ended up there that morning, I don't know. Such accidents is very common. Last week, my next door neighbor handed me a flier of five teens' funeral. She pointed one and said: 'That's my eighteen year old son, and the next was his cousin and so on. I keep seeing such accidents on the news. The devil's mission is to steal, kill and destroy. He does not like the godly seed that God sought out of your unions, He wants to kill the seed. See Revelation 12. Please, don't let him!

When a child or teen begins to rebel against parental authority, the Holy Spirit is deeply grieved. The word of God says in Ephesians 6: 1-3: Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 "Honor your father and mother," which is the first commandment with promise: "that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. The order of God in the home is that children are to obey and honor their parents so they will live long and prosper. However, rebelliousness continue to kill most of them. Most of them become suicidal as the enemy continues to lie to them how much their parents hate them, especially when the parents don't pay attention to their struggles, or when they are in constant fights with the parents. Most parents are frustrated with the rebelliousness and suffer much heart break especially if such a teen is so rebellious to the point that the parents cannot correct or even say a word. Sometimes, such frustration drives the parents to start uttering curses against their future in retaliation to the rebellion.

Some parents, on the other hand, simply oppress their teens and often accuse them of one thing or the other, always cursing -, and calling them names, thereby constantly grieving them. The next verse of the above scriptures says: And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:3. Here, it is easy to form an opinion of the child and constantly use it against such a child, always reminding him/her of a mistake he/she made some time ago. Parents need to forgive their children when they make a mistake, and not to constantly remind them of it and use it as a ground to constantly torment them. The more they torment the child, the more the devil will rob the parents' peace and continue to give them more burden to see something else to pick on the child so that there will always be confusion and strife.

Besides, the mistake many parents have often made is fighting with the children in response to their rebelliousness. I always ask the parents to learn to fight the devil, not them. What the devil wants is to ruin the destiny of that godly offspring you have, and so he drives the parents to respond by uttering curses to destroy their destinies.

Teen rebellion is a challenging time both to parents and to the rebellious teens. Their rebellion causes them to also go through series of internal warfare. They are not at peace with God or with themselves because, they are rebelling against divine order at home. They are opening doors through rebellion for the enemy to attack them, and the family, and being out of parental protection, the enemy can kill them unless the parents are covering them in prayers. Besides, their rebellion is hindering the presence of God in the home especially if the parents' attitude begin to go out of hand too.

What God expects parents to do during this hour is to be parents in their behavior, not teens like them. What do I mean? Your child is heading for destruction, to Hell. Your child is violating divine principles that could cause God to kill him/her at an instant, what do you do? Help devil fight your child? NO. So, it's time to look beyond your pains and agony and think about the wellbeing of your child. Drop your feelings and hurts and think about the soul of your child. Enter into intercessory warfare on behalf of that child and save him/her. Parental rebellion, which is fighting back can give the enemy foothold in your family. Such parents may suffer heart disease through anger and rage with their natural response to it (depending on the level of rebellion). The parents can chose to love and draw the rebelling teen closer. Love never fails. The power of love can melt an iron heart, or they can use their verbal abuses and curses and throw the teen farther away.

It's time for midnight hours in the presence of God. God revealed to me that my three-days dry fasting and prayers was not answered because of one of my daughters, I mentioned it above. I had few more days to leave for the mission work, but the Holy Spirit rejected all the nannies I found for them, one by one. I was getting frustrated, and asked Him what I was to do. He pointed to me the school issue with my daughter. Out of anger, I carried my laptop to hit her, but the Holy Spirit, who revealed to me the secret now asked me this question:

DID SHE SIN AGAINST YOU OR AGAINST ME?

When the Lord asked me that question, it changed everything. My child's rebellion or sin is against God and God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. What He expects parents to do is to fight for their child, intercede for your child. The reason the devil provokes the parents to the point of wanting them to curse their children is because he cannot do anything against your child until he gets that permission through the parents. He works through the parental legal authority. So in your child's rebellion, he begins to magnify to you that your child is dishonoring you, tramples on your authority, breaks the rules and has no respect for you. Then in response, the parents begin to rage, and set themselves to teach the child that "I born you". The Lord told me that is "fighting back". When you attack your child out of anger for breaking the rules, or disappointing your expectations of him or her, you are retaliating. You are fighting back. Most parents are shocked because of the strange behavior or what they suddenly heard about their child. They have no clue where the child picked that because they did not raise him/her that way. We will talk about that in one of the series on this raising godly seed.

The Bible says that as a Father pities His children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. The compassion of God over us is what keeps us going even when we fail seventy times. We are able to come back because the compassion of our Father continues to woo us back, and the Lord Jesus continues to intercede for us that our faith fail not. He shed His very Blood for us. This compassion has helped me overcome many obstacles in raising my children. Even when they break my heart, I will hear the Lord ask me to cry out my heartbreaks at the altar, not fighting. Besides, since they don't always communicate their internal crises or challenges to us, the Lord continues to overwhelm parents with compassion for them so that, even though you don't know what is going on in their lives, you continue to pray for them.

