How to use Warfare Parenting to Bring Back our Prodigal Children
In this first Warfare Parenting blog, I wanted to draw a picture of what is coming up in the new Warfare Parenting Podcast Series that follows along with this blog, and you will love it. We will battle the most pressing topics facing our teens and young adult prodigals and how we can best help them as parents. You are not alone facing the giants of addictions, depression, cutting, and more trying to destroy our prodigal. Whether or not you are the parent or a teacher or have niece’s nephews, these struggles facing our teens and young adults matter to us.
How do we help them? How do we fight better?
My three kids are now all young adults– each one of them battled with some very dark challenges: sex, drugs, alcohol, porn, depression, and more. These are issues that we have got to take seriously. When I was in the warzone with my children, I was not sure they would ever be well. As a parent of a prodigal, I would cry out to God and ask, please keep my kids alive until the age of 25. I had read so much about how the brain’s frontal lobe did not fully develop until the mid-20s, so I would pray that God would help me get them to the age of 25 when they were better equipped to make better choices!
Today they all three have overcome and are living successfully free, whole, and healed lives.
Check out the Warfare Parenting Podcast – Laine Lawson Craft
Helping parents is a deep passion of mine. I want to support parents that are in the battle for their kids’ lives and help come alongside them to encourage, cultivate hope, give all the resources and tools to equip for the battle, and fight with you to win the victory over spiritual warfare over our teens and young adult prodigals bringing them back home!
Perhaps you have a child, like mine, who once lived in the way you’d hoped has now made bad choices. Our story begins with me sitting in my recliner on Mother’s Day, sobbing hysterically. My dreams and aspirations for all my children lay in tattered pieces. Indeed awful thoughts were circling over and over in my mind. Are my children going to survive? Live to be twenty-five years old? Will my sons end up dead, addicted, or in prison? Will my daughter find true happiness and worth? My heart was shattered into a million pieces. I didn’t know how to go on, but I knew that I somehow had to keep moving.
I know from experience that there is nothing worse than seeing our children following the path we prayed for daily then unexpectedly having to watch them falling backward. The disappointment can be paralyzing. The children we once knew seem to have all but disappeared. Gone is the joy, laughter, trust, and hopeful future we spent so much time daydreaming about. There is a fear and dread of what might be coming next in its place.
Perhaps my stories resonate with you as a parent. If so, then it’s time to separate the behavior from the child. The angels of darkness (also known as demons) are our true enemy, not our children. It’s hard to keep this in the forefront of our minds as our children’s eyes turn cold, and we feel as though they are disconnected from the love we continually offer, but we must do. Indeed, they are not blameless in their actions, but they are also being guided by powers they are probably not even aware of.
We will mix the spiritual perspective with the therapeutic side with experts from various fields weighing in on the struggles that prodigal teens and young adults are facing.
We’ve got incredible expert guests with real-life experiences with these struggles themselves sharing for our premiere season. You can listen or watch these powerful interviews on my YouTube channel.
- We will be talking to Adam Comer all about addictions, his powerful testimony over drugs-
- Tina Yeager, a licensed counselor all about anorexia and her victory over the eating disorder and unexpected pregnancies and how to love and support these young mothers and dads
- Lori Wildenberg, certified family counselor about Suicide and suicidal thoughts and how her own daughter committed Suicide but was miraculously unsuccessful
- Dena Yohe, ministry leader, is all about cutting and what it means and how to heal from it as she shares her life-transforming story about her own daughter’s healing journey.
And more life-transforming and hope-filled episodes are coming!
Listen to the first Warefare Parenting Podcast episode!
This is a passion and a call on my life to help in every way that I can other parents who are fighting hell over their prodigal teens and young adults. In each episode, there will be frank and honest confessions, transparent stories, and life-changing applications that offer sound spiritual solutions to help maneuver this battle as we war emotionally, physically, psychologically, and spiritually for our prodigals!
Does this sound familiar? It’s another new day with another sleepless night because our child didn’t make it home. Our stomachs are upset, and our nerves are shot. Emotions are at an all-time high, and fear has overcome us. Of course, our trust with our prodigal is broken again. We have no idea how it could ever be rebuilt. Instinctively, we know that it is time to trust God yet again. But how do we continue to do that over and over?
You see my heart has been broken into a million pieces by my prodigal children way too many times, but now I can share the hope and inspiration and the tools and applications to help you find victory for your children too!
Parenting is hard- and there is NOT one perfect parent- The only perfect Father that exists is our heavenly Father- God Himself, the creator of all-the Father of us and the Father of our children too! Even God, the perfect Father, had two children, Adam and Eve, who disobeyed and made self-destructing choices- when we truly understand this, and then we realize that God has a plan for all of us, and He loves us extravagantly even when we sin and run from Him – He never quits pursuing us or loving us!
Give yourselves some grace- I’m breathing in God’s grace right now—NONE ZERO NADA No one is a perfect parent with perfect kids.
But together, we can walk this battle out, fighting for all of our children, especially our prodigal teens and young adults, and win the spiritual war!
AND What I can tell you is that a lot of people asked me how did all three of your children find themselves and victory – each episode will reveal more ways to understand and implement so that you can find more information- applications- tools- encouragement, and know that you are not alone in this battle. Together we will win the spiritual war over our teens and young adults so that they can live free, whole, and healed.
Thank YOU for reading this today- I want to hear from you. I want to be here to support you too! Please text- Hi Laine to 55444 that’s H I L A I N E to 5544, and we can connect! I want you to be a part of the conversation too! I want to hear your struggles and your powerful stories of victory too!
I need your help, too- please subscribe to this podcast – I don’t want you to miss a single episode, and please share this podcast with anyone in a battle with a teen or young adult prodigal.