Loving Your Children God's Way, and God's calling of Titus 2 - Part 2 - A Devotional

Today is Part 2 of what I started yesterday, a past letter to a friend struggling with her parenting role and her relationship with Christ. (But it looks like I'll be having a Part 3, I found another page of what I shared with her that day.)

Proverbs 27:19, "As in water face reflects face, so a man’s heart reveals the man." People, be they children or adults, cannot hide their heart for long. Eventually it comes out and you see it for the ugly wretched thing that it is.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings." I used to make the mistake of telling people they just had to "follow the leading of their heart". Then God showed this scripture to me and revealed just how desparetly wicked we really could be. Now I say, "Don't follow your heart!!! It's a lying, scheming, coniving thing that wants to convice you that whatever it is you want to do is the right thing to do!! No, my sisters and brothers, DO NOT follow your heart, follow God's Word!!!

The beginning of Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." Remember that when you discipline your children, your discipline is to bring about fruits of righteousness, a heart that is aware of its need for God. Hebrews 12:11, "Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

The issues of disobedience, rebellion, disrepect, etc... are not matters in need of a psychologist or their opinions and techniques, but those in need of a God full of grace who wants to change their hearts. It is a matter of the heart, and only God changes hearts. In a child's life, we - the parent's - are God's instruments, but He alone can do the work within.

Jeremiah 24:7 says, " Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart." This is indeed our greatest desire for our children, that God would indeed give them a heart to know Him.

Resting in His Sovereign will for my children,
Lori