What Does Turning the Hearts of the Fathers to Their Children Mean?

God says unless the father’s hearts turn to their children, God will smite the land with a curse. What does this mean and how to father’s turn their hearts to the children?

Missing Fathers

God says unless the father’s hearts turn to their children, God will smite the land with a curse. What does this mean and how to father’s turn their hearts to the children? What does Malachi 4:6 mean for fathers today? This happens when the fathers turn their hearts toward God, they will naturally turn their hearts to their children. That’s the beginning point, but for now, Malachi’s warning (4:6), on the surface, wouldn’t seem to apply only for Israel would it? It’s almost as if God is speaking to fathers to help them understood the huge impact they have in their home, or at least should have. When fathers are missing, problems are not.

Abandoned Children

Many of the prisoners I get to preach too and counsel with tell me that one of the reasons they ended up in prison is because they didn’t receive the discipline of their father. They wished that he would have spanked them when they were young or they would have kept them in line more often. Many of these prisoners (most of them in fact) never had a father in the home or those who had a father abandoned them when they were young. Even though single mothers do an extraordinary good job being mom and dad, caregiver and bread-winner, it is too much burden placed upon one person. They have to do it all. And it’s hard to discipline a young man when he towers over his mother at six foot two or more.

Hearts of the Children

When a father is a Christian and attends church regularly, 93% of the family (wife and children) will also come to saving faith in Christ. Read that again! A father’s Christian faith makes it over nine times more likely that their own children will be saved. It’s not that the fathers are saving anyone…but God is using the father and husband as a means to His own ends, and that is the saving of his wife and children. The fathers show their family the path to eternal life by repentance and faith in Christ. They plant the seeds of the Word of God and then allow God to give the increase through His Holy Spirit. How important is a Christian father’s impact on their children? Consider this fact: 85% of Christians were saved from between ages 4-14! That is a vital, yet small window of time that parents have to help lead them to Christ.

A Pivotal Role

As we have read, Fathers play a pivotal role in the family and often the father determines the success or failure of the family. What happens to children and families when fathers are absent from the home?

 Girls 2 and a ½ times more likely to become pregnant before graduation
 Girls are twice as likely to commit suicide
 Boys are 63% more likely to run away from home
 It doubles boy’s chances of criminal activity and drug/alcohol abuse
 It doubles the likelihood of boys dropping out of high school
 And for both children, it doubles the chances of their children living at poverty level

Leading Children to Christ

It should not surprise us that Malachi wrote of John the Baptist, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal 4:5-6). As we know, the Jewish fathers did not turn or repent of their self-righteousness at the warning of Malachi, John the Baptist or even Jesus Christ. Since they did not turn their hearts to God, they failed to turn their hearts to their children, and as a result, Jerusalem was the land that God struck and left the city in “utter destruction” as Malachi has warned 400 years earlier. The word for “turn” that Malachi uses is from the Hebrew word “shuwb” which means to “turn back to” or “return to,” indicating that the father’s hearts where not directed toward their children, otherwise no turning would be necessary.

Children are a gift of God but so are grandchildren. Thank God for them. Pray for them that they might come to saving faith someday.

A Father’s Example

The Jewish leaders failed to heed Jesus’ warning where He prophesied that not one stone would be left upon another of the temple (Matt 24:2; Mark 13:2; Luke 21:6). In 70 AD, it came to pass. Not one stone of the great temple was left on top of one another in Jerusalem. There was utter destruction. As for us, fathers, grandfathers, and male role models for the children around us, let us first draw near to God and turn or return (repent). If we haven’t repented and believed, how can we expect our children to? We can’t expect them to turn their hearts toward God if we haven’t done so ourselves. Pray that God helps us lead our children to faith in Christ, but unless we have faith, we cannot teach it, for we cannot teach what we do not know and we cannot pass on what we do not live out. Your example can turn their hearts toward God so that God might grant them repentance and faith like He did Lydia (Acts 16:14).

Conclusion

I pray you have put your trust in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. If that has not happened yet, my friend, you are in real danger of hell fire. And I mean, in immediate danger. You’re one breath, one heartbeat…one accident away from eternity when it will be too late to repent. Today is the best day to believe (2 Cor 6:2) since tomorrow is no guarantee. If Jesus Christ came today, here is your fate (Matt 7:21-23). This is why I plead with you as you read this, repent today…and I mean right now. Put your trust in Jesus Christ. If you do not, you will face God’s judgment after death guaranteed (Heb 9:27) or at Jesus Christ’s appearance (Rev 20:12-15), which could happen at any moment.

Here is some related reading for you: 11 Qualities of a Christian Father

Resource – Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version^® (ESV^®), Crossway Bibles. (2007). ESV: Study Bible: English standard version. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Bibles. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Tagged as: Children, Fathers, raising children, Repentance