Do Your Children Have Passion?

If I hope to instill a passion to worship in my children, passion for God must begin in me! If there ever was someone in your life that can identify a fake, its your own children. They know you much better than you believe. As they mature, they carefully watch what you do and almost without a thought ignore what you say. A child can learn to passionately worship even before they can read or right. As wonderful as this truth is, any mom knows it cuts with a two-edged sword. Because just as much as they can learn good spiritual lessons from us, they also absorb our negative, lazy or dead works.

"Hypocrite! You, brood of vipers!," called John to the pharisees of his day. All nice and clean on the outside, worshipful in the sight of others, but harsh words, selfish motivation and judgmental of others in the private places of their life. A child of a pharisee would know that his pious father didn't publicly display who he truly was. And your child too, sees and knows who you really are when no one is looking or listening.

Don't be guilted into a passionate relationship with God, not that it is even possible. But Do be sensitive to allow the sweet conviction of the Holy Spirit full passage through the rooms of your inner heart. Let Him shed His beautifying light on the dusty dark recesses in your soul that must be attended to, swept clean and newly washed in His loving grace. He enters not to condemn but to restore, repair and regenerate. He takes what is dead and brings fresh sprigs of hope that a new day is coming for the neglected places in your heart. Receive Him with joy, swinging wide the welcoming door of your being anticipating the wonderful changes He will orchestrate, if you only give Him permission.

What does it take to instill passion of worship in your soul? It takes a heart that is wholy crying out to God, pleading, "Bend me! Bend my sins. Bend my will. Bend me!" This was the exact words pleaded by those who saw revival in their own hearts at the beginning of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Revivals of 1904 in Wales. Their only heart desire was to let God have His way. No plans, no traditions, no programs, no strict schedules took priority over the direction of the Holy Spirit. As He moved in hearts, freedom was allowed to sing out, dance, cry, pray and preach. Sermons did not need to be prepared, the words spoken and preached flowed totally from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

God chose His instruments of delivery. We can be certain it was not the scholarly students of the day, but the one who sat at the feet of Jesus to get his daily instructions, and teaching. Nothing is purer than mining out the gems in God's Holy Word totally dependent on the Spirit to guide a dearly devoted soul to rightly divide and understand His Words. The Bible is a commentary unto Its self, clarifying words, and repeating instruction for emphasis and illustrating principles of life through life stories, songs, and letters of faithful followers.

What parent doesn't long to pass their faith to their children? To see their own child's eyes light up with amazement and thrill of being touched by the Living God. Just as I long to see my own child walk in His perfectly chosen God-directed path, Father God longs to see us walk in the our God-chosen paths.

Always, before you begin to teach, or speak on a topic, first allow the Holy Spirit to help you internalize the truth by exercising your own faithful walk. Truly people including our own children learn more about what we believe by what we do than what we say, because what you honestly believe is what you will live. A lot of people can talk the right talk, but if we really believed Him, we would walk the right walk.

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