LET HIM WALK WITH YOU

LET HIM WALK WITH YOU

I just spent some time walking with a father who is dealing with the trauma (and horror) of his pre-teen daughter being groomed and seduced by an online predator. Seeing him take every step with Jesus in the process has been breathtaking. Jesus is not afraid to do the messy and hard things with you. He wants to carry the burden, the grief, and the fear and has so much to say and give you in exchange.

PERFECT FATHER

It was never about you striving to be perfect but about showing them the One who is. Look at the revelation this mom had while taking our online JOURNEY class.

“I love that I can use my blunders to point my kids toward Jesus!!”

GROOMING

This is from my friend.

“Please be aware: My kids told me about an app to search for good deals on toys. Today, I thought I would check it out and see what else there was. I pressed the ‘browse’ button and was appalled at the porn items that appeared. I told my kids I was deleting the app and asked them if they knew why. My eight and eleven-year-old both said yes. I asked them if they ever saw inappropriate stuff on it, and they said yes, that when searching for something else, the sex toys appeared, so they quickly closed out of it. Ugh!!! I don’t even know how they came up. So tired of porn everywhere!”

YOUR JOURNEY MATTERS

If you are single and had a childhood that left you with more heart splinters than joy, JOURNEY is for you. If you are newly married without children yet and want to learn how to model your family after His, JOURNEY is for you. If you were raised with rules and performance expectations and want to break the cycle, JOURNEY is for you. If you are knee-deep in the toddler season and want to prevent having to undo some parenting down the road, JOURNEY is for you. If you are struggling in your parenting with children of any age, JOURNEY is for you. If you feel distance and space between you and one of your children, JOURNEY is for you. If you are a grandparent and want to sow into your adult children and grandchildren, JOURNEY is for you. If you came from a great family and are simply hungry for more, JOURNEY is for you. JOURNEY is a month-long adventure of going deeper with God as you align your heart and family after His. This is not a parenting method or 1, 2, 3 steps, but rather introducing you to a lifestyle of partnering with Him. NOW is a great time to sow into your family no matter what season you are in. 

Journey – ONLINE CLASS – Let the Children Fly

THE BEDROOM IS GETTING HOTTER

Yeah, I just said that. I love it when God ministers in themes. The theme of this post is the bedroom. Walk with me through these three powerful stories of God setting women free in the marriage bed. I am sharing with their blessing. 

Mom #1 – There has always been a presence of fear and unwanted violent sexual thoughts. She would have to manage these thoughts with great effort while being intimate with her husband. God showed us that doors were open in the spiritual realm through shame and hidden sin in her family line. We addressed it spiritually by closing the door and walking in our authority. All this time, she thought something was wrong with her for having those unwanted thoughts when it was a spirit. Shortly after, she sent me a message saying she was experiencing intimacy with her husband like never before. Yeah, God! 

Mom #2 – She mentioned that she was raised with strong legalistic views about sex. I explained that sex is good and God’s gift to be enjoyed thoroughly in the context in which He outlines. Attraction, puberty, coming alive, and falling in love are all GOOD and part of God’s original plan. To partner with extreme lack, shame and legalism are just as out of balance as sexual sin or perversion. While she wanted to enjoy her husband, she felt this separation from herself, almost as if she had never fully awakened in that area when she was younger. When we have an inferior belief system that is not God’s, we create behaviors that are not in alignment with God’s best. Every time we partner with that behavior, we strengthen the release of the wrong kingdom. She assumed all these years that something was wrong with her sexually, preventing her from fully engaging, but it was a spirit lying to her that stemmed from strong legalistic views. We broke the agreement with the lying voices telling her sex was dirty and shameful, and Jesus gave her permission to en-JOY her husband. 

