The God Who Moves Hearts, Part 2

The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will. Proverbs 21:1

Probably one of the most challenging aspects of teaching children and youth comes in the form of a willful child. Now, most of the time they're not intending to be disruptive or disobedient. As in the case of my pastor's two boys, they were quite certain they knew how things should be done, and the teacher was just not doing it right. Although I have said it once, I will say it again: you never realize just how powerless you are until you have kids. This can be especially true, and heartbreaking, when your child's willfulness leads him or her into "the far country." It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Your heart breaks, because you know the outcome of their choices but are unable to convince them to change. But no matter what the situation, maybe you can find peace by trusting that God can move the heart of the willful person.

You can find peace by trusting that God can melt the heart of the most willful person. God proved this when He moved the people of Nineveh to repent. This story is in the book of Jonah in the Bible. The Assyrians were the most pagan people of the prophet Jonah's day. Since they had no respect for life, there was no surrender when they attacked. When they took prisoners, the Assyrians were probably some of most brutal human rights violators ever. Yet, at Jonah's preaching, they repented. Think about it. These pagans who had little to no concept of Yahweh repented at his preaching. Jonah didn't even have his heart in the preaching, and, yet, they repented. In the same way, God brought Nebuchadnezzar to acknowledge God's sovereignty. Nebuchadnezzar went from claiming deity for himself to acknowledging that Yahweh is above all other gods and has the right to rule over humankind. Likewise, He caused Paul to go from persecuting the saints to becoming the most influential Apostle. How does a man go from having everything through persecuting God's people to helping them and being persecuted himself? Paul, and these others, made this change, because God can melt the most vile and evil heart. I believe He can change the heart of your wayward child, if He can melt those hardened hearts.

You can also find peace in trusting that God can open the eyes of the person blinded by sin. Right now your child may not be able to see the destructiveness of his or her actions or the hurt they are causing you. Their eyes are blinded by their sinful willfulness. But God can move the king to see the error he could not see before (2 Sam 12). God used the prophet Nathan to show King David what he could not see before: his adultery and his murder. Likewise He caused the prodical son to get sick of the sin he was living in (Luke 15).

But God's work doesn't just stop with Him opening the eye. When your children's eyes are opened they, like the prodigal, will begin to recognize areas they must change. The prodigal saw that he needed to get out of the pig pen and get back to his father. Likewise, you can rest in knowing that when God opens their eyes, He will move their heart so they will start doing the things they need to do. That's good because, as a father, I'm sometimes worried that my child wont want to go to church, pray, and love God as a teenager or young adult. I mean, by the world's standards, it's totally unrealistic to expect a teenager would want to stay pure, pray, go to church. But God is able to make that young heart thirst for Him. He can move the heart so your young person will want to do the things he or she should do.

God is also mighty to moves their heart to stop doing the things that are displeasing to Him. Once again, by the world's standards, why would a young person want to stop doing all the fun and exciting stuff so he or she can go listen to a boring Sunday School teacher? Why would a young person want to stop doing all the fun stuff that God calls sin (Heb 11. 24-25)? When God opens their eyes, however, He does it so they will stop living in the pig pen.

Ultimately, you can't make your child trust Christ. No amount of argumentation will make someone obey God. But God, if He chooses, can use your words, just as He used Nathan to help David, as a means to open their eyes. This can only happen when we make prayer our first undertaking. Pray that God would open their spiritual eyes to their true spiritual condition. Pray that God will make the beauty of sin bitterness. Pray that God would reveal His beauty to them. Pray that God would make you hunger and thirst for Him. When you have done these things, then do the things that feed that thirst. It may be that you confront them like Nathan. It may be that you encourage counseling or going to a facility that deals with their particular difficulty. Whatever it may be, we pray first and then trust Gods leading for the results.

Ultimately, the life of your child is in God's hands. You can and should do what you can to reclaim him or her, but, ultimately, you can't make your child trust God or see His beauty (Is 61.3); the only way he or she can know God's beauty is by Him opening his or her eyes to see Him (Mt 11.27). Nobody can come to the realization of their condition without God's help. God is the one who causes us to remember what we have been taught about the God from the Bible. He can move the heart of your child to remember all the good things they learned about Him. God accomplishes this today when he makes Christ and His cross beautiful in our eyes. When God reveals his beauty to your child, he or she can't help but want to return ... just like the prodigal son.

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