The most vulnerable children in the United States are those raised in single-parent homes, especially if an unrelated male is present. Children are 11 times more likely to suffer sexual and physical abuse in such situations. Without the protection of a mother and father in the home, children are more likely to run away, go missing, or spend time in the foster care system. In 2016, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that 86% of sex trafficking victims were in the care of social services when they went missing.

Kara was 11 when her family first sold her body for drugs.
Sydney was 14 when she met an older man online who promised her financial security and a better life.
And after another stint in the foster care system, Marcus decided that anything, including homelessness, would be better than the foster family he was living with.
Each of these stories, from real girls and boys in the United States, reflects the most common entry points for children being pulled into child trafficking. The facts are frightening:

On average, a child enters the U.S. sex trade at 12 to 14 years old. Many are runaway girls who were sexually abused as children.
Most of the time, victims are trafficked by someone they know, such as a friend, family member, or romantic partner.
Predators can rent a child for a single sex act for an average of $90. Often, that child is forced to have sex 20 times per day, six days a week.
Trafficking usually occurs in hotels, motels, online websites, and at truck stops in the U.S.
About 50,000 people, primarily from Mexico and the Philippines, are trafficked into the U.S. annually.
According to the Federal Human Trafficking Report, “In 2018, over half (51.6%) of the criminal human trafficking cases active in the U.S. were sex trafficking cases involving only children.”
Traffickers use social media platforms to recruit and advertise victims of human trafficking, according to anti-trafficking advocates.

Films like “Sound of Freedom” and “Taken” highlight the dangers of international trafficking and exploitation. These films deal with trafficking outside the U.S. The United States, however, is a top destination for victims and a major transit hub. Studies estimate that 83% of child trafficking victims in the U.S. are Americans.
Like all crimes, trafficking has a context. In the U.S., child trafficking is aggravated by four main factors: the porous southern border, predatory social media use, pornography, and broken families.
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People have six days to be entertained, but the seventh day is a day of rest from worldly amusements and a time to seriously worship the risen Christ. If the church one is attending is theater-driven, tickling people’s ears with what they want to hear while using the world’s methods in an attempt toward relevancy, then the worship of the Lord is compromised with worldliness. Every Sunday churchgoers should shake off the worldly desire to be entertained and enter the holy gathering of the saints with the desire to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth in the beauty of Christ’s holiness.

The following guide is designed to help churchgoers with discernment as to whether they are attending church for the right reasons, and to help with discernment in choosing a faithful church to attend.
Personal Motivations
1. Sentimentalism should never overrule truth.
When it comes to church life, people are easily given to sentimentalism rather than to the truth. There may be a variety of reasons for this: sentimental attachment to a building, longstanding family representation in a particular church, pride in a certain denomination, etc. Doctrinal integrity often takes a back seat to these kinds of sentimental attractions. In these scenarios, people can easily honor their traditions more than the Lord.
2. The church should not be a product for consumption.
People approach a prospective church like consumers: What kind of programs does the church offer? What is the facility like? Does the pastor make me feel comfortable? How did the people make me feel? What people like and what they actually need are often radically different things. The church is established by Christ as a place to help the needy in their struggle against sin to receive mercy and the forgiveness of sins through the message of the gospel.
3. Your children should not determine the choice of a church.
We live in a day of the cult of the child. The home today is built around children in all ages of development with a neglect of proper discipline. This has devastating effects upon church life. Undiscerning parents are prone to listen to their child’s wants rather than to actively nurture their children by leading them in what they need. As peer pressure grows, a youth may complain that sermons are too long, the service is boring, or the views are too restrictive, and undiscerning parents often honor their young people more than the Lord as they base their church attendance on what the young person likes.
This has resulted in the practice of children’s church and youth centers, along with other practices that remove children/youth from the worship service. The consequences of this are devastating upon church life. We are raising an entire generation of children/young people who are not being trained to listen to sermons or worship the Lord together with God’s people. The long term fruits of this show in increased antipathy to anything formal or organized when it comes to worship, and an unwillingness to attend church. This is a prevalent reason as to why scores of young adults no longer attend Christian worship.
4. Style preference should not be neutral.
Often people base church attendance on stylistic preference, often with regard to music. The Bible never presents worship as a matter of personal taste or style. Self-imposed worship is greatly condemned in the Bible (see Col. 2), Christians, therefore, should give great care that worship conforms to God’s Word. Our music must conform to his truth, our liturgies should be filled with his Word, and the sermons should be delivered in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
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What glory does God receive from our confession? First, confession is admitting that God is, “righteous in all his ways” (Psalm 145:17). Confession is glorifying to God because we are saying, “God, You are right, and I am wrong!” We are dethroning ourselves and coming to a right view of our sin. Second, confession glorifies God because when we confess our sins, we are acknowledging that only He can deal with our sin. 

A friend of mine once said, “You know why we don’t confess our sin? Because we want our lives to look like a George Muller biography.” What he meant was, we often fail to confess our sin because we so badly want to be perceived as strong in the faith. If we confess, then people will know that we are just as weak and sinful as the next man. And that kind of knowledge doesn’t work well with the image we are trying to maintain. It is an unfortunate fact that you and I want people to think better of us that we deserve.
The sad thing is, sometimes we get away with it. Sometimes we let the praise of men linger too long. We hear others speaking well of us, too well of us, and we love it. Sinful pride creeps into our hearts, and we begin to deceive ourselves and believe our own press. But deep down we know. We know that we are not good. We understand it theologically, but we also know it experientially. Even our best days are riddled with mixed affections and conflicted motives. Our willingness to hear our own praises, mixed with a lack of confession, presents a faulty reality to those around us. We set up a false image of ourselves for others to marvel at. And when we fail to acknowledge our shortcomings and allow people to think better of us than we deserve, we perpetuate a culture that lacks confession, sin remains undealt with, and ultimately God is not glorified.
A Culture Without Confession
When we fail to confess, others are less likely to confess. This same friend said to me, “It’s really hard to confess my sin when everyone around me just wants to go die for Christ.” Those extreme feelings of devotion are good and godly, but they’re not the whole truth.
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