Mom #3 – She confessed to me that her mental thought life was unhealthy. She shared how, as a little girl, these thoughts would often visit her while on the school bus and alone in her room. She has no history of violation or seeing anything with her eyes, yet the thoughts came often. While partnering with Holy Spirit, He revealed that her mom had undealt-with sexual violation and that the sexual door was left open, making her vulnerable as a child to these spirits. I kept sensing the word ‘parent’ while ministering to her, and she agreed that the thoughts met an emotional need and brought comfort (even though she never acted on them or engaged other than in her mind). Over the years, she had a hard time divorcing herself fully from the thoughts because they did bring her comfort, despite the price tag that came with it. I was so happy when she messaged me to say she experienced intimacy with her husband for the first time WITHOUT the false comfort of the thoughts. 

All three of these women encountered sexual spirits as a child yet assumed something was wrong with them because of it. While there are cases of addiction, lust, and poor sexual choices, these women were clearly dealing with it on the spiritual level, which required walking in authority to break it. 

TEEN BRAIN

Teen girls have been fairly smooth sailing for me. When emotions are big, I feel confident in how to respond and help them. Teen boys, on the other hand, have refined me to my core. I love my son dearly, and connection with him is important to me, but I have been challenged to remain connected to him while he is finding his way. As a mom, I have full awareness that I cannot fully bring him into manhood and learning how to do this dance has been interesting. Parts of this season with him have made me feel so inadequate, weak, and even worried. Yet it has made me all the more dependent upon the Lord in a new and fresh way. I was crying out to God for strategy and help when He told me to tap into the incredible men around us who have more wisdom and knowledge than I do in this area. I was blown away by their insight and surprised by how similar their responses were. Men really do hold keys to a young man’s heart. 

This is the text I sent to a handful of men: “Hello! I am asking a couple of men who I trust for some feedback. Hudson is 14 and clearly shifting seasons. I am sensitive to these changes and want to grow in supporting him and become all that God has for him, even if the male brain and wiring are not my norm. Would you be willing to give me insight on the following questions from your perspective as a dad but also from when you were his age? What is something he really NEEDS at this age/stage? What is one of the worst things a mother could do at this age? What could I do as his mom to affirm his need to pull away and become his own individual? Any additional thoughts? I sincerely value hearing and learning how best to parent him! Lisa.”

Here are their responses loaded with empowerment and rich wisdom:

