A time to fight and a time to love.

“...you are counselled to keep having this relationship with your child, and that's the most important thing; I took a different tact with that, I was loving toward her, but I decided that I was going to set boundaries and I was going to hold the lines down on those boundaries, and they were not going to be crossed; I took the phone, we dropped the friends, we moved to a private school.” excerpts from Erin Friday’s interview on how she rescued her daughter from transgerderism.

My initial intention was to focus on closing our discussion on transgender ideology. However, in listening to Erin's story and reflecting on it, I realize that as parents today, we fight different battles every day. In my clime (Nigeria) for instance, the LGBTQ+ craze is still a hush-hush thing but, our teens and youths are being eaten up by diverse monsters (substance use, pathological gambling, pornography, internet fraud, ritual money, etc) that parents are dealing with every day. Just recently, the social media space went agog again with the story of a twenty-six years old "yahoo" boy that murdered his twenty-one years old girlfriend. He claimed it happened during a fight but initial reports from the police point to parts of the girl's body being cut off and missing! A visit to the social media pages of these young people would reveal the very ostentatious lifestyle they lived. Even with the tragedy, you find other young people commenting on how "good" a life the girl lived; a life that robbed her of her youth and eternity!

There is war out there parents; the devil is all out stealing, killing and destroying the lives of young people and robbing the church. It is our responsibility as parents to step in and do all that is within our power as stewards and shepherds to save our children.

This article will highlight a parent's approach to saving her child and how we can deal with the battles we are faced with daily when a child goes prodigal.

Erin Friday is an attorney and a parent advocate in the United States who deeply embodies the LoL Parenting concept of Stewardship & Responsibility; she runs a not-for-profit organization called “Our Duty”, which supports families in their fight against the transgender ideology. Her family’s story is very remarkable and inspiring, not just for families with concerns around the transgender ideology but for every family out there who is fighting the battle of love. We cannot afford to let the enemy win; we must fight on our knees and with every available resource to rescue our children.

As I worked my way through articles and video interviews to get better acquainted with the issues around transgender ideologies, I came across two videos that stood out for me; the first was Erin’s story about how she fought for her child and eventually triumphed. The other video was a video of seven de-transitioners who had come out to share the painful stories of their error and regrets when they jumped on the transgender wagon, undergoing medical transitions that have proven very costly for their wellbeing. The video was interesting to me because of the story of one of the ladies (I couldn’t get her name as she spoke very quietly), whose every word spoken was laced with deep regret and her unspoken wish that her parents could have prevented her error if they had been more insistent in their love. In other words, she may not have gone through the medical transition process if she had enough resistance from her parents!

Parenting is a joyful journey, and it comes with its battles, especially in the times we find ourselves. As society becomes vainer, our children are exposed to more vices and could be more prone to exploring the “foolishness in their minds”; the foolishness of gender ideology exploration, the foolishness of pathological gambling at the expense of school tuition, the foolishness of being drawn to friends who are into internet fraud (yahoo), the foolishness of girls acting like strippers on social media under the fancy name of “brand influencers” to access the "soft life" and boys exploring ritual money making, substance or porn to prove to their friends that they are “tough, hardcore” etc.

As Erin Friday exemplified in our opening story, when we notice such insanity beginning to breed, the texture of our love must toughen up, and the battle lines need to be drawn clearly. It is time to team up, PUSH, Isolate and reiterate through affirmative actions of biblical love, and fight for that child.

What are some of the things parents can do when faced with the tough situation of dealing with their teen who has just signed up for a dating relationship with the devil in whatever guise?

There is no laid down manual on how to navigate, given the uniqueness of our different family tribes. However, I will share a few tips gleaned from the Bible and from listening to what other parents have shared.

• Be the standard! now more than ever, we must lead from the front by seeking God and living the faith life consistently before our children. As our children grow older, they begin to seek models that they can identify with to develop their sense of self. When we live contradictory lives that fall short of the values we preach to them, they feel disappointed and will seek that identity from outside their homes. We lose our children easily when our lives contradict the things we want them to uphold.

