Well, first of all, I would say if that has happened in your life, remember the great heart of God. I thank God for my Calvinism at this point, to be quite frank about it, which helps me to say that He gave your children to you; and long before they arrived, your life, even this season of anguish, was known to the Father, indeed, before the foundation of the world. We must never lose our grip on the great truth that God delights in saving the lost; for He desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Moreover, the Lord has promised that in all things, He is able to work for the good of those that love him, and so, I would say, throw yourself on the grace of God. Beat down the doors of Heaven; and, remember, those wonderful stories in the gospel like the story of the woman who came to the judge, the judge who feared neither God nor man, and the text says that because of her much knocking, he got up and attended to her need. You see, God is a God who will listen. His ears are open to the cries of the righteous. God desires to answer our prayers.
And then, second, know that the Lord is not condemning you. You see, when our children are away from the home or out of control and their back is to God, so that they have thrown away their faith or at least it feels like it, then many times we personalize all of that, and we begin to judge ourselves, but you need to know that in such seasons, the Lord is not condemning you. What may be condemning you may be something other than the Holy Spirit. Now, I do not want to hit this too hard, but it could that what is condemning you is your concern for your spiritual reputation or how you are being perceived, or maybe it is the need to explain yourself, to justify yourself, because of the mess that your children have made. However, I want to say, Beloved, you do not need to do that, and you should not do that. Our kids grow up, and the day comes when we are not responsible for their behavior or even for their choices. Remember the comforting words out of the book of Ezekiel, "No longer shall it be a proverb among the people that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." You see, when our grown children are rebellious, it is because they are exercising their own will over their parents' will. The thing that many parents fail to understand is that our children have a free will. Let me say that if what they do destroys you emotionally, breaks your heart and breaks your health, then hasn't that played right into the hands of the devil? The posture that God wants from us is to fight back in the Spirit, to contend for our children's souls through prayer, to pray for their lives, to pray for their reconciliation, to pray that God will turn them around, to pray that He will reach out to them and bring them back to His very own heart. We are not to fold into a heap, but rather, that is the time when we should seek God all the more fervently and fight back. God is delighted by our faith. It is our faith that pleases God, but to simply capitulate and surrender to the way things are and the way things will always be when our children are out on the highways and byways playing the prodigal and that somehow they will never get back to God, that is an eclipse of faith. God does not want us to take that kind of posture.
