GATEWAY SINS AND YOUR CHILD

Dear Believer,

Have you heard about gateway drugs?

These are drugs that in themselves may not seem so hard, but whose use eventually leads to the use of harder drugs.

Many people who are now hopelessly addicted to drugs like heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and so on didn’t start with these dangerous drugs. They began with drugs like cigarettes.

Addiction results from an increasing desire to get ‘higher’ than last time. When cigarettes cease to satisfy his cravings, the user may graduate to marijuana, and from there to harder stuff. Cigarette, in this case, is only a gateway drug.

I’m using this illustration, dear friend, to explain what I call gateway sins. I am sharing this so that we may use this to ‘train up’ our children, and even grandchildren. We’d do well to also apply this to our own lives because we are also children to our heavenly father.

The world has changed since we were kids. Now children are being exposed to sin at every turn, and many times, it is not the hard stuff that they start to see.

The enemy of their soul places a ‘gateway sin’ at strategic places for them to tempt them. We must educate our children to understand that Satan’s bait is not a blessing, no matter how attractive it may look. 

Let me emphasize that the basic way to train your child is by example. Your home and the atmosphere in it is the ultimate gateway into good or evil for your child. Don’t be good at everything else and be bad at parenting.

Consider pornography. Every child in this modern time will get exposed at some point. Pornography is a serious gateway sin whose effect can ruin the future home of a child, mess with his or her brain, implant in him antisocial tendencies like rape and damage his God-given sexuality. Many homes experiencing perennial cases of unfaithfulness and lack of trust today have pornographic addiction as the culprit. It is a sin that demands more and more commitment from you as you want more and more deviant images.

Now, there are even some gateway behaviors of indulgence like excessive television, indolence and even overeating.

Our children are God’s heritage whose souls Satan wants to steal from us. We are not to merely to teach them, we are to TRAIN them in the way that they should go.

Training is more than just talking to your child; it includes ‘getting your hands dirty’ as you settle down with them to go through their childhood experiences with them and address their confusions.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

There are also gateway groups. These are groups that draw in children and then ‘initiate’ them into acts that are totally alien to their godly upbringing.

I know you pray for your children, but that is only one way to raise them. One other way to train a child against gateway sins and gateway groups is to let them see with their eyes the damage these gateway sins can do. It is good, for instance, to let them watch documentaries about the effects of drug addiction, or give them wholesome books to read on the damaging effects of sexual perversion. There are stories in the Bible that can help, too.

For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.

Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. (Proverbs 43-4, 14-15).

Train the children to appreciate their Christian heritage and not be envious of the sinners. This is very important because if they do not appreciate their ‘goodly heritage,’ they will trade it for a counterfeit that can only lead to ruination.

Let the children be trained to understand enticement. Today, many of the children of believers take enticement to mean acceptance. They feel grateful when they are invited into these gateway groups not knowing that it is only a trap. In many cases it isn’t their fault; their parents never trained them to understand what enticement is.

In Proverbs 1:10 we read, “My child, if sinners try to entice you, do not consent!” Then the following verses explain what enticement was within the context of that society. We can train our children about enticement in this modern world, too.

Let me emphasize that the basic way to train your child is by example. Your home and the atmosphere in it is the ultimate gateway into good or evil for your child. Don’t be good at everything else and be bad at parenting.

David was a great king, a great warrior, a terrific author and even a great musician and worshiper. That’s where it ended. David was a very bad father.

This king didn’t train up his children in the way of the Lord. (Maybe he left the training to their mothers only). This singular mistake was largely responsible for the fragmentation of the nation and the resultant idolatry that eventually became the bane of Israel.

My prayer for you, dear Believer, is that you’d be helped by the Holy Spirit to shut all the gateways of sin that’s threatening to suck in your child (and even you) into the world of evil, in the name of Jesus.

Note : If you would love to join a group of godly parents who learn together the principles of godly parenting, please get in touch with me.

And if you don’t yet have a child you are raising as a parent or guardian, please send this to anyone you know who is raising a child.

Have a blessed day.

Your friend,
Deon.
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For further studies read Proverbs chapters 1, 2 and 3.