Parent, Where is Your Heart?

As the second part to the previous post 'Do You Have Your Children's Hearts?', I would like to begin by asking both parents this very important question:

Parent, where is your heart?

We see God's heart for family in two key verses:

"He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse." Malachi 4:6

"And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the hearts of the righteous---to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. " Luke 1:17

We cannot assume that because one is a parent that this makes ones heart automatically turned toward their children. A parent's heart should be firmly grounded loving the Lord first, then and only then can they properly turn their hearts toward their children.

You might think your heart is turned to your children, but in reality, it isn't. Ask yourself honestly, what things do you focus upon throughout the day outside of your daily responsibilities and how do you spend your time? If you are surfing on the computer all day while your children are being neglected then your heart is probably not turned toward them. You can be a stay at home mom but that does not mean you are spending time with your children. You could even be a homeschooling mom and even then still not spend time with them. Another indicator would be that you might notice there is friction between you and a child but you do not try to resolve it. These are warning signs.

Ultimately, the key is to turn your heart toward them with help from the Lord, personal prayer and life changing effort. I remember once a man from church asked my husband's advice about pursuing some ministry at church and wanted his opinion on the matter. My husband responded by asking him of the condition of his family life. The man proceeded to tell him that he had a son that had strayed, did not have a good relationship with and was living in the world. My husband strongly encouraged the man before he start this specific ministry to go out and chase after the heart of this lost son of his. Hallelujah! It is about time men start pointing one another to what really matters so that our homes reflect the glory of God! It is a sad day in Christianity when we choose ministry first and forsake our own families. We must understand that ministry is taking care of our families and we must guard it with all we have. Ministry will always be there in abundance for us to partake of but our children will not be. We must repent of neglect of our families and know that if we have weak homes we will have weak churches and therefore a weak nation.

I will post a third part to this series about How to Chase After a Child's Heart. I hope you will join me.