Moms Declaring War on Satan

Moms Declaring War on Satan - Parenting Like Hannah
Photo by Peter Baker

I am officially declaring the end of the war between working moms and stay-at-home moms. Not because I don’t have an opinion, but because I think this trumped up, media fueled war is distracting all mothers from the real enemy. Our enemy is not other moms. Our enemy is Satan. I know even many Christians question the existence of Satan, but I assure you he is real and active in our world. Reading the headlines can validate that very quickly.

So how does Satan attack mothers? Surely, he is too busy with other things to worry about than how mothers parent their children? Actually, I think parents may be Satan’s number one target. You see, children are the most vulnerable individuals in any society. Anyone in education will tell you, how a child is parented and educated in the early years will effect everything the child does for the rest of his life. If Satan can convince us to parent poorly, he has made winning the next generation away from God much easier for himself.

We know from the story of Adam and Eve and the temptation of Jesus that Satan can be very tricky. Yet somehow, on some level, we honestly believe we are successfully avoiding his traps the majority of the time. After all, we haven’t murdered anyone or stolen anything or cheated on our spouses. Remember Adam and Eve’s responses to God? They tried to convince God their sins were not their fault. They had been tricked, so what else could they have done? Unfortunately for them (and us), God doesn’t accept excuses. The world fell, as they say, and things have been a mess ever since.

The good news is, that if we arm ourselves properly; we really can avoid Satan’s traps. We can use the weapons God has given us to keep Satan away while we parent our children towards God. Sound a little over dramatic? A quick look around aging churches, young adults rejecting God and His commands and a society bent on promoting Satan’s agenda should convince you this is a topic to get very passionate about and quickly.

My small group has been studying the book The Strategy of Satan: How to Detect and Defeat Him by Warren Wiersbe. The study has opened our eyes to not only the traps Satan sets, but also the weapons God has given us to defeat him. The study is generic in nature, but as we went through it, I realized it could be adapted to have a focus on parenting. In fact, our group is going back and picking other stories in the Bible to identify more traps of Satan.

In my last post, I asked you to record how many meaningful conversations you had with your children in a 48 hour period. By meaningful, I mean conversations discussing God’s laws and principles, something in the Bible or something to do with your child’s heart. What number did you get? I imagine for most of you the number was low. Not because I question your love for your children or God. Statistically, the average parent only spends a few minutes in conversation with their children each day. About anything! The odds that the subject of the conversations in those few minutes is God are probably extremely small.

Yet, God repeats several times in the scriptures about the very active role we are to have in our child’s spiritual development. So why do we spend so little time talking to our children and molding their faith? I believe we have fallen prey to Satan’s favorite weapon, the lie. In my next post, I will discuss some of the many, many lies Satan tells parents. I believe almost every parent has fallen into this trap more than once (Ok, I really think every parent has, but I am leaving room for some perfect parent out there. I know it certainly isn’t me!). The scary thing is that Satan is such a good liar, we don’t even know we have been caught in his trap. What parenting lies do you think Satan tells us? I would love to hear what you think in a comment below.

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Thereasa Winnett

Thereasa Winnett is the founder of Teach One Reach One and blogger at Parenting Like Hannah. She holds a BA in education from the College of William and Mary. She has served in all areas of ministry to children and teens for more than thirty years and regularly leads workshops for ministries and churches. She has conducted numerous workshops, including sessions at Points of Light’s National Conference on Volunteering and Service, the National Urban Ministry Conference, Pepperdine Bible Lectures, and Lipscomb’s Summer Celebration. Thereasa lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Greg, where she enjoys reading, knitting, traveling and cooking.

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