Coming to the Cross
Well let me tell you something, this week has been an exciting and spiritually fulfilling week not only for myself, but for my entire family. If you are a parent and have not had the opportunity to be an active part in one of your children coming to Christ, you are missing out on something huge. This weekend our son Gregory made that leap of faith and accepted Christ as his Savior, but I can tell you it was a process that my wife and I had felt and seen coming for weeks now I believe. There is nothing material in this world I would have rather experienced than him coming to Christ and I could not be happier for him.
The signs are really kind of subtle but in your face if you have a child who is seeking to give their life to Christ. As a parent, there are a plethora of situations throughout your children’s lives that you are expected to be ready to handle. One of those situations that I found out I was not ready to handle properly was guiding my child to the Lord. You see I think that Gregory had done everything he could to let me know what he wanted and was looking for me to confirm that for him and I just kept missing the early signs.
About a month ago or maybe more, I was in the pool cleaning and vacuuming my son just came out and said to me “dad guess what, I just prayed to God to forgive me for my sins and to help make me a better person.” Do you know what I did? I blew him off is what I did. Looking back now, I truly think that this was the moment that my son took Jesus into his heart and found his salvation. He was not prompted in any way to come out and say that to me, it was just something that was on his heart that he wanted to share and I didn’t catch it and missed my chance at that time. From that moment on Gregory’s attitude towards the Word and Jesus had changed.
Soon after the pool incident, my wife and I started to know a steady spiritual growth in Gregory as the days and weeks progressed. They were subtle and things that you can write off as a child being a child, but now that we look back at it they were the things we should have been picking up on. Gregory was all of a sudden extremely focused on saying grace at the table, wanting to learn more about the Bible and Jesus, and was periodically just jazzed up by some of the music that our worship band would play. I remember one Saturday in particular during the bands rehearsal my son telling me how much he loved one of the songs that was played, when I asked him “why” he told me “because it talks about Jesus and I love Jesus.”
This past week we enrolled Gregory in the connect class for our Church to let him learn more about Jesus and his personal relationship with Him. I also started to conduct a Bible study with the kids at night; it was during this Bible study last Friday that it finally hit me that I hadn’t been listening to my son. I asked Gregory to open us up in prayer and noticed that he was praying specifically to become a Christian by the end of the month. He was associating the act of becoming a Christian with the completion of this class from Church and Baptism alone. After the class I pulled him out to talk to Shannon and myself. We explained to him that becoming a Christian did not mean you had to complete a class and that it was something your heart will tell you when it is time. We also made the decision to have him talk to Mrs. Nicole at band practice in the morning.
Mrs. Nicole did get a chance to speak with Gregory the next day, and confirmed what we had thought. Gregory was right there on the edge just waiting to make that leap. The one thing about Gregory is that he is intelligent and was thinking too much about this. I know that he was thinking about that eternal commitment to Christ and that he understood that giving control of his life over to the Lord meant changes in his life. This kind of slowed him down a little.
This Sunday during service our family tried a new approach with our kids to attending the adult service. We took away the video games and had our children actually listen to the message being delivered by Pastor Greg. Well it went as expected causing my wife a lot of grief, since I was running the media booth and not sitting with her. About 10 minutes in I had to have Gregory come and sit with me in the booth. At this time I made him actually listen to the message and surprisingly he started taking notes. When the time came for the invitation I noticed that Gregory had gotten on his knees inside the booth and started praying. I explained to him at this time what the invitation period was for and asked him if he wanted to go to the front of the Church and pray at the Altar. He answered yes but asked if I would go with him. We went up and prayed and on the way back I asked him what he prayed for and he told me “for God to take away my sins and to take charge of his life.” I wasn’t going to miss this for a second time. I immediately asked him if he wanted to talk to Pastor Greg and have him say a prayer for him and Gregory said yes. It was all over from there, it was awesome watching Gregory answer the questions that Pastor Greg had for him. What was even better was seeing that he understood the gravity of the answers he was giving and he understood that he had to surrender to Christ and let Christ lead his life.
This was one of the most spiritually satisfying experiences I have ever encountered. Watching him go through this process has strengthened my faith and my family is stronger for it. The Lords Kingdom is being built up strong in our family and God is our life. There is nothing we won’t do or are unwilling to do for Him and we will happily give everything we have for Him. Now onto Zachary who is being our stubborn hold out, but as it was pointed out to us, God knows when and where Zachary will feel it in his heart and realize that the only way to live is to live through Christ. Thank you for reading and God Bless.
1 John 3:18-20 Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and actions. This is how we will know we belong to the presence, even if our conscience condemns us, that God is greater than our conscience, and He knows all things.
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