TODAY’S PROPHETIC WORD
I have promised a thousand generations to those who love Me. I see your love for Me and I celebrate that you are stewarding your generations to follow Me. Love your children like I love you – hoping and believing all things.
PIT TO PALACE
I don’t care how saved you are. You don’t get the goodness of God into your family just because you’re saved. Ask King David.
There’s no greater rockstar that’s ever lived than King David. He so pleased the Lord. He enjoyed crazy relationship, experience and favor with the Lord. The brother is the original renaissance man, but family is where he tripped up, and it cost him bitterly.
David made a terrible mistake by thinking, “I’ll raise my kids exactly the way I was raised, and my kids will turn out fine.”
Let me tell you how King David was raised. His parent just left him alone. They put him out in a field and left him to his own devices. Everybody else grew up in the house being welcomed, celebrated and taught the scriptures. David didn’t grow up in the house.
He was out with the lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my!). He’s out there in all that mess and the Spirit of the Lord moved upon him because David pursued God. He went after relationship with God because who else did he have to talk to? Who else would listen or care? David experienced God’s presence because he was desperate.
While that experience and presence made him into the “man after God’s own heart,” it didn’t help him raising his kids because he thought, “I can be a hands off kind of dad and my kids will turn out like me.”
That’s not the way it works because his kids were not him. He failed to instill that love of God in his children. There is no evidence any of them, Solomon included, pursued or experienced God the way their daddy did. What was missing was relationship.
Fathers, don’t exasperate your sons. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. – Ephesians 6:4
“Exasperate” means to leave them without hope. The hope of what? Your love, honor, blessing and a right relationship with you!
If you don’t build relationships with your kids, they won’t have the first clue what a good father is like, and seeing God as a loving father will be much more difficult. Relationship, people! You’ve gotta have it before you can introduce your kids to King Jesus or “bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
It doesn’t matter if you live in a pit or a palace. Your kids need mamas and daddies who love them and lead them to Jesus. Where are your kids? If they’re in the field, welcome them into the house then lead them to the cross.
FROM MY SERMON SERIES NEXT OF KIN
