Matters of the Heart

I just completed my morning quiet time of prayer for WonderBoy. This is Day 3 of the 21 Days of Prayer for Our Sons that I am so excited to be part of. Today's prayers are centered around Avoiding Foolishness. This is good stuff - meat and potatoes that you can sink your teeth into prayer! I am loving it!!
Day 1 started things off with Obedience - is there a child (or adult for that matter) that does not struggle with issues of obedience? Nature of the human condition regardless of age and why prayer in this area is SO important - only God can change hearts.
Day 2 was a logical progression from Obedience to Submission to Authority. This dear readers is a hot topic in our home! It continues to amaze and confound me how this whole thing works. Let me give you a little history/insight....curtain is down on this, this is the real deal raw truth. My sweet son has some pretty major issues with Submission to Authority. My husband and I have little to no challenges in this area of our lives, we have our share of issues in other areas rest assured and I intend to be as transparent as I can be about those too in the interest of full disclosure ;-)
As you may or may not be aware from reading my ramblingsin the past, I am a survivor of divorce. WonderBoy's dad and I were together for the better part of 10 years all total, our marriage dissolved right at a year after WonderBoy was born. The reasons and gory details of all that are best left for another post entirely which, by the way has been brewing in the background of my thoughts for a while - so far I'm so sure how to put it all together - but I am thinking a series of posts about marriage (feel free to pray for me on this one).
Onward. Dad is not an ideal role model of Submission to Authority on any level but does provide many excellent examples of the consequences of what being out the God's Will in this area of life will produce. So how is it then, that the people you spend the most time with, the ones that are training and guiding, the ones sowing seed and watering growth, encouraging, sacrificing, grooming and doing all they know to be what a child needs to grow to the man of God they are called to be, have the least amount of influence? It leaves me downright flabbergasted. Onward. This is an area of prayer that we need to meet on our knees in full battle gear on an ongoing daily basis. The thing is that until WonderBoy's heart is changed little of what we do or say will have any desired impact. Only God can change a heart of stone.

Ezekiel 36:26-27
New Century Version (NCV)

26 Also, I will teach you to respect me completely, and I will put a new way of thinking inside you. I will take out the stubborn hearts of stone from your bodies, and I will give you obedient hearts of flesh.27 I will put my Spirit inside you and help you live by my rules and carefully obey my laws.

This whole issue of Heart has been coming up so much that it cannot be ignored. It is, I believe, the very root of where our battles must be waged from. The Principal is currently working through Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp (a wonderful book that I highly recommend) with his men's bible study lunch group each Wednesday and gaining wonderful insight in this area. We are constantly talking about issues of the heart. I am curretnly reading The Five Love Language of Children by Ross Campbell and Gary Chapman (another worthwhile read, which mentions time and time over about these issues of the heart. I am thinking that this is the road - the narrow road I am to follow. Would you be inclined to agree? I have been praying for years that God would show me how to 'get through' to WonderBoy and I no longer believe in coincedences. The timing of all these things is in His design for a time such as this!!
And if all this is not enough, WonderBoy asked if we could spend the day painting recently, so yesterday we gathered together our supplies and with a vision and a plan, this is what my son produced......

Ok Lord, gotcha! ;-)
This post is part of a blog hop in which I will be participating each Friday during the 21 Days of Prayer for Our Sons. I am on a team being led by Jodi at Granola Mom 4 God. Please take a minute to visit Jodi and some of the other Mom's on my team and share in what God is doing in and through them throughout this journey.