One Word From God Can Change Your Family by Kenneth Copeland, Gloria Copeland Read Free Book Online Page A

Bibles and started putting God’s laws and principles into operation in our families. It’s time we started doing things God’s way.
    What is God’s way? You can find it in Genesis 8:22. There, God tells us, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
What Seeds Are Being Planted in Your Child’s Heart?
    Seedtime and harvest. That is God’s method of operation in everything He does. It’s been His way since the beginning, and it will continue to be His way as long as this Earth remains.
    Seedtime and harvest is how you were saved. The principle of seedtime and harvest is what made it possible for you to have children in the first place. You planted seed and received a harvest. And seedtime and harvest is the method you must use to raise those children.
    Read Proverbs 4:20-23 and you’ll see what I mean. “My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”
    Those verses reveal exactly how everything in life comes to us. First, something is planted like seed in the ground of our hearts. How does it get into that ground? Through the eyes, the ears and the mouth. Those three avenues are actually gateways through which things gain entrance into our hearts.
    Once the seed is in the ground, it will grow and produce a harvest. If it’s good seed, it will produce a good harvest. If you don’t guard the ground, however, then you’ll get unwanted seed on it and things will begin to grow that you don’t want. But, one way or another, for better or for worse, you will get a harvest.
    If we, as Christian parents, want to have children and teenagers who will keep the faith, we cannot neglect this system of seedtime and harvest. As parents, we are responsible for guarding the hearts of our children until they grow to the point where they can accept that responsibility themselves. We must watch over what is being planted in them because when they are young, the ground of their hearts is wide open to any and every kind of seed. And those seeds will become the forces that establish the kind of person they will grow up to be.
    I don’t want my daughter watching MTV, because I’m guarding her heart. I don’t want her listening to lustful music, because I’m guarding her heart. I don’t want those kinds of influences going in her eyes and her ears because I don’t want her to grow up thinking and acting like some ungodly rap musician. I want her to grow up to be a woman of God.
    Of course, guarding against unwanted seed is only part of our job as parents. We must also be planting good seed in our children’s hearts. We must do what is necessary to give them an inheritance of faith that’s strong enough to sustain them when they grow up.
    If I want my daughters to enjoy a lifetime of victory in the Lord, I have to make sure they understand what I understand about the Word of God. I must see to it they have a revelation of how to prosper. I must be sure they know how to get healed and how to get ahead—not by depending on other people to make them successful, but by depending on faith in God.
    It’s much more important for me to leave an inheritance of faith to my children than it is for me to leave them a financial inheritance. If I leave them an inheritance of faith, they can get every material thing I ever had—and much more!
    The New Testament tells us about one particular young man who received such an inheritance of faith. His name was Timothy, and he pastored some of the great, early churches that were started by the Apostle Paul. In 2 Timothy 1:3-5 Paul wrote to him and said:
    ...without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day; Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of