Pastor and best-selling author reveals how parents can fight 'demonic hierarchy' targeting children
Best-selling author and pastor, Kenneth Ulmer, shares how parents can fight "the demonic hierarchy that targets our children" and replace generational curses with important blessings for the family in his new book, Passing the Generation Blessing: Speak Life, Shape Destinies.
Ulmer, pastor of Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California, told The Christian Post that Satan will attack the hearts and minds of the next generation in any way he can, whether through outward sins like drugs and pornography, or internal tendencies like dishonesty and gossip.
"I believe the war begins in the spirit realm as we wrestle against the demonic hierarchy that targets our children," he said. "However, I don't think the battle remains in the invisible realm. I believe we are called to be so involved in our children that we first of all prayerfully identity the enemy that is attacking our child."
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But this revelation can only come through prayerful discernment an intentional involvement, investment, and interest in the life of the child, Ulmer charged.
"I often say, if the Lord said I could only ask for one spiritual gift, I would pray for the gift of discernment," he said. "I'm talking about the kind of divinely revealed insight into the struggle the child is facing that only God can give. It's the kind of inspired intuition that can hear what the child does not say, and see what the child tries to hide."
"On a more practical level, get in the trenches with the child," he said. "School, PTA, leisure time, hobbies, all can be open doors (that the enemy wants you to stay out of) that become paths of participation in the battles of the child. ... One cannot adequately impact the next generation long distance."
Ulmer's book, featuring a foreword from actor and two-time Grammy Award-winner LL Cool J, says that the Bible clearly states the significance and responsibility of personal sin and its generational potential.
"The traits of the parents become the tendencies of the children," he explained. "Or, to put it another way, what you 'do' see in the parent, you 'may' see in the child."
To better equip their children for the future, parents must first admit and acknowledge their own sinful tendencies, the pastor advised.
"I think far too many of us parents posture ourselves as being so far removed from our children; more often 'above' our children in the sense that we sometime subtly, sometimes overtly, imply that we have NOT been there and done that," he said.
The father-of-three clarified that confessing and repenting of sin "is not an exercise in hanging out your dirty laundry before your child."
"The sharing should be in principles and not necessarily particulars, but a sensitive opportunity to declare the forgiving, cleansing power of a loving God to your child," he said.
Scripture is clear that there are unseen forces fighting for the hearts and minds of children, Ulmer explained. Parents, then, have an obligation to stand up for their children, to pray for them, and to look out for them.
"Don't give up on your child," he said. "You have about a dozen or so years to make a lasting impression on your child. You will come to the point where you must say as my mother said when she dropped me off at the University of Illinois, 'Well, son, Mama's gonna put you in the hands of the Lord!'"
Passing the Generational Blessing released nationwide Oct. 30. To learn more or to order the book, click here.
