DAY 7
Press into the heart of the Father

A lady by the name of Trish sent me this picture. The Lord gave her this picture while she was in Rwanda a few weeks ago. Everyday she was surrounded by little children while she was there.

She shares: The picture is about the children/youth coming to God. It shows children pressing into these huge doors. Behind the doors is - the Father’s heart which is ENORMOUS. The children that are pressing on the doors don't know the Fathers heart, but THEY WANT TO. As they push on the doors and press in, the doors begin to open. It was just as if they wanted to get as close as they could to the heart of Father God. As the doors opened a bit more they came through the doors skipping and jumping. As soon as they did they were crowned. See the Father wanted them to know that they are heirs of the Kingdom; princes and princess.

The children were also making a way for others. These doors had been closed and there had been stone walls placed around the knowledge of walking as princes and princesses of the Kingdom. But God was using the children to make a way for others and to show us all the father’s heart.
Look at the picture and see how IN the Father’s heart there are many other hearts. These represent all the hearts that are coming to the Father and how he holds their hearts within His own heart.

As the doors open there is also water that is flowing outward beyond the doors into the streets. The water is made up of the tears of the Father that he has cried for his lost children. But as the doors open the river of tears begins to go outward and flows into the streets to bring healing.

In the beginning when God created the earth, He used to walk and talk with Adam and Eve. But when they disobeyed all that changed. Through sin the kingdom of darkness had entered the world. Now they were afraid. Instead of a beautiful garden there would be weeds that would get in the way. But the saddest of all was that they would no longer hear God’s voice clearly. The close friendship that they had was broken. Still the heavenly Father would leave His fingerprint in His creation so that people could still find Him. He would also leave His fingerprint in their hearts that they would know when they did something wrong or right, and could choose to find Him, as He very much wanted to be found.

See the heavenly father still loved his children. He was very sad that they had sinned, but he promised that one day Jesus would come, his very own son, and He would bring them back to God. God would not forget about them. Then they could hear God’s voice again and if they obeyed Him could bring a bit of heaven back to earth… That is what they waited for.
(Genesis 1-3)

So when Jesus came to earth one of His main goals was to restore our relationship of closeness with the heavenly Father. He wanted us to draw close to him, or press into His heart. How do we do that? How do we get close to someone? From our last post we learned that obedience is important as is listening. But what kind of doors do we need to push open to get closer to the Father’s heart? The key that unlocks the door in the first place is atonement. That’s a hard word so let me explain. You see for God’s kingdom to be able to rule, the first thing that needed to be done was that sin’s rule needed to be broken. God is Holy and He cannot allow any kind of sin into His kingdom, otherwise it would be the seed that would lead to everything that is bad in the world now. When sin came into the world one of the consequences was that only the death of a totally innocent person would break its power over us. Jesus was the only one ever that was both God and man and completely innocent. Jesus broke the power of sin over us when he gave Himself for us, and died in our place. This is called atonement. To go from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light we need to go through the Lord Jesus, and to believe and accept what he did for us. Our response to that is repentance. That means we change our way of thinking about sin and seeing the world around us. IN a sense, the atonement was the key which unlocked the locked door, and our repentance is what pushes it open so we can become children of the King.

(Col 1:13 LB) says, For He rescued us out of the darkness and gloom of Satan’s kingdom, and brought us into the kingdom of His dear Son, who bought our freedom with His blood and forgave us all our sins.

So what are the 2 main keys to open the door to the Kingdom? Repentance and Atonement.

If you haven’t believed and accepted what Jesus did for you before and would like to, talk to Him right now. You do that just by talking as you would talk to anyone one else. Tell Him you are sorry for the wrong things that you have done and that you need help to change your way of thinking about what is right and wrong. Thank Jesus for breaking the power of sin and opening the door to a close relationship with Him again.

Another lady by the name of Jennifer Toledo, who works with children all over the world, shares this picture:
She saw a picture in black and white of a whole lot of people, dressed in rags, shuffling along with their heads down. Most of them had chains around their ankles. Everyone looked miserable. She was one of the people. Then she saw a picture of a huge palace in color.

In a little while the door of the palace opened and a King came out who was dressed in fine royal robes. He looked out and saw all the people, waited and then came and pushed through the crowd. As she looked up He came up to her and said,
“I choose you! I want to be your daddy. I want to adopt you!”
She was amazed as the king then brought her inside the palace and some maids came and gave her a bubble bath and dressed her in beautiful clothes. When she was ready the King came up to her and got down on one knee so she could see him better, and said,
“You need to get one thing straight. From this day on I am your Father and you are my daughter. You are never again to think of yourself as a slave, or act like a slave, or dress like a slave. You are the daughter of a King. It would make me very sad if you think of yourself ever again as a slave. Another thing, as my daughter you have access to everything in the kingdom!”

Action:

Look back at both these pictures. Which one speaks the most to you?
Imagine yourself as the girl. Picture the king coming close to you and saying, “I choose you! I want to be your daddy! I want you to be my son or daughter.” Alana you are the daughter of the King. Josh you are the son of a King. Mickayla you are a princess, Ryan you are a Prince! Insert your own name and hear the Father calling you by name.

WOW!

Now that you are a part of God’s family you have to change our way of thinking. Do princes and princesses walk around in rags with their heads down? Don’t they have a right to everything that the King owns? Don’t they act like the king?

Now picture yourself as one of the kids pushing the door open. Even if you know you are God’s child, you can still be hanging back and not drawing close. God wants us to push back the walls of thinking that we are slaves and open our eyes to see Father God as he really is. He wants us to know how much he loves us and that he wants to bring his healing to the other people outside these walls. He wants us to know we are King’s Kids and to act like it. When we do we will bring a bit of heaven to the world around us. That was God’s plan.

• Think about it, what keeps you from getting closer to God? What do you fill your mind with, T.V. video games? Do the books you read honor God? Are you so busy with all sorts of activities that you don’t have time to read your Bible or pray? Ask Him to show you what the walls are for you and then ask Him what you need to do to remove them
   
• Have someone stand behind a door to hold it back. Now Act out pushing back a HUGE door. As you do pray that the walls that hold people back from knowing Father God would come down.
   
• Ask God to show you one way that you can bring His love to someone, this week. This is opening doors as well. It would be even better if it was someone that didn’t already know about his love. You could go to a mall, for example and ask God to point out someone that is discouraged like the people in the vision Jennifer had. Then ask Him for a word of encouragement for that person. Then go up to them and share it. (It would be good to have someone older with you to do that one.)

For Younger children:

• Make a crown out of construction paper and decorate it. On the inside write Prince or Princess and your name.
• Ask God to open your eyes to see someone that needs to know that God loves them. When He does, draw them a happy face and tell them that God loves them.

Listen to this song by Robin Marks as you finish.

With All Faith Believe
By Robin Marks

Press in to the heart of the Father.
Hold fast to the grace received.
Breathe in the life of the Spirit,
And with all faith believe,
And with all faith believe.
believe on this:
The Word of Life,
Our Lord, the Christ,
Has come to save us.
Receive by faith His blood supplied,
That the power of sin be cursed
And the Father be glorified

To hear part of the song click on http://www.robinmark.com/index.php?section=18
and then on With All faith

This post was written by Trish Preston and Carolin. Trish drew the picture and shared what it meant. The other vision was from Jennifer Toledo. Again if the Lord whispers a secret to you just like he did for Trish or Jennifer we would love to hear about it at carolin@watchmen.org.