There are many of you out there, children of God who have children of your own, and maybe some if not all of them are not serving Jesus Christ. This breaks your heart, this breaks the heart of any parent who loves Jesus. You've prayed and you prayed and you find it hard sometimes to hold on to the promise that your family would be saved just like you have been saved. You've tried everything, all the faith fads, all the prayer fads and still no visible result.
We know they have their own choice to make and we know what choice they need to make but we can't make it for them. You see we need to stop trying to believe them into heaven, and we need to begin to believe that they are going to have an encounter with Jesus Christ through the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Ask God to give them an encounter. Ask God to send a laborer that will give an nonreligious Spirit empowered presentation of the gospel. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. The Holy Spirit must be present convincing and convicting concerning righteousness, sin, and judgment. Only then will they see it, only then will they really hear it, and only then do they have a legitimate opportunity to decide to relinquish their control over their lives to Jesus Christ.
We are commanded to go into all the world and tell the lost the good news. But we have to realize that the lost were not commanded to take us at our word. That's why you see in Mark 16:20 that as the disciples went out and preached as Jesus worked with them and confirm the word with the signs that followed. Paul put it this way, he said my preaching was in the demonstration of the Holy Spirit and power so that the people's faith would rest on the power of God and not on the wisdom of man. (1Cor. 2:4-5)
Just like us who have already been born again, our children need an encounter with the truths of who Jesus is, and with the truth of who they are, and with the truth about the ugliness and the evil that's in the lifestyles many have chosen to follow. You see it's not just what they heard, it's what they saw when they heard. Remember when you were born again, you saw your need and that Jesus was the only way. You became convinced, convinced enough to act and our children need the same thing.
They need to hear the gospel yes, but they must hear it when the power of God is present to change them and when the Spirit of God is present to convict them and to convince them. They need a radical life-changing encounter with a resurrected Christ, and nothing short of that is going to save them. You see we can't pray them into a decision, the decision is theirs, but we can pray them into an encounter. They are going to encounter the things of this world and the kingdom of darkness every waking moment. Every moment they're out there in the world they constantly encounter the things of the world. It is high time that they encounter the living God.
Ask God your Father to give your children an encounter with Himself. One that they cannot explain away, one that they cannot be indifferent about, one that they cannot deny. So that they know for themselves the reality of the truth that you so often tried to share with them. And whatever you do - don't stop praying.
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