It seems that adolescence has as much to teach the parent as it does the child. Many parents experience full-on panic attacks as their children enter adolescence, and this reality speaks volumes about the faith of the parent.

First, I don’t believe that parents are taught the normal progression of God’s work with man. We are given independence, mess up our world, and choose Jesus to sort out the mess and ourselves. People are too often told that if they follow certain formulas, they can bypass God’s order. God’s order can never be undone. Every single person that comes to Jesus will come in some form of brokenness.

Christianity is for those at the bottom rung of the ladder. The servant God, who became a man, a carpenter, started it. The “founders” were largely simple, uneducated men from a variety of walks of life. Given the state of the original founders, why did Christianity become something that is exclusive? Well, fleshly men want to make it exclusive; they can’t stand the fact that it is for the weakest. They always seem to have a “special” formula, which, if followed, will set apart and make disciples more exclusive. Those in the exclusive club don’t believe that we all are equal in Jesus.

Parents fall victim to these special formulas because they want to believe that if the formula is followed, they won’t have any problem with their children and can live in comfort. It is the parents’ fault for being deceived. I am asked, “Well, what about all those kids that never have any problems?” My answer is the same, “What kids? All have sinned, have they not?”

Also, in counseling I hear the things that the parents never will. There are no “perfect” kids. A child must follow God’s order! Before a child can believe, he must first have been unbelieving. In adolescence pride (unbelief) is active, which causes independent decisions, which results in failures and sin. The consequence of the aforementioned is the personal need for Jesus. Again, it is the order of things.

However, what I see happening in the parent is often more vexing that what I am seeing in the child. The child in his unbelief and bad behavior pulls the parents into lack of faith. The dynamic should be the parents’ pulling the child up into their faith in a God Who is big enough to care for all of them. But the opposite is true as soon they are as unbelieving as the child. They can’t believe that God will work, that the order of things is wise, or that the child, like the prodigal son, will return.

This unbelief gives rise to a flood of activities and covert messages. The teenager is forced into the youth group, where, it is hoped, since God has dropped the ball and isn’t working, maybe the youth leader can do something. There is a search for a person or place that can “fix” the child. [There can be a need and a place for faith-based intervention, but not that which is replacing the need for faith.]

Now at this point, as I am talking to parents, the complaint comes, “Well, are we just to let our teens go do whatever they want, ignore the consequences, and give up?” That statement actually addresses three separate issues.

First, stop thinking about what you should do as a parent and start thinking about what you are to do as a child of the most High God. What are you to be doing today? What is God telling you to do? Not just with your kids, but your family, your mate, your job, and most importantly, what are you doing with Him? This is the advice that Samson’s parents got when they questioned the angel as to what they were to do for the boy. Live separated to Him, obey Him, and you will be the believer that you need to be. Everything else will flow from that.

Second, I am not saying that you do nothing, but is your faith in the doing or in your God? I liked having family devotions at night because I believed God wanted me to have them. However, I never for a minute believed that the devotions would make my children Christian; that is God’s job. Yes, we do have standards, we do enforce them, we do what is good for the child, and we do fight for our stands. But unless God puts His fire in a person, none of the above will change him. We do protect our children, for one day we will hand their lives over to them, and we want to give something of value.

Third, it reveals that the parent really only sees two options: Either the child is formed into the image of God by the parent or an image of the world by the child’s own choices. What about Jesus? What about the Holy Spirit? What about the promises of God? What about God?

Now, I end where I began, with parents hitting the panic button because they have no God! Your parents didn’t put the fire of God in you; I can’t imagine that you will put it in your child. However, you can trust God to do it as He follows His order. It is very easy to tell the difference between the child that has been touched by his parents’ teaching and the one that has had a personal touch of God. Which do you want?

“and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.” Gen. 1:18

Sometimes I feel as though my office, wherever I happen to be set up, is a place where light and darkness meet. It is God’s gracious work to separate the two. The day that we received Jesus we received everything. How could we not? He is, actually, everything.

(Col. 1:16) “For by Him all things were created, {both} in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities —all things have been created by Him and for Him.”

Each day, since that first day, it has been the job of the Holy Spirit to convince you that you are lacking in nothing. In opposition, Satan has taken it upon himself to convince you that you are lacking in everything, to persuade you that your job, mate, kids, situation, physical appearance, and position in life are all sub-standard. He must also convince you that holiness, mercy, fellowship, maturity, blessings, and forgiveness must all be worked for. His goal is to have you so consumed with what you think you don’t have, that you will never recognize what you do have.

My job is to witness to the work of the Spirit and the Jesus that is in you. So many come to my office possessing so much, and yet, they can’t see the blessings for obsession on the negatives. They are men with beautiful families, children that are not rebellious, financial security, and a wife who is putting up with, and even loving them, through their goofy behavior. Yet, the devil has blinded them. They can’t see any of it. They just sit there recounting the offenses they have had in life, the people who have let them down, and their failed attempts to be Christian. Every preacher must learn to be free from the fear of repetition. I am!

What gets your attention, gets you. We are to obsess on what is true, right, pure, and lovely. I guess everyone is just self-centered enough to only think about me! We mingle light and darkness to the point where we don’t know the difference. All of life is just gray. Pray for a word from Him that would separate the two!

