Child Salvation

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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Mentoring the Kids

Kids First Family Bible Study

            Last night I started to implement our nightly Bible Study inside the house and I must say I think that it went well. I have decided to go with the Bible in a year program with the kids to see how they would be able to handle it and they did pretty good. The study/reading went for about an hour and the kids didn’t complain once, that is a first for me.

            We started with Genesis chapter 1 focusing on the creation of the earth and all that the earth encompasses. I was completely thrilled to see that even after reading the whole chapter, the kids were able to answer the questions that I had outlined for them with very little prompting. They were able to tell me what God created on each day for the first six days, they were able to tell me how many times God said “it was good” in the first chapter, and they were also able to summarize what the chapter was about. It was wonderful to see my kids actually compete over who would answer each question and to show excitement over hearing and reading the Word. Each one of the children took part in reading 4-5 verses at a time and were always eager to read more.

            We then moved to Mathew chapter 1 which focused on the lineage of Jesus and his birth. The lineage portion to the children was definitely harder for them to take in, but once we got to the circumstances around the conception and birth of Jesus the kids were all ears and just chomping at the bit to put their input in. I think the hardest part of this lesson was trying to explain why it was such a miracle that Mary was pregnant. My kids are young and we haven’t really covered sex education yet so trying to explain the importance of Mary being a virgin yet being pregnant was a little hard for me. Thank God for Anna who simply put it that Mary was a special girl who was given a special gift by God to be the mother of Jesus Christ who was put on this earth by His Father to die for our sins. If it wasn’t for her I probably would have had to have a sex education class to explain it. In addition the kids were able to properly identify that the lineage of Jesus tracked back 42 generations to Abraham, that Mary was given a special gift by the Holy Spirit, and that Joseph was told by an Angel of the Lord to marry Mary and name the child Jesus.

            Next came Ezra chapter 1 which focused on the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. This one was a little hard to explain to children so young. They were able to recognize that God commanded King Cyrus through Jeremiah to basically invite the exiles back to Jerusalem and allow them to worship God. They also were able to identify that those who had persecuted the exiles were compelled to give goods, gold, silver, and livestock to the exiles as they came back to help them out in the rebuilding of their homes and the House of the Lord.

            Finally we ended with Acts chapter 1 which focused on the events following the crucifixion of Jesus. Even though this was toward the end of the session the kids were definitely energized in this portion of the class. The kids really wanted to read and have their input heard here. They each were able to identify that Jesus had risen and was with the apostles for 40 days after his resurrection. They also were able to identify that the apostles went to Mount Olive for prayer, that Judas was punished for his betrayal of Jesus, and that Mathias was chosen to replace Judas as the 12^th apostle.

            Overall this was an extremely good experience for not only my children but also for me. It was spiritually fulfilling to see the kids excited to hear the Word and actively participate in discussion. What was even better was to hear Gregory come out of the room talking about how it was the best hour of his life. I will continue to flood my children with the Word as it is my duty. I learned in AWANA this week while working with the kids that it is said in Deuteronomy 6:6-7;  Basically put, teach my children about the Lord at all times. Thank you for reading and God bless.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7

These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

G.E.D.D.

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Changes

Drastic Changes

  Over this last weekend my wife and I had a few conversations about how we have drastically changed our family’s normal routine and life around the house. We also discussed some changes we would like to make within the home in the near future. For myself I can tell you that I am elated that all these changes revolve around God and the Church. I have listed below some of the changes that have been made and the ones that we are thinking about making here shortly.

    When my family and I started attending Church at First Baptist Church of Rosepine, it did not take long for us to make the decision that that was where we wanted to be. With that decision came our family’s first major change in the house. From the moment that we realized that was where we wanted to be spiritually, we made sure to revolve our schedules around God and the Church in every way. Our favorite days of the week quickly became Wednesday and Sunday. These are the days that we get to worship God with our Church body and see the people that we look forward to seeing all week. My wife and I were talking about it last night and it was definitely a conscious and deliberate decision to make, and believe me when I tell you it was not a hard one to make. In fact, when and if the occurrence happens that we are not able to attend ANY Church function, the sadness and sense of emptiness that is within us is almost sickening. We have both completely dedicated our lives to Christ and want to spend every minute glorifying Him.

   The second change that was made for us in the house was the decision to home school the children. We made this decision whole heartedly knowing that it was going to be a hard road to follow, but we made it to bring our family closer not only physically and emotionally, but also spiritually. We are able to have some quality one on one time with the kids involving their school work, not just a check the block thing that you get from doing homework with them. Even though the teaching is hard (mostly on my wife), there is a definite reward when one of your children unexpectedly says something in a public setting that shows that they are actually learning what you are teaching.

  One of the biggest changes our family has made is how we deal with all of our issues that come up in our lives now. We do not make any choices in our family anymore without first praying about it and following what is laid on our hearts. There have been opportunities here lately where I am definitely being tested and had I not taken a step back and prayed on the subject, I would have failed the tests. So we have definitely made it our priority to take a step back from all major decisions and pray about them as a family and seek His advice about what we should be doing.

   A major and drastic change that is coming in my house is going to be the limiting of the TV. There is no doubt in my mind that this will be one of the hardest changes to date since the TV has been burnt into our daily routine for so long. Starting tonight the kids and I are going to start the Bible in a Year program as part of our Bible study nightly. Hopefully this time will help to take away from the TV and help to teach my children more about the Lord and His Word. We will be reading together 4 chapters a night and I will do my best to teach them what they are reading. In addition we will really start to crack down on the amount of video games that they play, especially when it comes to Sunday’s. This day is a day for God and family so kids get ready to say Goodbye to your video systems.

   If you would have asked me a year ago if I would make these changes, I would have told you absolutely not. Now I couldn’t imagine our lives any other way. Everything in my life has gotten better since I found Christ and the Church and I guarantee that it will only get better. I am finding that the more of my life and vises that I give over to Christ the stronger my life gets and the love in my family gets stronger. If you haven’t made this leap yet I can only ask you WHY? What do you have to lose? It is not hard to say at all, I am a JESUS FREAK and I am proud of it. Thank you for reading and God Bless.

G.E.D.D.

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