I remember one time in Enugu when I was in Nigeria, a woman was always praying for her daughters in the University. One of them was engaged to marry someone. So one day she dreamt and saw a snake wrapped around her daughter's head with its mouth right at the center of her head, sucking her blood. She grabbed her daughter and unwrapped the snake from her head and pulled its mouth out of her head and smashed it on the ground, the blood in the snake's mouth poured on the ground. The daughter later called her sister and asked her to warn her mother because she was "harassing her fiancé".

God expects parents to be parents. As parents, we are their spiritual cover, their protector, and leader to help them take right decisions. You cannot fight them at twenty, twenty-one or else you will offend God or you will destroy your relationship with them. What you do is to listen to the Holy Spirit who will stir up compassion in your heart for them, and you respond at the altar of prayers, and when you have prayed through, with respect you can communicate to them.

Your entire heart beat is for the salvation of their souls, to rescue them from evil even when they are yelling at you and telling you how much they hate you. At times, your teens tell you how much she hates you and bang the door behind her, and walk away. In your frustration, you continue to cry to God to save your child. When Benny Hinn's daughter, Jessica was expressing her hatred to her father, and would leave the house at midnight and go out with her bad friends, his wife would take anointing oil and go over to her bed crying and anointing her sheets, asking God to please save her baby. God answered her prayers and saved her, and she returned to the Lord. Parents are not to try to force discipline at times, because it alienates them. It can help them at times, but can also drive them further away. Even when they would not respond to the altar of prayers, allow the Holy Spirit to speak to them, not you fighting them and telling them how much of disappointment they have been to you. It's not worth it! Bad language is not necessary. Return to the altar and seek the face of God, and ask for mercy on their behalf. The Lord systematically thought me how to overcome each stage of their adolescent lives, and the corresponding challenges. He thought me how to love in the most difficult challenge. Love shall cover the multitude of sins. Love does not fail. It melts the most hardened hearts.

Two weapons to use in raising them: The weapon of the Blood of Jesus, and the word of God. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death (Revelation 12: 11).

The Blood of Jesus destroys the works of the enemy in their lives. As you get up in the morning, you arrest every plan of the enemy against them, through them and cancel all his plans by the Blood of Jesus Christ. The Blood is very powerful. Also, the word of God becomes your rod of correction which will not depart from your mouth through prayer, teaching and correcting, not condemning. The more the opposition, the more intense is your love and compassion for their soul and that continues to provoke your intercessory prayers as you have laid down your own life, your pains, your feelings of humiliation and anger and turned them to the Lord and continue to plead the Blood of Jesus against the works of the enemy through them, and against them.

Pray the word over their lives at all times, that is faith. The word does not fail. Your house is the house of the Lord. I thought my children how to fight in prayers, in fasting and how to win and not to lose. We have won the most difficult battles in prayers together as a family.

Your family is a place of prayers and daily worship of the Lord, not a place of fighting, argument and strife.

For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? (1 Corinthians 3:3).

For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work (James 3:16).

Refuse therefore, to strive with your teens or spouse, but with the enemy. You can bring order into your home through the help of the Holy Spirit as you yield to God in prayers and through faith, patience and perseverance. God will bring order in your home in His time when your obedience in Him is complete.

In my next series, we will look into some foundational problems that affect their lives, and how to pull down the strongholds and help them fulfil their destinies.

I have written a great word-based prayer book (Raising godly Children: Foundation Laid in Prayers) to help parents intercede for their children using the word-based prayers and also How Do We Invest In our Children? to learn principles for raising godly children. They are ebook in Amazon, but hardcopies including Revisiting the Foundation of Marriage will be available in a couple of weeks.

Let us pray for our children:

  1. In the mighty name of Jesus Christ, I decree and declare that my children shall not die, but live to declare the works of the Lord; I shall not cast away my young for with long life Oh! Lord you promise to satisfy them and show them your salvation (Psalm 118: 17; Psalm 91: 16, Exodus 23: 26).

  2. Even the lawful captives shall be delivered, for the Lord shall contend with those who contend with my children, and He shall save them in Jesus name (Isaiah 41:15).

  3. The Lord shall cause the enemies who rise against my children to flee before them: they shall come against them one way and shall flee seven ways in Jesus name… (Deuteronomy 28: 7).

  4. Because the Lord God has given His angels charge over my children, I declare that the Lord's angels encamp round about them to deliver them. No evil shall befall my children neither shall any plague come near our dwelling in Jesus name, amen! (Psalm 91: 10- 11; 34: 7).

  5. Your covenant of mercy, even the sure mercies of David Oh! Lord shall prevail for my children in Jesus name (Isaiah 55: 3; Acts 13: 34, Psalm 89: 1; 1 Chronicles 17: 13).

For more on this, please follow the link to Amazon for ebooks. Hard copies still in print to be ready in a couple of weeks.

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