20 Things We Need To Tell Our Children - Part 1 Series

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Proverbs Chapter 22.

I’m beginning this morning a new series of messages called 20 Things We Need To Tell Our Children.

Over the next few weeks you and I are going to look at some important truths that we need to communicate to our children, our teenagers, and even our young adult children.

These are important principles that we as parents, grandparents, or anyone who is in a position of influence need to give to our children as they attempt to navigate through the pressures and problems that many of them are right now facing in their young lives.

Over the next five or six weeks I will be challenging you to memorize specific verses of Scripture and encouraging you to implement some of the things I give you with your child or young person.

Let’s get started…

Proverbs 22:6

Here is our first memory verse.

Proverbs 22:6 King James Version (KJV)

6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Before I give out some of the principles, I need for you to understand a couple of things.

1. Our children are under assault by an unseen enemy.

I need you to understand something this morning...Its not easy for our young people today.

The truth is, it's different than how many of us grew up. I think the battle that is confronting today's teenagers are taken far too lightly by the adult world. A typical adult's attitude seems to be,.. Well I made it through my teens and I turned out okay. Today's kids just need to suck it up, get to work and deal with it. The sooner they figure out there are no free lunches, the better off they’ll be.

With that many parents leave their children to deal with the pressures and and problems by themselves hoping they will somehow navigate their way through life without any major hiccups or roadblocks in the way.

But I want to tell you that’s not true…our children are under assault by an unseen enemy.

They are under attack. We need to understand that. There is an enemy out there that wants to destroy them,

that wants to hurt them, that want to kill them.

That unseen enemy is Satan and just like the recruiting poster by Uncle Sam that says I Want You, Satan is right there targeting our kids saying, "I want you."

Satan wants to destroy our families our marriages and our children’s lives.

Look what the Bible says about Satan.

1 Peter 5:8 King James Version (KJV)

8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

John 10:10 King James Version (KJV)

10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Let me give you an example…

In Job, Chapter 1 we find God talking with Satan about Job.

Look at verse 8. Heres what God said.

Read 8…

Look at Satan's response to God in verses 8 and 9.

Now this is what Satan would like to do to our families if he was given the chance.

Look what he did to Job's family..

Read verses 18 and 19.

Here we see Satan attacking Job's family…his children…

Satan's objective is to attack our families.

He has a deliberate, willful and intentional plan to bring harm to our children, our marriages and our lives.

He can attack us physically, mentally, economically, spiritually, and relation-ally.

Unless we guard ourselves against the devil and resist him, we could end up being severely wounded.

There is a war for the hearts and minds of our children, And in this war we're not exactly winning.

Consider this. ..

Every day our children are facing an assault.

Every day in the US...

1000 unwed teenage girls becomes mothers.

Every day 1,106 teenage girls have abortions

Every day 500 teens begin using illegal drugs.

Every day 1000 young people begin drinking alcohol.

Every day 135,000 kids bring guns or other weapons to school.

Every day 3,610 teens are assaulted.

Every day 80 teens are raped.

Every day 630 teens are robbed.

Every day 16 teens are murdered.

Every day 15 teens commit suicide.

Everyday 3,000 kids watch their parents get divorced.

Every day 8,000 teenagers become infected with a sexually transmitted disease.

Look around, you're seeing casualties from this war everywhere you look.

You wont see bloodied bodies lying on the ground but make no mistake, the war is real. The battlefield is littered with our children. And millions of teenagers are burying their pain by self medicating with chemical substances or painkillers.