Today, reply is made to a teenager on being ridiculed at home for having doubts and uncertainty after “growing up” as a Christian. While our salvation does not depend upon memorizing and quoting verses from the Bible, our ability to communicate, encourage and share with other believers in Christ often does. Every believer should be careful to continue hearing the Gospel to further their own and the growth of others. Even so, many otherwise skilled parents become rooted and refuse to leave their “comfort zone” as followers of the Lord, instead of leaders who are in Christ. They fail to properly promote the spiritual growth of their children because they behave as though their offspring will become filled like sponges by simply being along with their parents when they attend church. In their efforts to become adult, be independent, and to function as full persons who can demonstrate integrity, children often enter into conflict with their parents because they correctly see the flaws and weakness in their first teachers, and feel a deep-seated need for missing spiritual content. It should come as no surprise that the young will increasingly center their awareness upon expressing anger, arrogance, distrust, and rejection. Because altered and defiled through premature sexual joining, encouraged by peers and unbelievers who are themselves in confusion, or influenced by popular celebrities, enemies and strangers to their well-being, the efforts of the young to break from parental controls invisibly shift to become denying and forgetting GOD. Parents are to embrace their children as partners sharing covenant and spiritual truth whom they cultivate and prepare for a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Yet, children and parents alike only may endure as believers through sacred operations that can be completed only by GOD. The things we are being given as Christian believers are indispensable for our salvation through Jesus Christ, and do not come automatically by the mechanical processes and unfolding of stages for emotional, intellectual and physical development as human beings. Spiritual gifts from divinity are being shared among us upon the earth that can not be created or fashioned by mankind. The process for developing skill in applying and using the things of power from GOD must unfold as change that is to be permanent, edification (i.e., an aspect of prophecy and revelation), gradual growth, and learning. A writer at “Yahoo! Answers” with “T. D” their ID (Level 1 with 23 points, a member since December 17, 2014) posted the following:
Should I be ridiculed for my beliefs?
I am 18, and I live in a protestant family. When I was growing up, my parents indoctrinated me and my siblings with Christian teachings; quotes from the bible, proclaiming there is one true God etc. Since I was young, I adopted these things to be true, and I accepted it as fact since my parents taught me they were always right. Recently, I have really begun to question all of it. Does God exist? Why is Christianity dominant over all other religions? Are these miracles of God or are they simply coincidence? When I spoke to my parents and siblings about it, they laughed and ridiculed me. They called me an atheistic mongrel. I am just beginning to question religion in general. Does my family have to right to insult me for my beliefs? Has anyone else come from a religous family and begin to question their faith? Please help me.
THE GOLDEN ARROW: For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Hebrews 5: 12-14, KJV)
THE DOUBLE DAGGER: Dating and Worship? (09/11/2014); Quality Time Together? (09/12/2014); Family and Beliefs of Children? (08/29/2014); Stories Repeated in the Bible? (08/30/2014); On Youth Doing Enough (02/06/2014); Driving Under the Influence (02/07/2014); Kicked Out By Parents? (11/27/2013); Before Getting Baptized? (11/28/2013); Childlike Faith (10/18/2012); Why Did The Judges Fight? (10/19/2012)
“T. D”, here are some points of sacred knowledge that have helped many young Christian believers face the challenges necessary to accomplishing their own spiritual maturity:
(1.) Baptism and the many sacred operations performed by GOD are more than social events, public ceremonies and fancy rituals. In baptism there is the death and burial of ones carnal inborn spirit that responds to appetite (e.g., hunger, thirst, sexual cravings), sensation (e.g., hearing, seeing, tasting, touching), emotion/mental functions (e.g., anger, desire, fear, imagination, recall) and sin (a non-material, non-spirit influence that opposes the continued existence of divine law, and may dominate awareness and self-will in created beings and living creatures).
(2.) While baptism results in believers having a new inner source for what will be displayed within all their living relationships, believers are at first no more than infants and newborns. Those who are born again also must “grow up” again, so to speak, and face the same “growing pains” and life experiences as all others upon the earth. Thus, believers also may face the disappointments that come when building a career, financial losses, illnesses, problems in marriage and parenting as well as bereavement and the loss of loved ones.
(3.) Because all Christian believers have been recruited to prepare a living harvest for GOD from the earth, all are equipped with fresh endowments of the same spirit content that originally was breathed into Adam, and appeared upon the earth through Jesus Christ.
(4.) Being a Christian is not about competition, introspection, self-improvement, and self-promotion so much as expressing gratitude, ministering support to others through intercession, unselfish service, and heartfelt worship of GOD. Believers receive inseparable aspects of divinity such as forbearance, forgiveness, humility, joy, love, longsuffering, wisdom, and wrath against sin that must be built up and nourished through practices such as church attendance, fellowship with experienced believers, praise, prayer, and study of the holy writings.
There is far more to be said, correctly understood, and properly apprehended. (For example: (5.) Being accountable and responsible for ones own beliefs as an adult also means acknowledging the peculiar duties, expectations and obligations one shares with their own family and church community. Teens who leave the church, usually do so not having full sacred knowledge from the Scriptures, and not yet having received the imparted spirit of GOD. As a result, they seek to meet the problems of living as an adult having only the things they were given for their childhood. Covenant with GOD is through promise and interpersonal exchange (we say, intimacy, sharing). A person may break their word to GOD, however, this will make them a liar and someone not to be trusted. While GOD will not give up on the believer, it remains he must acknowledge where the believer has given up on him.) Even so, I trust this fragment will be useful. Be it unto you according to your faith and spiritual maturity.
THE BLACK PHOENIX
Washington, DC
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