Romans 12:14-16 [KJV]
Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.
Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.
Something like TV Guardian was invented for parents who realize a very important assignment they have - to protect their children from anything that could harm them. Of course, a parent is going to protect their son or daughter from physical harm - like getting too close to the edge of a cliff or running onto the Interstate. But Mom and Dad have no less a responsibility for protecting their kids from things that can hurt their soul. And there's a lot of soul poison out there.
There's a 10-word challenge in our word for today from the Word of God that really underscores where the front lines of the battle are for any life - including that of your children. Proverbs 4:23 begins with these attention-getting words "Above all else..."[/color Woah! O.K., it's that important. Then these ten words -[color=red] "Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."
In other words, be careful about what gets into your heart - or into your child's heart - because it is the reservoir from which everything else flows.
And, yes, one front in the battle for a child's pure heart is related to what they watch and listen to in the media. It's amazing how we will allow someone to portray on TV or video, right in our living room, things we would never, ever allow to be done in our living room - sexually, for example. We allow comedy into our home and into their heart and it trivializes sin that ruins lives - not realizing that our kids are learning to laugh about things that are eternally serious. No matter what the parental peer pressure of what other parents are allowing and what the culture says is "must see" stuff, we've got to stand our ground on not allowing our kids to mentally eat out of the garbage can.
But guarding their heart is so much bigger than TV or movies or music. It's about the poison that comes from us. The bitterness they're learning by listening to us, the anger, the self-centeredness, the putdowns of other people, the names they hear us call people, the prejudice they hear in the way we talk about others, the disrespect they hear us expressing toward people at work, at church - or even toward their mother or father. That's more deadly poison than anything the media can pump out. Our precious children need Parent Guardian to protect them from the poison that they are seeing modeled in living color maybe by a Mom or Dad.
The DVR in your son's or daughter's heart is always recording. It's always capturing what it hears, and the impressions are shaping who they're becoming. You are the guardian, assigned to your child by God, to protect that young heart from poison and infection - even if (no, especially if) it's coming from you.
Thank you Pastor Hutchcraft for this CRITICAL lesson on helping keep our children's hearts PURE and the garbage from US and this world out of them.... WE ALL needed this lesson.....
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