One of the most difficult things to explain is the ALMI organization. I think I know why. While most are attempting to build an organization, we are busy getting His people to recognize the organization that already exists. The church is not built by human endeavor but is something that is recognized.

I hear people say, “We are building the Kingdom.” That is not true; actually, they are tearing down the real Kingdom of God by their unbelief in its existence and their attempts to build it. There already is an organization.

Our job at ALMI is to persuade people of the fact that they already belong to it. The organization is called the Vine and they are branches, not branches attached to branches but branches attached to the Vine, I don’t want people to join me; I want them to join Christ. Not only is it a great blessing to every branch to have the revelation of being in the Vine, it is an equal blessing to me. I don’t have to make rules, like kingdom builders, to do what the Holy Spirit will do naturally in the attached branch. Kingdom builders, in their authority, attempt to do what He would do naturally, in every person, if left alone with Him.

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

What exactly is the ugliest religion in the world? I have come in contact with countless religions and I believe that I have found the absolute worst one. Christianity! That’s right. Christianity! Why? Every other religion is created to be a religion. Every other religion centers around laws, places, rites, and ceremonies. That is the very nature of a religion.

However, Christianity centers on and is Jesus. Christianity centers on a relationship where the founder is not a teacher of new rules but one raised from the dead that actually lives in and through the follower. As a list of Jesus behaviors to be imitated, Christianity is just too high to attain to. Therefore, take Jesus out of it, and Christianity becomes ugly if not out and out goofy.

Since no one can imitate Jesus, the religious have to come up with a set of laws that they can imitate to exalt themselves over others. Again, it gets ugly. The religious cannot emphasize Jesus because in so doing they hold up a model they are not able to imitate. Therefore, they hold up everything else that appears spiritual.

You would not believe the things that I have heard. “Wear a white shirt when you preach. White allows the Holy Spirit to get out of you easier!” “Jesus said to love your neighbor. That is why I am right to have an affair with my neighbor.” “The color red is never to be worn by a Christian, it is evil.” “A woman is never to enter the sanctuary in anything other than a dress.” “Command God to give you wealth and health in the name of Jesus. He has to obey you.”

I could go on and on. But to what end? Christianity as a religion is ugly. Bring Jesus back into it. Lift Him up without fear. Let Him live through you and frankly, Christianity dusts every religion. None can measure up. The world would be so uncomfortable by the contrast that they would kill you, just as they did Him.

“Then the man of God said, ‘Where did it fall?’ And when he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw it in there, and made the iron float.” 2 Kings 6:6

We enjoyed the following excerpt in a letter from Brother in Christ, Gil Reed, and we think you will, too.

“I was thinking about working with the power of the Holy Spirit. It came to mind, and I mused at your teaching on it. I was fascinated at what God revealed to you regarding the iron and the wood. One thing was unclear. Why did God tell us that the ax was borrowed? What was the meaning behind that? God faithfully (immediately) gave me the answer. When we go into ministry with any other God than our own, ministry is doomed for failure. The young priest tried to fell the tree with a borrowed ax. God relayed to me the absolute necessity of ministering with Him, and Him alone. No other god will do. And we must not have borrowed our pastor’s God, our parents’ God, or anyone else’s God. God must be our own, as we are His. I wondered how many ministries today are failing because of a borrowed God? I wondered about my own ministry, when I’ve gone in without the One I possess and who possesses me.”

Being in a former USSR country, several questions come to the forefront of any conversation. At the center of the debate is what Christians should have done. We know what many did do, but what should have been done?

First, I don’t want to condemn anyone for what they did do. Liberians told me, when I was in Africa, of their own city’s bombing. Everyone in the market, upon seeing the bombs coming, began to run. Old people and babies who had been dropped were trampled to death. How do you suppose the babies’ mothers felt the next day? Fear causes many instinctive reactions.

Today, we discussed what a believer should do. I must always build a foundation that is in order before answering such questions. 1) God is love. 2) He permits what He could prevent. 3) He does not cause all things, but He causes all things to work together for good. 4) He could send evil to hell as easily today as tomorrow.

There are several ways of looking at things from this foundation. What would happen if every believer followed the command of Christ to love an enemy without reservation? What if tonight every Christian were killed by evil? What would the world be like if evil men helped the rapture of believers by killing them? If every believer were killed, earth would instantly become hell, because God’s Holy Spirit would be dwelling in no person. It would be a case of men on their way to hell, when hell actually came up to them.

Would the killing of every believer hasten or hinder the coming of Christ? These are things I think about in my personal journal. If evil is present in the shape of a physical force, army, or government, and if Christians are tricked into fighting it in the power of the flesh, would we actually be hindering the coming of Christ?

I talk to so many who came to a personal relationship with Jesus in a concentration camp in Siberia. What do we have to say about those things? Would they have come to Him without Siberia? Some are persecuted and die immediately, and some live years in a prison. Did those who died miss out on something?

I believe that we must see God, believe all things are in His hands, and rest. If we don’t see Him, we will try to make sense–in a carnal, intellectual way–of all that happens. I think I can answer all questions with one word, God! “I rest in you!”