• Team up! When the enemy shows up at your dinner table, behind your child, you pull out the “Three-fold Cord – you, your spouse and God”. It is not the time to trade blame or delegate to your spouse to “handle” it. Parents will need to come together as a united front to speak God’s perspective to that child, gather other family members together and take a stand.

• P.U.S.H: It is more spiritual than it is physical: the spirit of pornography, desire for easy wealth, gender dysphoria and the recent push by gender ideologists, amongst other battles our teenagers have been thrown into, are targeted at the destruction of souls, turning the hearts of young people away from God. Spiritual battles are not won through talk therapy; there’s the starting point of “pulling down the strongholds” in their minds through prayers and speaking God’s word. The Bible says the prayer of a righteous person is effective and powerful (James 5:16). You can save your child through your fervent prayer as a parent, get on your knees and P.U.S.H., pray until something happens that shows your child has been redeemed.

• Act fast; act now! Denial and trying to defend/excuse the changes you notice in your child will only push them further down the path of error. It is important to immediately speak to your child once you see strange friends, strange habits, and contrary interests that were not there before. Don’t leave it until it is too late.

• Separate & Isolate: like most parents who have been fortunate to notice and act fast, Erin understood that for her to win the battle with her child, she had to take drastic actions to cut her child off all sources that fed her erroneous beliefs about her identity. A young friend of mine had, not so long ago, shared how her family engaged with her younger brother, who had been ensnared into substance use and internet fraud. They had to come together as a family to build a barricade around the young man that isolated him from his friends and sources of access to the substance he was abusing. The singular action of isolating the young man made it easier for them to engage with him in an environment that was free from contradicting voices and influences.

• Commitment and presence are key: the cost of giving up our time, work commitments and social time to support an erring child who is “ungrateful, unyielding, foul-mouthed", and outspoken about not needing your interference in their life are HIGH. So also is the cost of losing a child and seeing their lives get messed up due to poor choices and negative peer influence or in the worst cases losing them to untimely death. If you are going to separate and isolate your child from sources of negative influences, you must be there to fill that void and support your child through their difficult time.

• Set boundaries: our children need to have safe limits to help them navigate difficult periods of their lives. Otherwise, they would be lost. While you are trying to provide support for your child and detoxify them from all the garbage that they have consumed (ideologies, porn, substance use, etc.), you must have clear communications about what is and what is not permissible. Depending on what phase your child is at, this could be an agreement reached by you both (for individuals who are beginning to realize their error and cooperating) or guiding rules that you must insist on to achieve success. Examples include restrictions on friends who are allowed to visit, access to devices and funds, use of substances within your home, etc. It is you “commanding your child” in line with expectations in your home based on your beliefs as a Christian parent.

• Love in the face of rejection: when children make hard decisions, they do so believing that they know what they are doing; every teen and young adult who ever took an erroneous plunge did so “knowing what was best for them” at that time. You are the one that is wrong and lacking in understanding; you are stuck in the 80s and need to get woke. But we know that "way", having been in their place before. The Bible says Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Rom. 5:8). Before we realized our need for Him, He died for us. When we rejected Him and clung to the pleasures of sin, He died for us. When He was spat on, whipped and abused, He picked up that cross and went on that torturous journey to the cross for our sake! And today, He calls us as parents to take up that cross for that child; love them through the fights and the bursts of anger, and stand in there praying and supporting until you bring that child home.

For families who have concerns about their child embracing transgender ideology, the following resources may be useful:

1. Visit Our duty" for resources

2. CheckoutErin Friday’s video here on she handled her daughter's case

3. Listen to the stories of the seven individuals who shared their de-transitioning journey here.

4. From transgender to transformed, how God saved her.

5. From Lesbian to God's Child, Jackie Perry's story

6. Gay girl, good God: Jackie's book about her journey as a Lesbian

7. Focus on the family offers additional resources here.

As parents, we can’t afford to give up, our children are counting on us to fight them through that path to victory. We must fight and not give up even when they say they don't need us in their lives, we must fight when they call us the enemy, we must fight until we win; that is the call of parenting, being that good Shepherd who never flees when the thief comes.

It is never an easy journey for a parent when their child gets off course; it is our responsibility to bring them home, trusting in the ever-saving grace that is in Christ Jesus. Shalom!