The intercontinental ballistic missile travels 6,000 miles and still hits its target. It carries a nuclear payload that has incredible power.
The amazing thing is that this missile can get to its target so accurately. It's a good thing that it can. You sure wouldn't want that missile wandering off course somewhere with all that power. Can you imagine a missile that powerful with no guidance system?
It has been said that "Children are messengers we send to a time we will not see." Sounds like they're going to be our missiles to the future. Today, a lot of parents look in the eyes of their son or daughter and wonder if they have what they need in a world like this. Challenging parenting is nothing new.
Deuteronomy 6 of the Bible describes a time where all of a sudden parents were having to raise their kids in a pagan culture, filled with pornography, promiscuity, godlessness, and sophisticated temptations. God tells them to raise their children there with these instructions, beginning at verse 5, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
This is God's antidote to the poison of a dangerous world: a contagious love relationship with the Lord. If you have this love for Him upon your heart, then that impresses your children, and they end up being stable people who also love the Lord. This isn't about a religion. It is about a deep relationship with God that steers you through each day. He gives you an inner guidance system that pulls you His way in each choice and gives you the strength to do it. He wants to be in your life, not just around it.
You might just have the Lord in your head. You have the facts, go to the religious meetings, know the verses, know the rituals, and know the hymns. If the way to God was a doctrine test, an attendance record, or a vote of the people who know you, you would do fine. God says, "I have to be in your heart."
There's nothing like a child to show you that you have the Savior in your head but not in your heart. Only a living Savior, whom you've invited into the control room of your life, can make you what your son or daughter needs.
When you look into the inquiring or hurting eyes of that boy or girl, you realize they are a mirror of you and you can't meet their needs until you know what to do with your own. That's where the word Savior comes in. The Bible says you're doomed to repeat your parents' and your grandparents' mistakes if you are without Christ. 1 Peter 1:18-19 says, "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect."
Christ died to forgive the sin that scars those you love and to break the power of selfishness that poisons your home. If you are parenting, don't go another day without a personal Savior; without Jesus. Invite Him into your heart. Then you can infect your son or daughter with a contagious love relationship with Jesus. If the young missiles at your house can catch that guidance system from you, their life will always be on target.