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It was time for class on a Sunday at church, and I had a heavy burden on my heart for our kids. I had been weeping all morning… for I had witnessed a broken place in the children’s love for one another that week.

And I grieved. Broken. Longing for more for them… and honestly, for us all.

“Father. How do I get to their hearts? How do I bring all of their hearts face to face with Yours in such a way that their repentance comes from within, and their love deepens in its purity and strength?”

Oh how I want to be part of raising a generation of kids whose love is completely holy… a love that our world is starving for. Yes. These ones. A generation whose hearts and love is pure and STAYS PURE. Whose forgiveness is real and lasting. A generation who doesn’t gossip or slander one another. One who knows so deeply the honor of our Father and the mercy of God, that it can only give honor and mercy to another. A generation who is good to those who hurt them. Who overcomes evil with good… the miraculous goodness of a steadfast heart turned towards. These hearts stubbornly unshakeable, holding fast to the relentless love of God for every single one. This I pray for these kids, for this generation of children whom my heart so loves and believes in.

Oh the burden for their hearts was heavy.

I decided that I was going to open my heart and share with them a story from my own life to try to convey this heart of God that I was experiencing for them.

My story was about a time that my husband and I were really wronged, and how I had let anger set into my heart. I told them how even some 8 years later, when we were in a restaurant, and I saw the ones who had wronged us, I could still feel the anger in my heart. Even though I knew Jesus and His ways and His forgiveness… my heart still just couldn’t let go.

I went on to share with them how Jesus spoke to me in that restaurant, and that I knew I had to do something very specific to bring my heart into alignment with God’s heart towards these people who had hurt us. I had to do good to the ones who had done wrong to me.

I then shared with them how it is so SO important to keep our hearts open before the Lord so that these things like anger and unforgiveness and bitterness can’t live in us. Healed hearts. Clean hearts. “Unfeigned” I told them. Pure. And that what I had lost (these people had quite literally stolen from us), God had already returned it to us and MORE. But I had held onto my anger to the point where I couldn’t even see how God had my back. I couldn’t see how Love had already returned it all to me and was simply asking me to forgive and let it go SO THAT HE COULD RESTORE MY HEART. He wanted me to free my heart unto His and to turn my heart towards these ones, with no anger lurking in the background of my being.

Then all the kids began to have things to share, for God was talking to all of us. Our hearts were being deeply challenged in His. Several kids began to see pictures in their minds, and others had specific places in their hearts that they could see needed cleaned in God’s love.

One girl spoke up “I see a heart that is broken in half, and there are two people, each one holding a half. And I saw God filling the broken part Himself, and bringing the heart back together into one.

We began to pray, placing our own hearts before the Lord and purposely letting some things go that we needed to let go of. Oh it was beautiful and pure. This place we were in is what I think was and will always be the best starting place… a place we all need to visit from time to time. A place where we open our hearts up to the Lord, and offer them to our beautiful, merciful Jesus, to be examined and to be cleaned. Made new in love. Oh let us do this together with them. May our love grow and deepen and be made so completely holy that the world will truly see and know Him.