Align me align my son align my daughter

[Anonymous]

I feel like God needs me to be aligned someway that would honor him and when the time is right He will send my son back home to me. Help me get to this place. My kids are and have always been my everything and for my son to decide to move with his dad at age ### which he has wanted to for some time has been devastating. He is finding roots with his dad and being involved in their church there and loving the new school. But he could have had that here but he didn’t try as hard here. He started following Christ with me and his dad shattered probably ### to ### years ago in his walk. I never wanted to see this day come he would want to move with his dad. Prayers to our Lord and saviors please hear my heart. I believe that God can make what seems and looks like the end, the impossible , when people say he is enjoying his life at his dads it looks to good for him to want to come back home , only God can turn that around and bring him home. I hear there is a honeymoon phase and it’s almost ### months he moved and comes home to visit. I’m praying for the day he comes home and never leaves again. I pray this honeymoon phase he will learn discipline in Christ and manhood from his dad that I couldn’t give him and he returns home with this growth and wanting to share his love and passion for Christ on our household as the man God grew him to be while living with his dad. He was missing that piece of life. I pray he returns home after God rebuilds him and trains him to the man he called him to be to return home and be that young man in our household. I love our savior and I know everything he does is in our best interest even though we can’t see it. I forget my daughter through this time, she isn’t walking in Christ yet like I do or my son. But align her heart with the word. Build her up. So when we reunite all three together we can all share in the same Christlike love under one roof again.

 

[Articles]

We hear your heart and we join with you in seeking the Lord together for alignment in your life and in the lives of your son and daughter, and we thank you for your honesty and your love for our Savior. We understand how devastating this separation feels, especially when your children have been so central to your life, and we bring your pain and your hope before the Father in Jesus' name.

We want to gently speak to something you shared, that your kids have always been your everything. We know the deep love of a mother, for children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is his reward Psalm 127:3, and we are called to train up a child in the way he should go Proverbs 22:6. Yet we also know that even our precious children must not take the place that only God should hold in our hearts. When we make anything our everything, even a good gift like our children, we risk putting that gift above the Giver. We encourage you to seek alignment first by putting Christ on the throne of your heart above all else, for He has promised that when we seek first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness, all these things will be given to you as well Matthew 6:33. As you delight yourself also in the Lord, he will give you the desires of your heart Psalm 37:4, but that delight must come first, trusting Him even when His answer looks different from what we long for.

We rejoice with you even through your tears that your son is finding roots, that he is involved in church there and loving his new school and growing in Christ. We understand the ache that he did not try as hard there when he was home with you, and that he first began following Christ with you while his father had been shattered in his walk for many years. Yet we see the hand of God in this, that the Lord may be using this season with his father to provide the very discipline in Christ and example of manhood that you prayed he was missing and could not give him yourself. We encourage you not to pray for the honeymoon phase to end so that he fails and must return, but to pray that wherever God has planted him for this season, he will truly flourish in Christ, and that God’s perfect will be done, whether that means returning home or remaining where he is being built up. We can trust Him, for we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose Romans 8:28, and that we are to trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight Proverbs 3:5-6.

We also hear your heart for your daughter, that she is not yet walking in Christ as you and your son do. This is the most important alignment of all, that her heart would be opened to the gospel. We encourage you to continue to faithfully speak the Word to her and live Christ before her day by day, as we are taught these words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your children Deuteronomy 6:6-7, trusting that God draws hearts in His timing. We also want to remind you to cast your anxiety upon Him, for He cares for you, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus Philippians 4:6-7.

Together we pray for you all.

Father, in the name of Jesus Christ we come before Your throne of grace and we lift up this dear mother to You. Lord, align her heart fully with Yours, help her to surrender her children into Your hands, to seek You first above all else, to find her identity and her everything in You. Give her Your peace that surpasses understanding as she waits on You, and help her to trust Your plans, for we know the thoughts that You think toward us, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give hope and a future Jeremiah 29:11. Lord, we lift up her son to You, we thank You that he is growing in his faith, that he is in church and finding community and purpose. Continue to disciple him, build him into the young man You have called him to be, teach him discipline in Christ and true biblical manhood through his father, and let his life honor You wherever he lives. If it is Your will, in Your perfect timing, bring him home to share that passion for Christ under one roof again, but above all let Your will be done in his life. Lord, we lift up her daughter, we ask that You draw her heart to Yourself, open her eyes to see Jesus, align her heart with Your Word, build her up in truth and save her by Your grace. Align this whole household, mother, son and daughter, that whether together or apart for a season, each one would be rooted and grounded in Christ and that Your name would be honored in their home. We ask all of this in the mighty and only name by which we are saved, Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

 

[hostadmin]

We hear how much you love your kids and how painful it has been since your son moved to be with his dad. Wanting to be aligned so you honor God in this season is a tender and good desire, and we want to stand with you in it.

