Thursday, January 08, 2009

The wonderful things my kids teach me about God

I had a story for Jackson and Mollie Jane that really hit me this week. Bible Study Fellowship is a wonderful, extremely disciplined, scriptural study that the kids and I have been involved in the last four year. It has taught me so much but probably the main thing is how much I can stand to learn about my relationship with Christ. My children have loved it as well and I seriously cannot wrap my brain around all the concepts and scripture they are learning. They both take it so seriously. They have a little class they go to every week and they learn and study the same lesson that I do. One of my favorite things is how disciplined the kids teachers are to pray for my children and my leader and group are to pray for me. I welcome all the prayers I can get for my kids in this crazy world in which we live to help them grow up to have a deep relationship with their Saviour. My favorite story to explain this point is from last year. Jackson was in the four year class and his teacher had a spiral notebook where she wrote all the prayers for the children in her class all year. She had written a prayer down for Jackson when she got her class list before she had ever met him. Every week she continued praying for him. Last year my Mom gave Jackson a Bible for his birthday. It was such a special present to him and he truly loved it. I would and still catch him in the morning just flipping through his Bible trying to pick out words he can read and checking out the pictures. He insists on bringing it with him every week to BSF and to church. He always says in his most serious voice "this is God's true word" to almost anyone who asks him about his Bible. His BSF teachers had noticed this specialness with Jackson and his Bible. His teacher pulled me aside a few weeks after his birthday last May and said I just have to show you this. She showed me that first entry in her prayer journal (which I didn't read the other entries for the other kids but noticed that each of the dozen of kid's listed had different prayers). I read what she wrote down on that first entry for Jackson. Her prayer was that "Jackson would hide God's true word upon his heart." She looked at me and said "God hears our prayers and he answers them, doesn't He?"
How thankful I am to my kids teachers for praying for them and when will I quit underestimating the importance of prayer for myself and those around me. Thank you God for hearing our prayers and answering them.

Mollie Jane's story was a few days ago coming home from Bible Study Fellowship. Our lesson that week was on Moses seeing God's image and Moses talking to God on the mountain for 40 days. It had not been a particularly great week for me with stress and just lots of things going on. I had been thinking about how much I wanted to go on a mountain and talk to God face to face and see him. I just felt like if I could do that like Moses my problems wouldn't seem so heavy. God why can't you make yourself accessible to me in the same way you did to Moses? It seems so much easier sometimes.
In the car, I was asking Mollie Jane about her lesson and what she learned. She told me about Moses on the Mountain and then she said "I talked to My God on my pillowcase." They have a little quiet/prayer time where the children lay down on their pillowcases and pray to God. She then proceeded to talk about John and Sally and how they don't like to talk to God on their pillowcases and they cried. (I assume they don't love the lay down quiet part of the day). I asked her what she said to God and she responded "I just wave to him and he waves back to me Mommy." I can just picture Mollie Jane on her Dora pillowcase at quiet time waving her chubby little hand up towards God. From that precious response, I realized from my two year old that God was reminding me while I can't always see Him the exact way that I want to see him if I would take may own agenda out of it I could be reminded that I can actually see him.

1 comment:

Shawna said...

Al,

Your sweet blog made me cry! I truly believe that God gives us kids so that we draw closer to him. In watching my kids I can imagine how much God loves us and rejoices when we get it right! I miss you friend! You are in my prayers! Hang in there sister and send me pictures of your cute bump!

Love you! Shawna