My Prayer for My Children

We all love to hear amazing stories of struggle and victory…of rising out of some difficult circumstance…of triumph over the worst of situations

As a Christian, I’ve often been powerfully moved by the testimony of somebody who lived the worst kind of life imaginable, but who changed to become a powerful soldier for the Kingdom of God.  I think we all gravitate to these kinds of stories.  What could be better than a dramatic transformation?

I don’t have that kind of testimony.  The story of how I became a Christian would probably not become a best-seller in the Christian book market.  In fact, I used to get quite embarrassed when someone would ask me how or when I became a Christian.  Honestly, I can’t remember.

I grew up in a family where my Dad would read to us from the Bible at breakfast every day.  My Mom would read Bible stories to me on a regular basis.  I heard about Jesus and his love for me from the time I was an infant.  I never needed to be convinced to love Jesus…from the training I received as a child, I just grew up loving Him.  Loving Jesus came about as naturally to me as breathing.

Does it make a dramatic story or a great read?  Perhaps not.  Sometimes I have wished that I could say I had once been a drug addict, or a murderer, or a bank-robber before God got ahold of me…but I don’t wish that anymore.  I’m thankful for a “boring” story.  It means that I was spared the heartache and misery of those who had the so-called more exciting testimonies!

I’m thankful for parents who love God, and who love me enough that they taught me to love God too!

I’m not trying to say that my life has been perfect.  Far from it!  I have made my share of poor choices.  I’ve spent more than enough time in my life ignoring God.  This has never been because God abandoned me, but more accurately, because I have wandered away from God.  Thankfully, He’s always been willing to welcome me back!!

I’m a parent now, with 3 boys of my own.  My prayer for my boys is that they will each have a “boring” testimony.  I pray that each of them will love God as easily as they draw breath.  I pray that when they wander (and we all wander sometimes), that they will find their way back without too much heartache in the meantime.

For this prayer to be answered, I need to do my part too, of course.  If I don’t teach my boys my faith…if I don’t read to them the stories of the Bible…if I don’t encourage them to discover the Word of God on their own, I will have failed them.  So part of my prayer for my children is that I won’t be a failure in sharing my faith.  My older 2 sons have already expressed their love for Jesus.  My youngest son is still a toddler, so he doesn’t have the words to express, yet, if he already loves Jesus.  However, even for our youngest, Bible stories are a regular part of his daily routine.

Proverbs 22:6 tells us, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

I guess my prayer for my children could be summed up in that one verse.

Stickers for Dishes

I love my church.  I love the pastor of my church.  I love the passion that Russ has for the Word of God, his passion for the lost, and his passion for the less fortunate of our community.  Pastor Russ has a large ambition:  he wants us to be a church that changes the world.  Perhaps this seems like an overly lofty goal…how can one church in a small Canadian city impact the entire planet?  One step at a time.  If the individuals in our church start to look at the needs of those around us, we can change our community.  If those in our community begin to look at the needs of those around them, we’ll change our province.  Our province can affect change in our nation.  Our nation can change the world!  In the past year, Russ has regularly spoken of the “Quartet of the Vulnerable”.  This includes widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor.  In the past year or so, among other things our church has partnered with Hands On Ministries (an organization that works with inner-city street kids), and has been helping a refugee family from Myanmar to adjust to life in Saskatoon (and is working on helping them to bring more of their family members to Saskatoon as well).

Sometimes as individuals, we wonder, “What can I do?”  ”How can I be an agent of change in my church/community/world”?  Start by looking at the small things you can do.

In the province of Saskatchewan, there is a chain of grocery stores (C0-Op) that runs a promotion each year for their customers.  They started this promo 2 years ago by offering knives to customers who collected enough stickers (different knives were worth a different amount of stickers).  Last year they offered pots and pans in the same way.  This year the offer is for plates, bowls and cups.  Stickers are collected by spending money on groceries at the store (for each $10 spent, one sticker is earned).  This year’s promotion just began a few day ago, and will run til mid June.

My wife and I were in need of knives…our old set of sharp knives could barely cut warm butter (OK, they weren’t that bad, but they weren’t in the best shape anymore), and the pots and pans were greatly appreciated as well.  Plates, bowl and cups, though?  We have more than we need already.  So my wife came up with an idea:  She suggested that we should collect the stickers as usual, and then get some dishes for a needy family in our community…or perhaps for the family members still to come over from Mynamar.  The needs in our city are numerous enough that finding a recipient shouldn’t be too difficult.

We recognized that, although we can contribute some, we likely couldn’t contribute an entire set of dishes on our own.  So we decided to involve our church and other friends in the city.  If numerous people were to “join forces” in sticker collection, we might be able to provide an entire set of dishes for a family…or maybe multiple sets for multiple families!

I know that some of the readers of this post will be from the Saskatoon area, and for those of you who live in the Saskatoon area:  if you’re interested in helping us out in this endeavour, I’d encourage you to leave a comment at the end of this post.

For those of you who live elsewhere, you might not  be able to help us out, but you can do things to help the needy in your own communities.  Do you have growing kids?  Consider taking the clothing that your children have out-grown and donate them to an organization that helps out young moms who can’t afford to clothe their children.  Or have a garage sale and instead of using the money for yourself, consider donating it to a local charity.  Or…find your own creative way of doing something for the betterment of somebody else.

“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor.’” (Zech. 7:9-10)

What better way to ‘not oppress’ than by actively seeking ways to help them out?