This is special prayer request. One of the most joyous parts of our lives is to be able to spend happy times especially with our children and grandchildren. So many of you know exactly what I mean and experience this joy often. I know the joy we feel with our daughter and her husband and their five wonderful children just minutes from where we live.
I want to put out a very special prayer request now though.
I’m learning of more and more friends and even just people I hear about in their 60’s and above especially, whose children won’t have anything to do with them. Some won’t allow any contact, even by mail or phone, with grandchildren. Talk about painful! Sure, it could easily be the parents’ fault – or perhaps there are other issues, but surely this is not something even remotely pleasing to God Most High, the supreme Father over all.
Regardless of whose fault it is, please join me in prayer that anyone going through all this can find a loving and joyful resolution with God’s help and working through His Holy Spirit.
This is not just an isolated situation here and there. I’m speaking of situations that are rampant.
Did you know that reconciling and reuniting families is one of the commissions given to the very end-time Elijah to come? See Malachi 4 below.
It also applied to John the Baptist, a type of the end-time Elijah of Malachi 4. There is yet to be a coming “Elijah” figure just before the dreadful “day of the LORD”. Now read verse 6 especially. Let’s pray God sends this man soon, who will reunite families and it also that this end-time Elijah will also successfully turn many “children” back to God the Father. See Luke 1:16 below.
Malachi 4:5-6
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.
6 And he will turn
The hearts of the fathers to the children,
And the hearts of the children to their fathers,
Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse."
Notice the hearts of the fathers changes first, turns first. Then the children turn their hearts. OK dads, let’s be turning our hearts and asking for a miracle from our loving Abba.
And where it ends with “lest I strike the earth with a curse”, the word for “curse” can also even extinction!
NIV – “with utter destruction”
ESV -- “a decree to strike the land with total destruction”.
ISV: “ Otherwise, I'll come, strike the land, and utterly destroy it."
So you see the importance God himself places on this prayer request.
This next scripture is about John the Baptist, who was a type of the end-time prophesied Elijah to appear on the scene, hopefully soon.
Luke 1:13-17
But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. 14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. 15 For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.
16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, 'to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,' and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
Please join me in praying for this loving reunion to start happening soon.
And if you’re one of those cut off from your own children or grandchildren, confess any faults you have in it, repent to our Abba God Most High, and pray for God to bless them and your situation. But please pray for specific people you know about in this situation and also generally, as I just keep hearing of more and more cases.