This is to all the parents out there who have teens, to all the parents who have young ones who will grow up to be a teen, to those who were once a teenager, or shoot this blog could be to a teenager. And to those who are thinking of concieving, call me, you may want to save up for a Christian boarding school or missions trip....Just kidding.

I, myself, will be reading this blog for the next 5 years straight... Cause I really need to remember this Gift God gave me in my Joy of following Him as I walk with my Lord and talk with my teenagers.

Teenagers oh, the word itself just brings me to a cring, a shudder, a loud wailing at times. You all know here at my house we have 5 teenagers all in a row right now at this time of the year ages 18,17,16,15, and 14. Sometimes you just love them. Sometimes you wish well.... God is the only one who is allowed to hate.... so here is a list of my wishes upon a star....

* Sometimes you wish their mouths would just get a case of the instant mysterious Godly "lock jaw" syndrom, and be quite (I need to state that politely).

* Sometimes you wish you could do a vulcan mind meld on them, and they could know the aweful conscequenses of the choices they continue to make. Then you could make them feel all the pain and sorrow you had from making the same bad choices. Then those teens coud carry the pain around with them for a day or two, and then you could take the pain back. Just so they could listen to your words about following the ways of the Lord. Some of my pain and shame, would have them begging to decompress the mind meld. (For all you trekkies out there)

Hey Kid... My wisdom and knowledge comes from my pain, my lessons that God taught me, and I NOW have the wisdom of God's Word... to keep you blessed all the days of your life, will you just listen to me and not argue.

* Sometimes you wish that when you are praying for the Lord to convict each and everyone of your teenagers, that your wish the Lord missunderstand your prayers and He allows them to get convicted by the laws of Ceasar so they can come back to getting convicted by the laws of GOD....

Then you actually praise the Lord LOL because the next month, they do actually have to go to the real legal court, and that teen has to fork out $400 for a lawyer for that bad choices, and they do learn from those mistakes and come back to us the parents who are always praying for them. I am still in awe of all the Humor God give me in raising teenagers.

And then there are the scary times... when your teen thinks about/tries suicide, or mutilates themselves, or experiments with drugs or alchohol, or even starts to go down the wrong path when they have followed the good one for so long ...Those are the times you just have to pray every minute. Trust me I know.

But it is times like these that you MUST trust that the Lord is doing in them will reel them back in, like a fish in the ocean. After all they are a part of His sheep and in time my teens will have to reach out to other sheep of His.


So for you teens out there... God commands you this:

But as for you parents of the dreaded teenager or soon to be teenager out there:

Since this is not Disneyworld and you cannot wish upon a star and the fairy does not sprinkle magic dust on your teenagers and make them magically behave. YOU cannot wish your children through the ugliness of growing up as a teenager in these end of days.

YOU MUST:

Pray for them daily, and Hourly if needed. Pray for them... not for what you want them to do, but for what the Lord wants them to do. You may not always know best, but God does. Because after all your children are also children of God, and isn't it to the Glory of God that He must write His story in His children? Even our teenagers... cause they are only on loan to us for a little while, and we are commaned to raise them up in the ways of the Lord as parents.

Then Pray to God that he will give you the words to say to them that will convict them back towards God. The words that will exhault and Glorify the Lord, not make him ashamed. Because a parents words can be more deadly than death to some teens.

And Parents, always rely on other parents. It does good to know the parents of friends, boyfriends, girlfriends...etc. Sometimes when Parents team up to pray, and or encourage their children, you would be supprised of the outcomes. I have all the other parents phone numbers and addressess and I will call, even if it is just for a recipe, or trying to see if my kid is actually there. ARG sneaky little teenagers they are.

But above all you must Love the Teenager as what Paul talks about in

Parents you know that Love, the Love that made our Father in heaven give up His only Son so we could live. Parents I know you Love your Children, so why don't we Love them Like God Loved us?

So when I encourage you to Love on your Children... I don't mean a simple, I love you. I mean the Love them through words they can see when they are doing things wrong in your eyes. Love your teens even when they make bad choices...show them the Grace our Lord in Heaven shows us.  

No Get real serious about it... tell them you are proud of them, not because of something they did in particular. Tell them you are proud because of their entire being, Tell them you are proud of their dreams, their oververcoming adversities of lifes difficulties, and how they are striving daily towards greatness and you can see it in them daily. 

Yes tell them you are proud of the bad choices they made, because they grew so much from those mistakes of judgement, and they have grown so much in comparison to where they were last year, last month.  Tell them you are so proud of how they have had to overcome such huge hurts the pains of being abused, abandond and told lies, by people they thought loved them. Then tell them that you are so very proud of them because they rose above and forgave them for the wrongs they did to you even if they see they did no wrongs, even if that person was a parent or someone you trusted. Tell them you are so excited that they are getting good grades (even though you know they snuck out of classes and have to go to a few Saturday detention classes to pass the classess that are now a FF instead of a B  hehehe... thanks for that one Lord)

Now I tell you parents does this mean that you only love on your biological teenagers, or your step-teenagers? No it means all teenagers you are in contact with, even here on MyChurch.

This method of encouraging them in love is really prophecying to their soul and inner spirit... I if you know about prophecying it usually comes true. Even though the teen may make the same mistake again, the inner spirit is working on that teen and pushing that teen towards the greatness you were telling them in your encouragements of love, positively, even if it isn't all quite true facts about what your teen is doing right now.

Love is the key to raising teens today. A beautiful key to raising a teenager up righteous in the ways of the Lord. So he may be blessed all the days of his life.  

I challenge you to Love on some teen you love... or better yet Love on a random teen you just met.
 
You will be blessed.