"He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." ––Luke 1:17

I find it very interesting that when the voice of the Lord returns in the New Testament to tell Zacharias about his soon-to-be-born son, John the Baptist, the Lord repeats the last prophetic words of the Old Testament (Malachi 4:5-6).

Luke 1:17 states that to "make ready" a people whose hearts are prepared for the Lord––open to His love, prepared for His presence and glory––the fathers’ hearts will have to be turned to the children and in return the children’s hearts must be turned towards their fathers and the Lord. In other words, if the Messiah comes and the fathers’ hearts are not turned toward the children, there is a good chance that the children will not receive the Messiah.

If their hearts have been hardened to their father’s love by the hardenings of their father’s love towards them, it will become a stumbling block, making it difficult for them to have an open heart to our heavenly Father. A hardened heart reproduces a hardened heart, and a soft heart reproduces a soft heart. When a child feels that their parents’ hearts are not turned towards them, they will put up a wall of protection over the years that will block out all healthy relationships including one with Jesus. There is something very powerful about the relationship of a father to his child. God calls Himself Father, and has recreated that relationship model in families.

The Lord is so good to spend time with us and cultivate a loving, trusting relationship, making it almost impossible to close Him out of our hearts once we have discovered His love and allowed Him in. His love makes us willing to obey, so willing to see Him pleased with us, so willing to give everything we have just to remain in His love. This is also the way things are in the relationship between a parent and child.

When our children trust us, know that we value them and long to spend time with them, that we find pleasure in their very being, and that we want the very best for them, then they will feel towards us as we do towards our heavenly Father and their hearts will be turned toward us. They will want to spend time with us, they will trust us and respect our judgment, Best of all, they will want to serve the God that we love so much and their hearts will be open to Him.

There is no greater joy than to see your children loving God and wanting to follow Him with a soft obedient heart. I am continually amazed at the simplicity of my children’s faith in the Father. It way surpasses mine. Things that the Lord had to get past my hardened heart are easily deposited into my children’s hearts because they know nothing more than to trust Him. It is easy for them to trust the love of their heavenly Father because of the example of a loving earthly father.

In 1Timothy chapter 3 it talks about the requirements of Bishops and Deacons:

For a Bishop in verse 4 and 5: "One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence, for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the house of God."

For a Deacon in verse 12: "Let the deacons be the husband of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well."

I once looked at these Scriptures just as a list of rules, but when I began to look further, it dawned on me why these rules were set up. I believe that when these rules were established, it was evident that a man who was able to develop a loving relationship with his children, causing them to walk in reverence to the Lord, would be a leader that you would want representing the Father to the Church and the world. If they "ruled their children and their own houses well" then they were trusted with the hearts of men outside their own families.

What is more rewarding than to see a family that really loves the Lord and each other. They are like a powerful force moving through the earth; there is nothing they cannot accomplish. On the contrary, when you see a leader who has a dysfunctional family, so much of their efforts and energy are spent on maintaining it that they have very little impact as a leader. First establish order your family then you will have what it takes to establish order elsewhere.

Having one’s family in order is foundational to Christianity. Order comes when we can cultivate the hearts of our children by our love.

Tracey Selby Biography