In the Bible, the book of Mark talks about having the faith of a child. I know as an adult, I am convicted that I try to figure things out myself and make things happen my way instead of just having faith that God will take care of it. We are seeing more and more examples from Ella Claire and Carter of that child-like faith talked about in the Bible.
The past 2 weeks, our church has entered a series of sermons on prayer. We are learning as a congregation exactly how to pray and how meaningless
repetition is pointless in prayer. We talked in our SS class about having our children say the same blessing and nighttime prayer over and over each day. As parents we all discussed the value in teaching our children to pray and they need these "God is great" and "Now I lay me.." prayers to start learning. We have started this past week to do away with the "God is great" prayer at meal time. Now we go around the table and the kids have to pick something from their plate to pray and thank God for...that way their prayers are more specific. The same thing at night time...we ask them what they want to thank God for from the day. It never fails...Carter is always going to say.."I want to pray for you mom." Even though it is
repetitious, we know Carter's heart and he is truly thankful for his mama and wants to thank God for me each night. He always adds something else he is thankful for too. Last night, he was thankful for going to Aunt Wendi and Uncle Mark's to play with Banks, and on his own he prayed and asked God to help him be a good listener. Ella Claire usually wants to pray for her bunny that she sleeps with and thank God for it and she chooses a favorite part of her day to thank God for as well. As we ended our prayer time last night, Lance was closing and in his prayer he was thanking God for Ella Claire and Carter and thanked God that Carter has begun to have a heart for prayer and for God to draw him closer to Him. When Lance said "Amen" Carter said..."God can't draw me Daddy." Again...the faith of a child...their minds are so simplistic. So Lance had Carter stand up in front of him and he reached out his hand and pulled him into a hug. He explained to Carter that this was what he meant to "draw" him in.
We were upstairs in the playroom on Saturday morning and the kids were playing with their new markers on the dry erase board. Ella yelled for us to come and look at what she had drawn. She had drawn a cross and began to tell us the story of how Jesus died on that cross for us. Again...the child like faith.
Carter got a new part for his train table for Christmas and he and Lance were going to set it up on Saturday night...we had promised him this would happen. Well...Lance was on call with the hospital and got called into work, so they did not get to put his train together. At our prayer time, Carter was heart-broken. He realized it was bedtime and his train was not put together. Lance sat down in front of him and explained that as the head of our house, he is required by God to have a job to provide for his family. Part of his job, is working as unto the Lord and when they called him, he had to go help the people at the hospital. We aren't sure if Carter understood what he was trying to explain, but he went to bed and that train set was put together Sunday afternoon!
