The next Generation is rising!

 The next generation is rising!

Today my son and I were in my study talking and playing together. I had been worshipping Jesus while he played upstairs with his toys when he suddenly knocked and came to find me. Callum then asked me if he could pray with me and my heart jumped.

 I love how my son is growing more and more interested in Jesus and prayer and how he is always asking me questions about God. As we lay on my study floor together with our pens and paper waiting for the Holy Spirit to speak to us both I began to see the importance of making prayer not only accessible to my 5 year old son but also fun and real.

We started off waiting on the Lord for pictures, things that we felt God saying and then we drew the picture and explained what we felt God was saying to us both. It was lovely, just hanging out with Jesus and my young son. I felt the word ‘worship’ drop into my heart and wondered if God wanted me to teach my son about worship, but, I then realised that actually this was worship. 

Callum drew a picture of Jesus on the cross and then asked me if I would pray with him but first he wanted to pray for me. This was his prayer;

“ Lord Jesus, help my daddy to be a better daddy by being more like Jesus”

Callum then looked up at me and said “ I want you to teach me what Jesus does and what He did because I don’t know and you do daddy”

My heart melted and I just wept, I have been watching recently and hearing my son tell me things about Jesus that I have never told him, he has been talking non stop about Jesus dying on the cross and how “I want you to tell me about Jesus dying every day”

The verse that came to me was when Jesus tells Peter that he is blessed because man did not reveal to him the simple truths he was proclaiming but God Himself revealed these things to him.

As we prayed, talked, read the children’s bible together and enjoyed the worship music in the background, I suddenly realised that God really does love the little children, it is pure worship when we invite them into a relationship with the Lord and help them to discover Him for themselves.

My son told me this “ If Jesus didn’t love us we wouldn’t love Him would we daddy”? (We love Him because He first loved us)

“If you have something mean to say in your head you’re not supposed to say it are you daddy”? (There is life and death in the power of the tongue)

Apparently 2 bigger boys were mean to him when he was playing recently and although he had something mean to say back he choose not to say it. I don’t know about you, but this challenged me to the bones, I mean, how amazing would it be if we all followed the simple, effective and anointed wisdom of this 5 year old boy who seems to be receiving personal training from His heavenly Father. I am so inspired to lift my game, to continue to seek the Lord and reveal the Lord to another generation of hungry hearts.

If you have children then please see the importance of involving them in your personal relationship with Christ, invite them to join you in the secret place and make it fun and intimate with them, not religious and boring and dead. We seem to have made ministry today all about a platform and that just simply is NOT it! And if we raise up yet another generation of gifted platform ministers but those ministers are absent fathers, then we will have missed it completely. It is about living a daily life for and with Jesus Christ, revealing Him wherever we go, being Him to those around us and partnering with the Father in His plans to raise up another generation of authentic christians. Our sons and our daughters are always His before they are ours and we owe it to God, and to them, to teach them the timeless values of true christianity and relationship with Jesus.

If we are spending loads of time alone with God and doing various activities and exploits for God but not spending regular, intimate, undistracted and priceless time with our children then I would question the authenticity of our idea of who God is and what God is like. To believe that God the Father is not more interested in your relationship with your children than He is with your ministry/calling is a misunderstanding of who God really is.

Together we can raise up the next generation of Jesus lovers xXx

God bless you all

Rob Joy