Parenting is serious business. For one thing, while your children are learning to listen to the Holy Spirit themselves, you’ve got to cover for them. They’re just kids, after all.
Noah is 11, our pre-pubescent, almost pubescent dude-and-a-half big brother to Joel and Glory. We love him so much. He’s not adolescing (I made that up) much yet, but his body, mind, and soul is definitely shifting gears. And grinding pretty loud at times.
The other day he told us about a friend who has a secret copy of a video game where you can chase down a woman and have sex with her. You don’t see anything, the lights go out, but the sexual inuendo is deafening. His parents don’t know he has it, and he’s already psyched about getting the next version, where the lights DO NOT go out, if you know what I mean. Noah is disgusted with the whole thing, praise God.
Two weeks ago I blogged about a sense of alarm for him, that something was wrong and that I had prayed to avert an evil event. Putting this together with that, now I know what it was. And then there was yesterday. He was going to another friend’s house for a birthday party sleepover, we were eating supper just before he took off, and I suddenly had a warning bell clanging in my spirit. I excused him from the table and we had a quick heart-to-heart.
I warned him that Satan was going to sexually tempt him at the party, that he had now entered a time of his life when friends might experiment with things that could damage his soul if he embraced them too and that I sensed it was coming that night. He seemed to understand and was grateful, though not quite grasping the magnitude of what I’d shared with him.
This morning I picked him up from the sleepover and one of the first things he said was, “You were right, Dad.” Apparently they’d playing Rock Band and you can design your own characters. Well, his friends customized a girl character with narrow bands of cloth where her clothes should have been so they could watch her bobbing and you know what to the music. He left the room when it happened, praise God. I’m so proud of him! And thankful to God once again, who pre-tripped the booby-traps of the enemy (pun intended) so we could avoid them.
I can’t be everywhere Noah is. But I can pray, I can listen, and this is so important — I CAN TELL HIM WHAT I’M HEARING. I pray that he realizes he can hear God for himself. That’s the next step.