LIVE BY THE WORD

WHY TEENAGERS BACKSLIDE

 

Maybe 10 to 12 years ago, I realized something was amiss in our counselling with teenagers who were involved in drugs and the occult. There was another wave of suicides in our city, mostly among boys. We had a measure of success and at the beginning of counselling, these kids seemed to experience a breakthrough. However, in a couple of months, some of them had cooled off and backslidden into most of their old ways. I started looking for a common denominator and spent some time in fasting and praying. Then one day I found several answers:

 

  • These boys all had poor relationships with their fathers
  • They were connected with each other through circles of friends
  • They all smoked weed and used LSD
  • They all listened to the same style of music and in fact, were Nirvana fans whose music was very depressing with strong suicidal overtones

GOD’S SOLUTION IN MALACHI

 

I asked the Lord for a solution and was led by the Spirit to Malachi, the last minor prophet in the Old Testament. In fact, it was in the very last few verses of the book that the answer jumped out of the pages at me, or so it felt. This is what it says:

 

Malachi 4:5  “Behold, I am sending you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of Jehovah.”

 

Malachi 4:6  “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and the heart of the sons to their fathers, that I not come and strike the earth with utter destruction.”

 

THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY

 

Now the section above these two verses explains why God intervenes in this way through the power of the Spirit of prophecy. These fathers had forsaken their responsibility to their children through a lack of Biblical instruction. They had not taught their children the disciplines of the Word of God as they as fathers are supposed to. Malachi 4:4 says:

 

“Remember the Law of Moses My servant, which I commanded to him in Horeb for all Israel, the statutes and judgments.”

 

PASSED DOWN THROUGH GENERATIONS

 

If parents, especially the fathers do not instruct their offspring in the Law and doctrines of the Bible, so as to live accordingly, each generation will become further removed from God, resulting in utter sinful living which is a disgrace to God and to the destruction of all men. The land will become lawless and unruly and people will treat each other with utter disrespect and disdain resulting in wholesale crime and barbarism.

 

SACRIFICING OUR CHILDREN AT BIRTH

 

In some of the ancient civilizations, drugs and witchcraft were the downfall of once proud and mighty empires. Some become so degraded that they even sacrificed their own children to dead idols. In this modern civilization we do not throw our babies into the fire, we kill them in the womb. We might not offer our teenagers on altars dedicated to Moloch or Baal, but we do sacrifice them to Mammon in the name of living in a respectable suburb and driving the latest model SUV.

 

DON’T BE A SHOPPING TROLLEY CHRISTIAN

 

We must not be fooled, teenagers of today are extremely perceptive and deadly honest and straightforward. They are not impressed with double standards and hypocrisy. If you want to wear the label of Christian, you better live like one or they will turn their back on you and seek family where there is reality. That is one of the reasons why so many turn to paganism and drugs. They experience acceptance and radical beliefs among those practising it.

 

DR KRIGE AND HOUSE REGENERATION

 

This adapted content was extracted from A Biblical Approach to Psychotherapy authored by Dr Ado Krige, the Founding Director of House Regeneration, a South African drug rehabilitation centre offering a comprehensive discipleship training program. By applying principles of Biblical Therapy, using the Scriptures to teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness, House Regeneration counsellors show anyone who has suffered from addiction how to fully understand why they do what they do and how to bring their belief systems in line with the Word of God.