The Next Generation

This weekend, we are at a homeschool conference so I will hopefully have a lot to talk about based on what I've learned, starting today.

Last night, we went to a talk given by Matt Walsh. I haven't actually read his blog but I've heard it can be pretty severe. He definitely gives his decision decidedly. Two things stood out to me which I will hopefully have finished and published by today.

The first topic I'm discussing, as seen in the title, is the issues surrounding the next generation.

I was in guitar/worship practice the other day and my teacher was talking about worship. He asked each of us, "what is worship to you?" I believe that worship is warfare. The whole Christian walk is a battle but worship, to me, is the thick of it. It's when we consciously engage the enemy by giving praise to the one who deserves it. And though it's not easy to do, we should be engaging in worship often because the battle is always going on, something is always going to come against us.

As any good general knows, your strategy has change as the war goes on and over time, we've seen that. The spirits coming against us are changing, evolving, learning, and in a sense, growing. Matt Walsh's view is that those spirits are coming against children, the next generation. From the small amount of history I know of that era, I believe that it's been happening since the sixties, seventies. Kids and teenagers are being dragged through the spiritual mud. The dirt is covering us and cleaning is a long, tedious, and sometimes painful process.

I myself have delt with depression, self harm, temptation and the follow-through. And I'm not the only one I know who has. I know people who were sucidal, anorexic, anxiety-ridden, all of it. The teenage generation is under attack on the form of mental illnesses. I read something that said that the average high school student deals with the same amount of stress as a psychological patient in the 1950s. This stuff is on us constantly and we aren't being trained to fight it. We don't know how to worship anymore, we're losing sight of God in all of this and in that place, trust me, there is so little hope.

Something I didn't know because I'm a sheltered homeschooler is that they are giving sex-ed in kindergarten. KINDERGARTEN. Those kids are just 4, 5 years old.  I am a total romantic but I don't want to read any of the stuff written for people my age because there is always at least one mention of sex. It's in the music, the TV shows, the movies, everywhere. And though I'm not saying we should go back to the time when men and women pretty much never touched, we're losing sight of what love really is in exchange for temporary pleasure and romance. They portray sex as love but it isn't, not anymore, and it's absolutely everywhere. We live in a world where love means nothing, you can walk away at any time.

See what I mean? All these powers are coming against us, starting with the kids and following us our whole lives. With morals thrown out the window, we have to be the salt light and light we have been called to be. We have to turn back to God, focus on Him because He his the love that this world so desperately needs, He is the one who's already won the war and will help us fight the battles.

Ephesians 6:12 "We're not waking war against enemies of flesh and blood alone. No, this fight is against tyrants, against authorities, against authorities, against supernatural powers and demon princes that slither in the darkness of this world, and against wicked spiritual armies that lurk about in heavenly places."