Well sort of.  I wanted to get your attention.  As a pastor, I have many conversations with parents about their kids.  When these parents are Christians, they talk with me about their desire for their children to make the decision to love and follow Jesus.  As they express this, then they share their greatest frustration.  It goes something like this:  “I just do not know where my child is spiritually.  I can not get them to talk about where they are with God.”  They often add that they do not know how and where to start a spiritual conversation.

Whenever I hear this, there are alarm bells that go off in my head.  These bells trigger a back-and-forth fight in my heart and soul of wanting to yell at the parents and say “are you kidding?!” or hug them and say “it is going to be alright.”  Here is why I have this fight.  The second part is easy to explain and understand.  I love these people, and I love their kids and want them all following God.  I am a parent, and I empathize with their struggle.  But if I am honest, this part of the fight does not last long.  I go back to the “I-want-to-yell-at-them” part.  Here is why.

These days most people’s kids open the door to these conversations for them.  Students today leverage Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, personal blogs and so on.  And here is the truth, if you spend 10 minutes looking at what your kids willingly post on the internet, you can find out exactly where they are spiritually, what they value, where they spend time, what are their priorities and what topics would be easy to bring up.  It is all their for you.  By their own accord.  It is like their diary has been published.  So do the work of following your kids on these various social networking tools and then converse away.  With just a little spying, you will find out everything you need to know to take the next step.