What is So Wrong With This?

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. –Hebrews 3:13

I have discovered that if homeschoolers rebel, they tend to do so later than their public-school counterparts. Perhaps it is because homeschool parents choose to insulate their children a bit longer than public-school parents, so their children’s interaction with major social issues is delayed. Those years between high school and marriage can be challenging for both child and parent alike. It is even more complex given the present state of our confused country, anti-God culture, seductive media, and impotent churches.

Many of our young adults are curious if not intrigued by man’s systems, not realizing where they ultimately end: on the junk pile of man’s fallen ideas. Sadly, compromise is trying to gain traction in the homeschool community as it has in the world. One of the major problems is our young people are asking the wrong question when it comes to flirting with the culture: “What’s so wrong with this?” This one question has shipwrecked many a naïve soul because they thought they were more worldly wise than they actually were. Despite parental warnings, they took the plunge, some never to resurface.

There are many grey areas in the Christian walk that we and our children must learn to navigate. Sometimes it is more a matter of the Spirit of the Law rather than the letter of the Law. To make it tougher yet, the church is only preaching one side of the tension regarding grace. Preachers emphasize the freedom of being under grace (all things are lawful) but speak little of grace as being the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to rise above the very behavior they seek to justify in the name of grace (not all things are beneficial). How do we resolve this tension?

We must teach our children that sin is both deceitful and hardening. It is more about undermining over time versus overwhelming immediately. It is the frog in the ever-warming waters of culture. Rather than seeing how close to the edge they can get, they need to be thinking about how close they can get to Christ. They need to know the crop they will eventually harvest will be a direct result of the seeds they are presently sowing. Sin suggests that it isn’t that big of bully and there are no real consequences for just playing around with it a little. It still whispers that stolen waters really are sweeter but never offers any evidence for the claim … outside of disappointment and loss.

In order to offset sin’s deceitfulness and hardness, we need to share the truth of God’s Word consistently. A Sunday morning here and a youth activity there will not cut it. We must complement God’s Word with the endless examples of those we know who thought they knew more than God and their parents. They need to know these are real stories with real consequences. We need to show them bible characters were not immune to the deceitfulness of sin. Great men like Samson, Solomon, David, Saul, and so many others lost so much when they became estranged from God’s directives.

Above all, we need to pray that God will enlighten their eyes to the gospel, to God’s glory, and to His beauty. Each month we call for a day of prayer and fasting. Others are calling out the following requests daily. Others incorporate them into their family altar where they talk about the relevancy of each request before going into the throne room of grace to receive help in time of need. (There are suggestions included when talking with your children.) We designate the second Tuesday of the month to fasting. This can be a meal, an activity, or complete abstinence from any food for a 24-hour period.

Wherever your family is at on your spiritual and homeschooling journey, God’s grace can reach you. He can still make blinded eyes see. He can move our children’s focus from “What’s so wrong about this?” to “What’s so right about this?”

1. Pray that God will mercifully give us and our children softening grace lest we become hardened against Him in anyway.
   1. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, ⁴ Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. –Exodus 7:3,4
   2. because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants, and you have humbled yourself before me and have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares the Lord. –2 Chronicles 34:27

(What happens to Play-Do if it is not kept in a proper container? (It gets hard.) It is only being in the right place that it stays soft. Discuss with children that our hearts will be naturally hard if we don’t place it in God’s keeping. When “God hardened Pharoah’s heart,” He simply withheld His softening grace and Pharoah’s sinfulness did the rest.)

2. Pray that God would grant our children the grace of discernment to distinguish between right and almost right and the conviction to follow through.
   1. The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the folly of fools is deceiving. —Proverbs 14:8
   2. Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them; for the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them. —Hosea 14:9

(Ask our children what discernment is and talk about the enemy of the best is the good.)

3. Pray that God would grace our children with a holy zeal as they work through secondary considerations that may not be salvific but will still highly impact their spiritual walk.
   1. I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps. –Jer. 10:23
   2. work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, –Phil. 2:12

[Share some examples of secondary issues. (Clothing, movies, music, etc.) Ask them why these are important issues to think through after salvation, including the tastes and appetites they set and the trajectories that are sure to follow.]

4. Pray that God would give our children the ability to see the shallowness, lies, hypocrisies, discontentedness, ignorance, foolishness, etc. of the culture in spite of how many thousands of times it is advertised as being something other than it is … empty.
   1. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. –Col. 3:1
   2. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. –Ecc. 1:9

(What are some of the lies of culture? These could include money is everything; church is not important; parents do not know what is best for their children. Ask, “Why are they so empty?) Remember, in all these discussions, we are actually discipling our children.)

5. Pray that God will give discernment and wisdom to parents as they walk their aging children through the “tweeener” years when they are most susceptible to world’s deceitful thoughts and practices. Pray that we will give grace in secondary areas where there are differences and pray that our children will have a heart to hear.
   1. There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. –Proverbs 12:18
   2. For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;⁷ he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, –Proverbs 2:6,7
   3. Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, –Proverbs 1:8

(Ask what the biggest challenges are in the tweener years. If you have the emotional bank account, you may want to talk about things your children see things differently than you. Remember, if they are authentic, they are saying they trust you to treat them with dignity.)

6. Pray that God will give parents the words to lovingly yet convincingly share why we do the things we do in secondary considerations, so our children will understand the realities of trajectories as well as cause and effect.
   1. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. — Acts 6:10
   2. The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. –Is. 50:4 (KJV)

(Are you sharing not simply what you do—especially in secondary areas where the Bible gives liberty—but why you are doing it?)

7. Pray that our children will realize TODAY matters. It is not about waiting for another five years to get serious with the Lord but addressing perspectives and appetites that will set the trajectory of their future.
   1. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, –Hebrews 3:7
   2. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”–Hebrews 3:15

(Ask your children for specific—not generic—things they can do TODAY to improve their walk with the Lord. We are not looking for “read my bible more” but rather “read my bible 15 or 20 minutes a day. We want something specific and something that is measurable.)

8. Pray that our children will not be caught in a spirit of mediocrity or complacency but will have a heart to always be seeking the grace of God to be increasingly conformed to the image of His Son.
   1. For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them; –Proverbs 1:32
   2. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. –Hebrews 4:11
   3. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. –Phil. 3:12
      

[Talk about what mediocrity and complacency looks like. You may want to talk about how Olympic athletes spend 2-3 years for a 20 second shot at fame. What do they sacrifice? Why are they willing to make the sacrifice? What do they receive for their efforts? (If nothing else, great discipline that will help them later in life.) Why should we be that motivated in our spiritual walk? What do we gain from that?]

9. Pray that God will deliver our children—or prevent them entirely—from addictive behaviors, including but not limiting to alcohol, crude and inappropriate language, pornography and sexual sins, media consumption, viewing habits, sins of the mouth, etc.
   1. And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested. –1 Chron. 4:10 (KJV)
   2. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, –Col. 1:13

(Explain to your children why it is so important to avoid certain behaviors when they are young. 1. They will not have to fight it when they are older. 2 They will not have to reap the seeds sown. 3. They can more thoroughly enjoy life in freedom. 4. It will not cost them time, energy, and resources to maintain addictions.)