Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Years ago there used to be a public service announcement that came across the TV screens every night at 10:00.  It said, "It's 10:00 PM... Do you know where your children are?"  The message was a reminder that parents had a responsibility to look after and care for their children.  It was telling parents that the hour was late and they should be making sure that their children were safe in their homes or wherever they were supposed to be, and not in danger or in a place where they could get in trouble. Back in those days, America believed in responsibility and accountability; something that has long since disappeared from our society.  

I was thinking about that message from my youth and what it was saying to both parents and children, and that thought got me to thinking about the same message in a spiritual sense. The same spirit of "not my responsibility" and self-centeredness has crept into the church. Parents have often said to me, "I can't make my child go to church if they don't want to." Then they wonder why they don't want to go to church as adults. My own children will be 27 and 24 years of age soon and I still call and/or text to check on them, talk to them about what is going on in their lives, both in the natural as well as the spiritual realm. They may be out of the nest but they are not out of my care. And the bottom line is, I want to see them in Heaven. I think about that. I pray about that, and I stay involved in their lives because it is important to me. I see that the hour is late and the midnight hour is fast approaching and I want to know that my children are where they need to be, safe and secure. It may sound self-serving to say this, but I really question how many parents think along these lines. When they see their children going down the wrong path, do they say anything to their kids? I have to honestly say that I see many parents who know their kids are on the path to destruction and Hell, they sheepishly say, "all I can do is pray."  That is a lie from the pits of Hell itself! I promise you that if they knew an intruder was waiting inside their children's home to kill them, they'd be standing outside that home doing everything within their power to keep that child from entering that home. They would not sit at home and pray, but they'd physically intervene. If their child thought them crazy or became angry and cynical of their intervention and tried to enter that house, they'd persist and fight them if necessary rather than say, "well, I prayed." This is real. This is not a fairy tale and the fact is, it's not 10:00 PM, it's 11:50 on the spiritual clock and there are souls hanging in the balance!

Do you know where your children are?