  • Taking risks that come with a belief he’s no longer a boy who needs protection (even if it looks completely immature or unnecessary to others). This can manifest by personal style or something as simple as going places without supervision. You might see a potentially bad outcome, but he might have to experience the process to understand where his limits are apart from what you wisely believe (regardless of the outcome). These can be reasonably compromised at times, but if he perceives that what you are always saying is “No, because I as your mother know better for you,” that can actually fuel his desire and become his concrete “I’m surely going to do this now.”
  • I remember when I was his age. My mom was somewhat overprotective, but she (and my dad) had laid a good foundation for me. That foundation was a good inner compass for me. Hudson has a good inner compass. He won’t go off the rails. His desire is for good.
  • When I was 14, I needed more independence. There were structured activities I found that in, like youth group. There were unstructured activities I chose to do too, hanging out with friends, running & mountain biking etc.
  • Boys & men process differently to women. Sitting down and talking about feelings is not natural for us (mostly). It is a learned skill. We tend to process through action. Emotions at this age are at extremes. It’ll pass and normalize.
  • Constructive projects were good for me. I worked for my aunt and uncle who owned land. I managed the land, fixed fences, drove tractors, repaired country roads, etc. Directed outdoor physical activity was healthy for me. Sports do the same thing – something physical with concrete results at the end.
  • Sometimes I failed. I had a bad group of friends for a short season. My inner compass told me they weren’t good for me, so I eventually drifted away from them. Bad decisions and failure are part of growing up – it’s part of adult life too! But I needed the freedom to choose, to fall and to know that my family would always be there for me when I fell. But, like Proverbs says, I rose again. I rose wiser. Hudson has a good inner compass, he’s loyal; he’s motivated towards compassion. He won’t go far wrong.
  • Shaming a boy for things that are out of his control as he navigates the insecurity of becoming a young man who truly thinks he knows what he’s doing. He might not feel embarrassed at all about something until you make it so for him because you are projecting.
  • Express how deep your love is that you can choose to believe he will be alright because that is how amazing a person he is. He has the freedom to not be all right (and not worry that it would cause you greater worry if he’s not) because if that happens, you will be there unconditionally to love on him through that too.
  • I am where I am today because someone called out the gold in me at a moment I nearly threw my future away at his age (and it’s only in hindsight I realized I would’ve thrown my future away). Pray that no matter where he goes, God will encounter him in somebody if he finds himself in a dark moment where a poor choice seems like the right one.
  • Also, he views authority as an obstruction. Part of the discovery is learning how working apart from authority can get him to a far point, and then realizing how authority actually serves as a foundational tool through which he can go much further.
  • Lisa, I would say the biggest need that I had at his age is validation. I needed to hear, “You have what it takes to be a man.”
  • Celebrate who he is as a young man becoming a man. And how he is wired differently than the girls. 
  • I see you already know and are doing this “grace in the poor choices/failures.” One thing I do is ask what they learned from the poor choice/failure then I know as a dad they are learning, and it is then easier for me to extend grace.
  • Boys really need a voice they admire to affirm their identity. A strong male they look up to who they know is for them and can speak into who they are. Girls seem to need many voices and relationships to feel “validated.” Boys just need one good one that isn’t their dad. Hudson will pick this person without realizing it. What you can do is be praying for this guy and then ask him to accept the responsibility when you figure out who it is.
  • Boys Hudson’s age start wrestling with their dads because they need to know how they measure up. It’s partly to see where they fall in the pecking order and it’s partly to satisfy their need to conquer things. As you’re able, find things Hudson can conquer. Camping, building things, ax throwing, whatever. He just needs things he enjoys that he can find success in accomplishing. I think a lot of guys misuse this aspect of being a guy but it’s a God-given feature that guys have. We were designed to accomplish things and to derive satisfaction from overcoming obstacles. And equally important is learning our limitations. It may sound weird but getting your butt kicked teaches you that you can’t do everything. Boys that never learn that turn into tyrants and bullies.
  • When I was 14 going into high school, I was very insecure and didn’t know how to feel. I needed a man to impart manhood to me and teach me/show me the process of how to feel. I needed a healthy mentor whom I could share anything with without judgment and could give me honest feedback. I needed questions asked of me as to what I wanted to build my life to be and taught how to be responsible and accountable for my life and given the opportunity to do so. I think it would take multiple fathers to provide these things (teachers, pastors, coaches, etc.). Also, I wish I was pushed to continue sports for the physical outlet and the comradery.
  • I needed to be empowered to make decisions and own the outcome no matter what it was, and the worst thing a mother could do is to ignore/micromanage/enable me in that process.
  • I think a good thing for a mom to do is to connect emotionally (probably accompanied with an activity of some kind because one-on-one can be difficult at that age). Connect emotionally would look like asking questions with no agenda (seek to understand) and ask how you can help get him where he wants to go. Challenge him to create goals and partner with his goals.
  • I think a boy at this age needs to know what it takes to be a man. I think a big part of that is able to accomplish tasks and overcome challenges. Success probably feels like being able to “win,” but I think deeper it’s about being able to prove on the outside that there is actually a “winner” on the inside. If he is eventually meant to be a protector and provider, he needs to be confident in his ability to accomplish. Healthy challenges and help identify needs and navigate disappointments, keeping identity intact when he makes mistakes in stepping out.
  • The worst thing a mom could do at this age is to stop comforting and affirming him. He still needs it, but you may need to do it differently. He’ll never stop needing to be fully seen.
  • One way to keep connected as he is developing a sense of self-sustainability could be to invite him in to help solve or accomplish tasks that you have. Ask his advice for stuff, create a way for him to accomplish something for you. Let him know the things he has done to meet your emotional and practical needs.
  • Do what you can to also have him around healthy men that he can observe and do things with and be affirmed by. Only a man can tell a boy that he’s a real man.

