Every Family Needs a Faithful Dad: Restoring Hearts with Love

9. Part Six

11. Every family needs a faithful Dad who loves God and loves them!

12. Malachi 4

13. Malachi 4:1 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff;

14. Malachi 4:1 and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the Lord of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”

15. Malachi 4:2 “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings;

16. Malachi 4:2 and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.”

17. Malachi 4:3 “You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the Lord of hosts.

18. Malachi 4:4 “Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.”

19. Malachi 4:5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

20. Malachi 4:6 “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite

21. Malachi 4:6 the land with a curse.”

22. Every family needs a faithful Dad who loves Godand loves them!

23. I love the phrase from verse six:

24. “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”

25. What is the heart?

26. H3820לבlabeFeelings, the will and even the intellect; the core of who you are: to care for, consider, kind, mindful.

27. What does it mean to restore?

28. H7725שׁוּבshoobTo turn back or turnagain: (break, build, make) to call to mind, convert, deliver, fetch home, recover, refresh, repent, rescue, restore, retrieve.

29. Who will restore the heart?

30. How will the heart be restored?

31. We automatically think of the surface level, but there’s more there than that.

32. It is speaking on every level.

33. Total Restoration!

34. When we’re restored to our Heavenly Father, then other forms of restoration become available.

35. When our heart is changed, then we want everybody’s heart to experience the same thing.

36. Notice which hearts turn first and which turn in response.

37. I’m reminded of several scriptures!

39. Joshua 24:14 Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River

40. Joshua 24:14 and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

41. Joshua 24:15 If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve; whether the gods which your

42. Joshua 24:15 fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we

43. Joshua 24:15 will serve the Lord.”

44. Joshua 24:16 The people answered and said, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods;

45. Joshua 24:17 for the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did these great

46. Joshua 24:17 signs in our sight and preserved us through all the way in which we went and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed.

47. Joshua 24:18 The Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land.

48. Joshua 24:18 We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.”

50. Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.