Why Good Intentions Aren't Enough: The Failure of Traditional Approaches
Despite billions spent on youth programs, therapy, and medication, today's young people are more anxious and confused than ever. Here's why our best efforts are falling short and how to fix it.
When I was in my rebellious teenage years, my Dad didn't know what to do with me. He restricted me and lectured me, but I was lost to him. One night I woke up late in the early morning hours because I could hear him laboring in prayer in the den. I will never forget that night. I can still hear his voice in my memory.
I crept down the stairs and I watched him for a long time from the shadows of another room as he agonized in prayer for me. He cried out to God for my deliverance from the dark powers that were seeking to destroy me. He could see so clearly what I refused to accept. It took another year, but I got my freedom. The first thing I did was to find a phone and call him.
Across America and around the world, concerned adults are trying to help young people who are struggling today. Parents seek therapy for their children. Schools implement mental health programs. Churches create youth ministries with better music, more engaging activities, and relevant messages.
Yet despite these well-intentioned efforts, the crisis continues to deepen.
The Mismatch Between Problem and Solution
The reason these approaches aren't working isn't because they're inherently bad or because the people implementing them don't care. The reason they're not working is because they're addressing symptoms rather than the root cause.
When we understand that young people are facing an unprecedented spiritual assault, it becomes clear why traditional approaches are insufficient.
You cannot counsel away spiritual bondage. You cannot program your way out of spiritual warfare. You cannot entertain young people into spiritual freedom.
The Limitations of Secular Mental Health Approaches
The mental health industry has become the primary response to the crisis facing young people, but secular mental health approaches are fundamentally limited:
•Symptom Management vs. Root Cause: Most mental health approaches focus on managing symptoms rather than addressing root causes. If anxiety is rooted in spiritual attack, coping strategies provide only temporary relief.
•Naturalistic Worldview: Secular mental health operates from a worldview that denies spiritual realities. Therapists cannot treat spiritual problems if they don't believe they exist.
•Medication as Primary Solution: While medication can sometimes provide temporary relief, it cannot break spiritual bondage.
The Insufficiency of Entertainment-Based Youth Ministry
Many churches have responded to declining youth engagement by making their programs more entertaining and culturally accommodating:
•Entertainment vs. Transformation: Entertainment can attract young people temporarily, but it cannot produce the spiritual transformation they desperately need.
•Cultural Accommodation vs. Cultural Transformation: In an effort to be relevant, many youth ministries have adopted the language, values, and methods of the very culture that's attacking young people.
•Lack of Spiritual Authority: Many youth leaders lack the spiritual authority and experience necessary to address the dark forces some young people are facing.
The Ministry of Jesus
Jesus dealt with individuals suffering from every kind of problem you can imagine. Sometimes it was poverty related. At other times it was a physical challenge like being lame or blind. Peter's mother had a fever that would not break. Some people were hungry. Others were failing at business. One woman was about to be executed for her moral failures. Jairus daughter had already died so young.
Christ didn't spiritualize every problem. While some problems were overtly spirit-related, like the case of the demonized child, sometimes money alone could solve a problem and we are told in the gospels that it was the habit of the Lord to give money to the poor.
On the other hand, even when the problem was as physical as hunger, he still used spiritual authority to call down a solution. He fed 5,000 with a miracle instead of having a caravan of food delivered. Even if the solution required human actions, as most solutions do, he still assumed that human suffering comes from the one source, the malevolence of Satan and the dark forces angelic and human that he controls.
Exorcism was the hallmark of Christ’s ministry. He cast out demons everywhere he went in synagogues, city streets and in homes.
The lesson for today is that whether we are dealing with poverty relief, trafficking, illiteracy, or drug addiction we need to be conscious that we are dealing with a spiritual assault regardless of the surrounding symptoms.
Here’s how Jesus saw the world:
5 [d]Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said to Him, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. 7 Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.” Luke 4:5-7 NKJV
The Need for Spiritual Authority
Jesus saw upon all forms of human bondage, the fingerprints of Satan. Satan hates humans because we are made in the image of God and are the apple of the Father’s eye.
Satan uses every possible tool to keep humans broken, so we cannot live up to our calling as God-ordained kings of the earth.
So, when young people are struggling with depression, identity confusion, pressure to join the hedonism of their friendship circle, or a dark cloud of oppression, they need Holy Spirit intervention.
They need deliverance, not just therapy. They need spiritual authority, not just emotional support. They need transformation, not just coping strategies.
Sherry and I have been engaged in frontier missions for over 40 years. We and our partners continue to deal with the deepest effects of poverty, mental assault, and the violence of evil people. We are convinced that success requires an inner rebirth that gives freedom and authority. This is an experience unavailable by humans means. Only Jesus can bring it. He is the deliverer.
All of us who want to be helpful to this generation need to return to the ancient path of prayer. It’s not enough to talk to them kindly. We need to make war on their behalf with the weapons Christ has provided to us.
Jesus assumed this and addressed all human suffering as the attack of Satan that could only be successfully repelled when a freed human exercises the authority of God over the attacker.
Both/And
I am not saying that there's anything wrong with human attempts to deal with mental illness and the ongoing suicidal collapse that's going on all around us.
I'm just saying that they simply aren't strong enough.
There is no substitute for an encounter with Jesus. Every other strategy has to be built around that conviction.
For example, our team does mental health workshops in universities in Thailand. They are fun and empowering and build community and deliver good food to students without enough to eat, but the true change takes place when young people start to pray to Jesus, the "God of the sound mind". A single encounter with Jesus will change their life forever. That’s our goal because it makes transformation possible.
That's what worked for us and that's the only thing that will work for them as well. That's why all of us at Emerge and Medialight need your prayer support.
We’re all engaged in a battle for this generation that goes beyond what previous generations have encountered. It will take more intentionality to gain spiritual authority in this lawless age.
On a personal note, I believe the Lord is telling me that I need to take my prayer ministry more seriously.
Loving our kids and grandkids means loving them enough to invest serious time and energy warring in prayer for them and praying with them as they allow it.
My Dad’s Legacy of Prayer
The habit of prayer was one of the greatest things about my dad. In his prayer room, there’s a darkened circle in the corner where he would place his forehead against the wall as he labored in prayer. As you enter the room there's a map on the wall with pins in it to designate the people and circumstances for which he felt responsible.
I wanna be like my dad in so many ways and especially to be a man of intercession the way he came to be especially in his later years.
Keep Up the Good Fight!
Love,
Chuck and Sherry
Superb article!!!