MEN & PORN

This is written by a spiritual son, and I am so proud of him and his journey to freedom.

“I was first exposed to pornography in the 6th grade when a friend at school passed around a dilapidated nudie magazine he probably found rotting in the street somewhere. I had never had a personal conversation with an adult regarding sexuality up to that point, and public school sex education in the early 90s was pretty much solely focused on anatomy and function. Needless to say, when my turn came to take the magazine home, I sat on my bed, electrified by entirely new feelings of wonder, excitement, danger, and shame, which produced a healthy blend of irresistible fascination and self-loathing. Shortly afterward, I was exploring the basement of our house one afternoon and came across several hidden boxes of decades-old pornographic material. This reinforced a couple of beliefs that had been developing in my subconscious – that every person with a penis had a raw hunger for sex that would never be satisfied. And that the only thing worse than living with this unshakeable burden would be to open up and talk about it with someone else. The years that followed are a blur of cognitive dissonance in memory. At church, I was captivated by the message of God’s grace and acceptance. At school, I felt desperately insecure about how I (didn’t) fit in socially. And at home, I buried myself in isolating and self-destructive behavior, firmly believing that anyone – family, friends, strangers, Jesus Himself – who learned what I was really like would turn away in disgust forever. After high school, I moved across the country for college in hopes of a fresh start. While I grew in self-confidence and self-expression, my sexuality remained stunted and a source of shame, allowed to peek its head out only in the company of a computer screen in the darkness or in pushing boundaries in dating relationships that were never explicitly acknowledged or discussed. I felt increasingly compartmentalized between the good things I was being exposed to and challenged to pursue and my hidden life of sexual shame, to the point where I began to have regular nightmares about the house I grew up in, the basement in particular. The dreams varied in detail, but the theme was always the same, and each time I woke up uneasy with a sense of dread from someone having entered or trying to enter my house with a clear intention to do harm. I continued to have these dreams consistently over the next fifteen years. In my mid-twenties, I finally gave up on hoping for a magic bullet from God to fix my broken areas overnight and opened up to some friends about my struggles with sexual purity. To my immense relief, I learned that I wasn’t alone in this area, and we decided to meet weekly as a group. Relief soon turned to puzzlement and resignation as we quickly realized that none of us had any idea of how to actually help each other. Our friendships deepened through the experience, but none of us got any healthier. Several years, a few moves, a couple of other men’s groups, and a wedding later, I reached the point of moderately successful behavior control. I hadn’t grown in any healthy level of sexual purity, let alone come close to the kind of freedom Jesus and Paul gush about in the New Testament, but I was managing to ‘act out’ only once every few months. I joined a men’s group at church called ‘The Whole Man Project’. The very first night I walked into the room, I heard a message of freedom being preached from a place of conviction and experience that I’d never thought possible, and I left wondering if I dared to hope for true freedom for myself. I joined a small group and started on the gradual but upward journey of uncovering and processing the hurts, pain, and false beliefs stored up over a lifetime that was underlying my lack of sexual self-control. In my mind, I began to switch from fighting an unending defensive battle just to avoid stupid behavior to fighting to take ground in how I wanted my life to play out. Taking one step at a time toward the abundant life Jesus promised His followers. About six months after I joined The Whole Man Project, I was chatting with a mentor one morning, which turned into a ministry session where she led me through revisiting some painful experiences. The memory of the day I discovered the pornography collection in the basement was brought to mind. She instructed me to ask Jesus where He was at that moment and write out what He showed me. I saw Jesus in the corner of the room as I was about to open the closet, and I asked Him that if He was there, then why did He let me open the door? I felt Him say that He would never take away the freedom to act and to choose from either myself or those around me, but I felt His fierceness towards the closet. I felt Him say that the enemy wanted to plant something in me, but He had already planned the path to conquer it in advance. She then led me through prayers of forgiveness and generational reconciliation, encountering the heart of the Father, and receiving the equipping and empowering of the Holy Spirit. I realized that I had been waiting for God to chauffeur me to the promised land of freedom while I helplessly sat in the backseat when He had been inviting me to sit up front and take an active role in partnering with Him to move forward together. After that day, my recurring nightmares about the house I grew up in stopped completely. The truth is that we have been reconciled to the Father completely through the work of Jesus on the cross, but that is the starting point for abundant life, not the finish line. Each day, He extends an invitation for us to journey with Him towards wholeness and freedom; how far we want to take it is ultimately up to us.”

