Good morning.

Over the past years, if you think back, we have spoken about many things. If you were to have a record of all the things you have discussed together before turning on the tape recorder for these talks, that itself would be valuable to you. You could look back and see that your life, even on the family level, is not a simple or easy thing. You are asked to take responsibility as parents on so many different levels, and I know that at times it can be overwhelming. But at the end of your discussions, when you begin taping and we talk together, we always come back to the same couple of points. I do want to remind you this morning of the sacredness of the Parent-child relationship, because it is in that place of coming together between parent and child that there is gained a great calm, a great strength, and a great framework with which to face life.

Last night you went to your friends’ home, and you could see their little boy running to his mom every few minutes just to touch her and get back in contact after his little journeys out and away from her, maybe to the kitchen with the nanny or to play basketball with his elder brother. But that little two-year-old boy would come back quickly to his mother, just to touch her, needing to be with her, assuring himself that Mamma is there as his foundation. If you took that mother away, well, you know the reality: He would cry very deeply and be shaken. And if she stayed away for many days, months, and years, and then if Papa was gone also, his life would have no sense of growth and of that rich foundation. His life would just become one of survival, like a little bear cub in the forest who has no mother, trying to avoid being killed by some predator or trying to find something to eat, and his life would become very tragic. And so, the issue of the parent-child relationship is critical. Also, without going into specific detail, you are learning the reality of that larger family that you have seen so much of in the past. And again, the question of parent-child relationship comes into heart.

Look at your own family. You as parents are now in a period of a lot of reflection as to the reality of the parent-child relationship. It’s not a theory. It’s not a belief or just a conviction that it should be a certain way. The parent-child relationship is an absolute reality, beyond any belief, beyond any convictions or whatever. The reality that you must face when you sit down to speak with your children becomes very apparent. And so, I want to tell you that the world itself truly turns on the axis of that parent-child relationship. I made you, ultimately, to be parents -- not preachers, not missionaries, but parents. That is your most important job in the world because it has to do with the future. Your own children become tomorrow’s parents. And while your own lives, W and H [wife and husband], will produce rich things for history (things that come out of your own selves beyond your own role as parents or children or whatever), if you have committed yourselves in marriage to one another, and if you have committed yourselves to having children, then those children will become a central theme in your lives. And the raising and the helping of those children to become the best human beings they can be cannot ever be forgotten.

This is the tragedy of today. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke about the young woman who had an illegitimate child whom she dumped into a garbage can. What a tragedy! The commitment of man and woman together and of parents to children is a very serious and profound matter, because each child is a son or daughter of God. It’s an awesome responsibility for you as parents. I know that the responsibility is all the more complex for fallen humanity because the parents are not in contact with Me. I must say to you that historically it’s almost one hundred percent sure that the contact with Me is genuinely weak. Yet, this parent-child relationship is critical to the restoration of the world.

For many men and women who have participated in this work of restoration, there has been a common tragic theme, which is that while they were ready to rush out to save people in other countries or go to the mission field and sacrifice themselves, there was a failure in so many cases to understand that their own children would carry on long after they were buried in the ground. The children would become the estimony to the parents. And so, in many, many cases the children were lost and even felt hostile to the parents’ lifestyle, feeling that their mom and dad just worked for God and Jesus. In one way, the parents’ way of life was wonderful, but the children wonder why the parents’ didn’t spend more time or even use the little time they had to give their children something of quality from their hearts. This is a weak point of many of those who have worked in the restoration throughout history. They became caught with the many responsibilities of their various offices and taken up with the profound nature of working for God, but they forgot that, ultimately, God is not just some great CEO or king or universal being who wants them to perform glorious deeds, but that God is a father and mother.

And I have to tell you [tearfully] that the greatest thing for Me is to be a father and a mother. There is no greater joy. You call Me the Creator. The greatest thing I could ever create would be something that was so fully and completely in My own image -- My own children. And so, the greatest act you can perform in your lifetime is the reproduction of what I did -- having your own children. And yet, so many times the children have been forgotten or, as religious people say, sacrificed.

Yet, the meaning here of the word "sacrifice" is so important. The idea of sacrificing has not been understood, and many have felt that sacrifice simply equals abandoning or leaving behind to carry on some "greater work for God." No. To make a sacrifice means to lay something on the altar and make a profound offering. This must be done with your whole heart and mind. Yes, it may involve a physical separation many times; it may involve saying goodbye for a certain amount of time. But so many parents have simply been proud that for X-number of days during the year they were away from their family in the name of God and, therefore, they did something great. This can easily turn into pride, just making the self grand or built up in a way that is not of Me. So, again, I come back to the essence of the word "sacrifice." The key is not physical separation from your family necessarily; it’s how you regard your family and how you place your family in line with the providence of God, My providence. The key is how deeply you recognize the sacredness of the relationships, and then you can recognize the tremendous opportunity you have to share the same experience that I have had. It’s in that relationship with your own children that the greatest restoration can take place, because it most closely resembles the essence of My relationship with you. Do you understand.