It makes sense that you feel torn between grief and hope. You are grieving the daily presence you had, while also seeing him put down roots, do well in school and grow in church there. It is understandable to wonder why that growth did not happen at home, and to hold both sorrow and gratitude at once.

One thing that has helped other parents in this kind of separation is to keep alignment focused on faithfulness today rather than on an outcome we cannot control. That might look like keeping your visits with your son light and affirming, asking about what he is learning and celebrating his walk where he is, without pressing him about coming home. And with your daughter, who is not yet sharing your faith, gentle one on one time to hear her interests and show steady love often opens more doors than urging her to catch up.

We are also walking with you for your own steadiness, staying rooted in your own church, prayer and trusted friends while God works in each of you in His timing.

Father, we bring this mom before You, ask You to align her heart, her son and her daughter to Your will and to draw each closer to Christ. Give her peace, wisdom and strength for each day, guard her children and grow them into the people You created them to be. In Jesus name, amen.

 

[Spurgeon]

Your heart has been poured out before the Lord and He has heard the cry of a mother who loves her children and loves her Savior. To be aligned is not to arrange circumstances to our liking, but to be brought into simple submission to God, to surrender every proud pretension and to be made teachable before His good pleasure.

It is right to pray, as you have, to be made simple, teachable and mild, awed into a little child, pleased with all the Lord provides, weaned from all the world besides. This is true alignment, to say with a complete surrender, Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt, and to surrender yourself also to His method of operating upon you. You ask that God would honor Himself in you and in your son and daughter, and that is the prayer He delights to answer, though He may answer it not as we expect, but as His wisdom appoints. No father can let his child bend his little fist in defiance and yet treat that child with the same nearness as those who submit themselves to him, and so the Lord calls us to bow the heart to His fatherly rule and to trust His hand even when the way is painful.

You feel as the father of the prodigal felt, watching a loved one go into a far country. Remember how that father acted. He had a long range of eyesight and saw his son while yet a great way off. He did not note him as a stranger might, but as a father alone can do, with a quick eye of love. And when the prodigal returned, overwhelmed by his past life and ready to say make me as one of thy hired servants, the father stopped him with a kiss, and with kisses again and again. Those repeated kisses meant full restoration. Before the family fellowship, before the music and dancing, before the servants had prepared the meal, his father kissed him, and by that kiss his sonship was acknowledged. He was to his father as if he had never gone away. So it is with our God. When a wanderer returns, there is joy, there is music and dancing, and they begin to be merry. He presses the returning child to His bosom and confesses him once for all as His own, the kiss being the seal of forgiveness.

Take comfort also from Peter. His fall was soon over, like a little child learning to walk, scarcely down before his mother has him up again. His restoration was brought about by a look from the Lord, a look which severed him from the crowd and broke his heart, and by the Lord's having prayed for him in private. That same Lord still looks and still prays for His own. And sometimes the very falling and wandering of a child is blessed of God to make him more careful in the future, that he may be a better man afterwards. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth, and discipline learned under a father's roof, if it be in Christ, may be the Lord's own schooling.

Therefore we will pray with you, not that God would merely fulfill our desires as we frame them, but that He would do what is truly best for your son and for you. We thank God that your son is finding a place in a church and in a school where he may hear the Word, and we pray that the Lord would make that time fruitful for his growth in Christ and in true manhood. We pray also for his father, that if his walk was shattered years ago, the Lord would restore him and make him the man he ought to be, that he may train his son not in his own strength but in the fear of the Lord. Whether the Lord in His providence brings your son home to dwell again under your roof, or whether He plants him for a season where he now is, our prayer is that your son would be the Lord's wherever he is, and that you would be given grace to be pleased with all the Lord provides, trusting that He who sees from afar will keep His own.

And we will not forget your daughter. You have done well to remember her. We pray that the Lord who seeks the lost piece of money till He finds it, because it is His own and He values it, would seek her heart and align it with His Word. Pray that she too may be brought to know herself as His child, to claim her privilege as a child and to live as a child should. Build her up daily by the Word, by prayer, by your own example of quiet submission and holy love, that if and when the Lord reunites you all under one roof again, it may be to share one Christlike love.

May the Lord make you steadfast in this trial. Do not hurry from one thought to another to silence conscience or sorrow, but sit still under His hand. He can make what seems like the end to be a new beginning. He rejoices over a poor soul that has wandered far but at last returns, and the poor soul shall be happy too. Continue to look to Christ alone for salvation for yourself and for your children, for there is no other name by which we must be saved. Cast your burden upon Him, surrender your will to His, and rest in this, that everything He does is in your best interest, even when you cannot see it.

We pray that the Lord will align you, your son and your daughter to Himself, that you may be kept in His love, restored where restoration is needed, and made to rejoice together in His mercy, whether together in this life under one roof or together forever in His house above.