ARE YOU FEELING RESISTANCE?

We had a Let the Children Fly team meeting and I sensed many people were dealing with spiritual resistance (the refusal to accept or comply with something, the attempt to prevent something by action or argument). As I was sharing my own experience, I saw this picture of workout resistance bands wrapped around one’s legs. They can still walk, but it takes more effort with every step because there is resistance set up to oppose their steps. I got the idea to grab rubber bands and put them between our fingers to feel the resistance. I put on some worship music, and we just spent time aligning our hearts with His. During worship, God reminded me of a story where a man came up against great resistance, but it was God who put up the block for his training and development. When the challenging season was over, he knew his anointing had doubled. I began to process that some resistance is good and from the Father’s hand to develop us more like Jesus. But then I saw this picture of the enemy using resistance and disguising it as being from Him. And that is when God showed me the strategy. Many people are experiencing resistance and simply accepting it, going low, and submitting to the Father when in reality, it is something that needs to be dealt with in the spiritual realm. The more they partnered with the resistance saying, “Well, it is just for my development” or “It comes with the territory of breakthrough,” they were actually partnering with the enemy who was bringing the wrong kind of resistance against them, their minds, calling, assignments and relationships. What’s the difference? Your level of peace! God’s training, character development, increasing our capacity, and seasons of refinement are not always pleasant, but they come with a layer of peace. Only God can discipline you in a way that still somehow feels loving and protective. If the resistance you are experiencing leads you to feel uneasy, unsettled, full of lack, discouragement, or hopelessness, then perhaps it is not more patience that you need but a revelation of your authority to resist the resistance and watch it flee. I gave each team member scissors, and we stretched the rubber bands between our fingers to feel the resistance and then cut it. The bands went flying everywhere, and joy broke out. We all felt lighter and restored to hope and confidence that He will complete the work in us and fulfill the promises over us in His way and in His timing.

HAVE IT YOUR WAY

Years ago in California, we were having a terrible drought. The summer temps can hold onto 110 degrees for months, and it was scorching the land. Many cursed their city; others prayed for God to intervene. Drought affects more than just our immediate comfort. Many months later, long after the temperatures had gone back down to a comfort level, we had rains that would not let up. It poured for days. It soaked everything and anything in sight. Many cursed their city; others prayed for God to intervene. Yet few connected that perhaps the rainfall was an ANSWER to the prayers prayed months earlier. In fact, the rain not only watered our land, but the experts said it would have taken us nearly seven years to recover from the drought that the rainfall did in one season. We pray, beg, and ask God to move and then complain when He does so on His terms, in His ways. I see a flood of chaos, mess, and destruction all around me, and it is overwhelming, but I also see ANSWERED PRAYERS. We wanted God to rise up and respond to the scores of injustices to unborn babies; we wanted Him to act on behalf of the corruption with our leaders; we begged Him to save our children from being used and abused; we prayed for Him to awaken us. We prayed sleepless nights for churches to cease operating in control. We poured our hearts out for peace and unity in our families and communities. Friends, do not curse the WAY God chooses to answer His children’s heart cries. He sees the sleepless nights, the agony of the mother’s heart, and the cry of His people. Take comfort in knowing that He is God, and this is NOT His first rodeo (have you read Daniel lately?) He is STILL a good Father and knows what He is doing. 

It is hard to know how to pray at this hour. I have found myself often declaring, “God, we bless the work of Your hands and say let Your will be done on earth today despite the discomfort it brings me. We loosen every assignment of the enemy against Your perfect plan. Holy Spirit, cover me with Your perfect peace in this hour, but Lord, have Your way with us!”