“He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents….”
This is the last verse of the Old Testament. The first verse of the Old Testament is Genesis 1:1, which states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” So we start with God creating everything, and we end with the family.
Let us capitalize on the family in the verse above. I have said that family is all you have when the chips are laid down. The root of the family is your heart. Your heart will lead you into whatever it is focusing on. This is why the verse above mentions that the Lord will turn the hearts of the parents and the children toward each other.
You can spot a broken family easily when you see someone’s heart turned away from their family. All families have issues because we are human. No family is perfect, and in our ways, we all strive to become perfect, whether that is under the umbrella of Christ or under the umbrella of the world. Joshua said it best when he stated, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)
The Old Testament teaches us a very hard truth, that no matter how hard we try, we cannot reach God, but He reaches out to us. The family is His idea! In the Garden of Eden, God told Adam to be fruitful and multiply, the family unit was started by God. When we use the world and all its twisted ways to govern our families, we will always end up in chaos. When Jesus said, “Go out into the world and don’t be afraid because I have overcome the world,” we can say that a God-centered family will overcome the world and all its twisted rules that lead us astray.
Today, make a decision that your family is a God thing. You may call someone else your family unit because life has driven your birth family away, and that is okay. Jesus used 12 men as His family for three years to change the world. Decide today to turn your heart towards your children if you are a parent, and if you are a child, decide to turn your heart towards your parents. Believe it or not, that is what a godly family does.
Family is important to the Lord. Let’s start every day protecting that union that God gave us with our devotion to our families. Move forward with the ones God has put in your life and treat them as Jesus would.
Family was God’s idea, and the people in your life right now are what God will use in your life. So begin today to turn your heart toward them. We are all in the family of God. If Jesus can use twelve random men from Israel to change the world, just think what He can do with the family of believers the Lord has put in your life. You have to begin to see things the way Jesus sees, He sees us as sons and daughters of the King, full of faith and victory, walking in love and spreading the Good News. Family is a God thing, so don’t disregard the one you have.
Prayer: Father, help us to love our family. I pray that families will begin to turn their hearts back to each other and begin to love each other like Christ loved the Church. I pray that the family unit we have been given, whether blood or not, will be blessed and be a place of rest and refreshment. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let It Go 
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