1—Your Heartbeat Gives & Receives Influence

Influence—We all want to have it with our children, especially heart-level influence, but how do we know if we really do?

This is the first of a series of messages about the 10 functions of your relational heartbeat. The first function of your heartbeat is influence. Your heart is the place of influence, not only where you are influenced, but also where your children receive influence from you—from your heart to their hearts.

Influence is the ability to receive guidance and direction, and in turn give guidance and direction to another—your children, your spouse, maybe even a friend—at the heart-level. Are your children receiving heart-level guidance and direction from your parental influence that will form their character according to Christ?

How Do You Influence Your Children?

Let’s talk about how you influence your children. Do they readily hear you and happily cooperate with your direction and guidance? The measure they regularly do or regularly don’t is the measure of your influence. Most moms would say they have this kind of influence with their children. The challenge lies in knowing what is motivating your children’s response to your influence.

Are your children’s responses to you fear-induced or love-induced? It’s easy to be deceived by self-centeredness as you look at this. If love isn’t your reason, you aren’t actually exercising heart-level influence. And if your children don’t respond with a “want to” to obey you out of love, then they are not receiving heart-level influence from you.

Willing obedience comes from a heart that feels loved and understood in a relationship.

The Holy Spirit Is Our First Influencer

God wants to be the One who starts the “influence cycle” of our lives, and sets the standard for what we are influenced about, and what we influence our children about, as well as the spirit of our influence. When you allow God to influence you, you will know how to influence your children rightly toward you, and toward Him.

John 16:8 tells us that, when Jesus went to be with the Father, “The Holy Spirit was sent into the world to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.” Jesus sent the Spirit to influence us with conviction about our godless views concerning sin and righteousness.

Our Poor Judgment

We really have very little understanding about what is actually sin, and what is actually righteousness. When the Holy Spirit begins to convict our hearts, He shows us what poor judgment we have about our relational interactions, and clarifies to us what we are missing so we can cooperate with Him to set things right.

The Holy Spirit begins this work by showing us our fruit. Our relational fruit “tells on us”, revealing our poor judgment about right and wrong.

You can read more about the idea of our fruit “telling on us” in my book, Empowered—Healing the Heartbeat of Your Family.

An example of poor judgment is when we think that teaching Bible lessons is what will instill righteousness into our children and grow moral character in them. Or we think giving them a “biblical world view” is the answer to instilling biblical thinking and character in our children.

These are great ways to grow our children’s biblical knowledge base. However, the reality is that educating the intellect in isolation from educating the relational dynamic of the heart does not change the heart, or form the character toward Christlikeness, or even direct the will toward Christ’s heartbeat. This is a seriously poor judgment on our part.

While we may be trying to influence our children’s minds with what we think or what we want them to know, their inner response mechanism is set to receive from what flows from our heart. If your heart isn’t clear and acting out of a true love in how you relate with your children, then truth will have difficulty finding a landing place in their hearts.

Your Relational Fruit

Your relational fruit will direct your children’s lives much more than you know. Later on down the road, your children will respond to lessons of the intellect out of how they felt treated, understood and loved. Their understanding and ability to apply truths will always point back to their experience of the parent-child relationship while growing up.

In other words, either their particular take on any truth will be subtly twisted to serve the heart of flesh that never got corrected or instructed in childhood.

Or, your children will own an accurate view of truth and know how to apply it practically to their lives, all because they learned how truth works in a real and healthy relational dynamic. They experienced it over and over throughout their childhood.

Children won’t be empowered for their life in Christ unless the truth that changes lives and forms the person from the inside out began in their hearts first. Truth is always, always, always formed in the heart first. When it isn’t formed there, it isn’t actually there at all, no matter how much knowledge about God was taught their intellects. Truth lacks power to shape lives when there is no landing place for it to grow in the heart.

Ways the Holy Spirit Influences Your Heart

The Holy Spirit is showing you your poor judgment for how you’ve been educating your children or how you’ve been trying to instill character in them when He shows you that your relational fruit is directly linked to your misplaced methods.

You’re allowing the Holy Spirit to influence you when you’ve come to see that your attempts to instill truths only through intellectual avenues has been futile.

The Holy Spirit is influencing your heart when He shows you the behaviors of your family interactions.

You’re allowing the Holy Spirit to influence you when you’ve acknowledged that you had poor judgment concerning what you thought was appropriate behavior in how you interacted in your family and taught your children to do the same.

Some of you have experienced this already. You’ve seen bad relational fruit in your family and have agreed in your heart that it’s not right. You’re allowing the Holy Spirit to influence you about what He says is right and wrong.

You’ve been repenting and setting things right as you have inspiration, and you’re looking for answers for how to instill truth in your children that they will choose to live by.

When you responded truthfully in your heart and took truthful actions, you received the Holy Spirit’s influence to your heart.

Dear Heart, I know you want to live loved and loving, and I hope you are continuing to actively listen for and eagerly be open to the Lord’s influence in all areas and relationships of your life to practice loving ways. And I hope you recognize this work in your heart is all from the Holy Spirit’s merciful conviction.

I urge you to look at what kind of influence you are exercising toward your children. Is it borne out of a loving, un-self-centered heart? Never take for granted the holding of a child’s heart!

Are you engaging your kids with you at the heart-level, drawing them to you? Are they receiving your loving gestures, attempts to encourage them, and to instruct them? Do they love being with you?

Where are you allowing the Holy Spirit to influence you now as you journey toward Christ’s heartbeat? Please let me know in the comments below!

If you missed the introduction to this series of messages, you can find it here.

Coming up next week—“Your Heart Is the Seat of Conscience”