We Are Prepared for Take-Off!
Having discovered some unsolicited text messages on my middle school daughter’s phone that made my heart stop and my blood boil, I was ready to put on my boxing gloves and deal directly with the culture that my child was facing. Instead of the brawl that I had anticipated, the Holy Spirit quieted me long enough to allow this incident to be a spring board into learning more about the world that my teens step into everyday when the walk though those large glass and steel doors of school. That night we talked. We cried. We prayed.
Long after the clock struck midnight, I found myself crawling into bed with a swirl of emotions: happy that my kids were trying to swim upstream instead of flowing down the torrential waters of sex, drinking and drugs, sad that they felt so alone in this place and trepid about all that they would still need to face in the years ahead. I found myself falling to sleep crying out to Jesus to make Himself more real to them than they had ever known.
In the days that followed, it seemed my senses were even keener to everything around me that scream out the mantra of this world. The continual cry to give in to anything and everything that gives a moments pleasure was louder than before. Nuggets of information from this late night talk came back to me. Evidence that the values of this world was seeping into their hearts and minds became more apparent. I began to feel stronger than ever that the time of influence with my kids was short and priceless and I would have to be more diligent than ever to prepare them for that day when they will depart from our home and be on their own.
As I was reading my Bible, I remembered a prayer that Jesus prayed for His disciples as He prepared to send them out on their own. As I found the chapter of John 17, I was amazed at how easily there was a correlation between Jesus sending off His disciples and how one day Greg and I will do the same with kids. I began to list the things Jesus had done or prayers that He had prayed. I found seven items in my list just as there are seven letters in the word prepare. One item for every day of the week. Maybe that is how Jesus intends for me to approach this preparation time – one day at a time. Over the next seven days, let’s look at Jesus’ plan and see how they can also help us to prepare our beloved children for the day when they will serve Him on their own. Take some time and read John 17 and share with me some of the things you discover about Jesus’ plan for preparation.