Yes, it is honorable to rush around to different parts of the world recognizing that those in Africa or Russia, those in Australia or the islands of the sea are My children and that you go to represent Me to My children all over the world. It is indeed a wonderful thing that people can do this. But, again, I tell you that if it is at the expense of your relationship with your own physical children, then there is a blind spot in your service. H, you know this as you look back at your earlier life in the World Mission Department. You can check your heart and you know where your weak spot was. While you were rushing around in many ways to serve Me,

I saw clearly when you came home how incapable you were of really giving your heart fully and deeply to your own family. You did not truly recognize that, as much as that person whom you cried and prayed with in that foreign country is My child, these children who live in your own home also are My children and need your tears and your heart just as much. Of course, I know, parenting your own children is difficult because your expectations are so high, but you must know them.

If I were to look at you in just the external sense and at some of the things that you do in your life, I’d be angry -- ready to spank you 24 hours a day! But I have an advantage that perhaps you, as a parent, do not have. I live inside of you, and so I know your deepest heart. I’ve studied you fully. I know you very well, better than anyone, and that’s why I can bear with you. And I’ll never leave you. So, when you look at your children, you have to make that special effort to come to know them. This doesn’t mean that you should accept everything they do, anymore than it means that for Me. I know you fully, but that does not mean I am satisfied and proud. No. By knowing you fully, by having invested in each of you, I can help you take the steps you need to take in order to become a true man and a true woman. And so, you, too, need to take that time and have that intensity to know each one of your kids.

You may not have a great quantity of time, but intensity can sometimes provide great learning within even just a few minutes, whereas lack of intensity will not provide a depth of learning even in many days. So, the intensity of your heart is important. And when your children feel that from you, they can never forget it. It becomes an anchor for them. They always know they can come back. Even if they’re eighty years old and if by some good fortune you’re still alive, they can come back to that heart, to that part of you, that parent that you are, to share themselves, to bring even the most difficult thing. Such intensity of heart is not an easy thing, I know, but it is in that parent-child relationship that you will come to know Me more fully.

There are no exceptions in the world. This is true for each and every family, however famous or obscure, however rich or poor, whoever they are; there are no exceptions. And when you see the results in families you observe, you can say to yourself, "Now I see something about the intensity or the lack of intensity in the relationship between those parents and those children." Please understand what I mean by the word "intensity," because there are different kinds of intensity. Sometimes parents can be very intense with children -- not intense to understand them or, to know them, but perhaps intense with their own agenda for the child. This doesn’t help.

Now, there are many things you as parents want to tell your own children to help them be able to avoid making mistakes, to be able to go ahead, to take steps more quickly, to make progress. But, on the other hand, as you know very well, you can’t just sit them down and list those wonderful points of wisdom you have: A-B-C, 1-2-3. It’s not quite that simple. The foundation to communicate needs to be built on that reaching out of your heart. They may bring many things to you that seem to your parental mind to be ridiculous, silly things. When people pray to Me every day, they pray for some of the most ridiculous things. But I hear those prayers, and through those prayers I try to find something I can touch in that person to help them grow. If I just condemn them for bringing stupid things to Me, do you think that’s going to help them? Then they feel that even God doesn’t want to listen. So, as parents -- My life and your life -- it is not an easy thing; it demands the highest virtue.

It doesn’t take overwhelming virtue to go out to another country and spend a few months or years with people of that nation, testifying about the love of God. Of course, it does take a good amount of commitment and virtue, but I tell you, in the lifelong relationship that you have with your own children, much more virtue will be demanded of you; much more growth will be demanded of you. Because, I tell you again, it is a replaying of My relationship with you. When you look back at how you have had to develop your relationship with Me in order to, in a sense, become to your own children what I am to you, then you can see the central nature of that relationship within those three generations: Myself, yourself, your children. That is central. And so, whatever glories you have had in your so-called missions with other people, finally, when your life comes to its close, it will be your children who will give the most central testimony to you in their lives and in their memories. It is important to recognize this fact and to be sensitive to it.

Historically, now is the time when the true family is needed more than ever before, and when I say "true family" I speak of the tradition as it is spread throughout so many families in the world. This goes far beyond simply bringing the children up in a certain external tradition. It really comes down to the heart of your relationship with Me and the heart of your children’s relationship with you. So, those three generations are critical.

Please pray for the situation that you have been seeing in the last week, because it is potentially a very tragic state of affairs. If anything, this is a building period, a time of hope, a time of great growth, so I ask you to join with many and pray sincerely for that situation. It doesn’t help for you to just be shocked and then walk away and shake your head, but it does help when you can lift your prayers and your heart of deep reconciliation. And also try to learn from what you see. Learn deeply and see it clearly with open eyes objectively, fully. You must. And then you can learn very valuable lessons for your own lives.

I’m going to leave you with that this morning and we will meet in a few days. Stay with Me. I am with you. Stay with Me day by day. You have a full week coming up. You have many pressures, many challenges, but don’t leave the wheel of your ship; otherwise you can’t steer it in the right direction. If you just go running around on the decks saying, What’ll we do? What’ll we do?, well, your ship’s going to run into an iceberg. So, please stay at the wheel of your ship, both of you, and trust each other to steer it well. If you don’t see where to go, talk to one another and talk to Me and we can take it to a safe harbor sooner or later. I’d like to close this morning and ask W to pray.