Thursday, June 21, 2012

An Answer to Prayer

Not too long ago, I wrote about all the struggles I have been having in parenting our second son, Luke in my post, Courageous Parenting.  Since then, I've been praying like mad for him.  We've had some good days and some not so good ones (which are, sad to say, usually very funny given his mischievous personality!)  But yesterday, everything changed; it was the best day!

Luke decided to ask for forgiveness from God and has chosen to follow Jesus with his life!

There's not much better than that in this world!  After weeks of saying he doesn't care about rules and that he wants to be bad and do things his way, he made the best choice of his life.  I'm not saying all is said and done with him now since my precious Luke still has a lot of growing to do (as we all do, though) but he is now on the right track.

Luke has always been one to trust in his own abilities to figure out all of life's problems.  Some notable examples of this have been when he wanted to climb on top of the armoire by jumping on my bed to swing on the ceiling fan over to it.  He was going to use cushions to make sure he didn't get hurt.  Luke told me he would wear a helmet when he wanted to climb a tree.  He plans on biting anyone who tries to kidnap him; I have scars that prove this would be a singularly effective defence.  Yesterday, he told me that he had figured out death.  His plan:  Jesus would raise him from the dead like he did with Lazarus and how He did after His death on the cross.

While I did appreciate his biblical knowledge, I had to explain there were some fundamental problems with that plan.  First, Lazarus died again and stayed dead that time and Jesus is God so is therefore not bound by death.  Very rarely does it happen, but Luke got that look of deep concern in his eyes when he realizes all is not going along with his plan. 

With his illusion of control shattered, he, for the first time listened when I explained how we need grace and forgiveness and why following Jesus is the only way to get it and it is the best thing for us.  Deep conversation while we were matching socks and folding laundry together!  So when I asked him if that was something that he wanted to do, he ran away.  Not the response I was hoping for so I called after him asking again.  Still silence.

About a minute later, he ran back into the dining room smiling from ear to ear.  "I did it!  I prayed to God and told Him that I want to follow Jesus!"

Was totally not expecting that reason for the silence!  Luke decided that it was time so he just went and prayed all by himself!  "You told God you are sorry for all the bad things you have done?!" I asked.

"Oops!  I forgot!" and he disappeared again into the living room for another minute.

He came back with a ton of questions about God and I did the best to give him the four year old answers.  Luke wanted to know where God is and I explained that it is a little different since God is spirit and doesn't have a body like we do but that He is in heaven and now, since he decided to follow Him, God is in his heart.  Luke smiled and said, "I know; I can feel Him!"

It makes me cry with joy since I have been really worried about Luke these past few weeks (and year...) and I feel so blessed to have been able to see the huge answer to my prayers for him.

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