Make Disciples

A few nights ago I put my oldest daughter to bed. She’s seven years old. I left her room and had to go downstairs to grab something. As I came back up I could hear her singing in her room. I didn’t go in, I just stood outside her door and listened to hear what the song was. I proceeded to hear her pouring her heart out to Jesus. She was quoting verses she knows from the Bible, proclaiming truths about God, the world, and herself. Things like how she knows God holds the world together, how He spoke it all into being, how He made the whole universe. She was proclaiming how much she knows He loves her. That Mommy and Daddy love her, but she knows God loves here “a million billion times more”. She didn’t know how that was possible, but that it was and she loved Jesus that much too. She was praising Him for the things in her life, thanking Him for all He has done for her. It was the most beautiful song I had ever heard. I was standing outside her song weeping, because my daughter understood so much more about God that I was even aware. I was encouraged, since 2020 and our lives centering around Jesus and serving Him, that it had that significant an impact in her life. That she hears the things we talk about, that she understands the things she reads in her Bible and is able to apply them as truth in her life. She just recently was gifted a kids translation of the full Bible and it’s her favorite book to read. She brings it everywhere. She will sit and read it with my wife, they are studying Romans together. She reads it with her friends who also have that same Bible. I stepped away from her door and went to my room. I began, through tears, to tell my wife what our daughter had just been doing. Bearing her heart to the Lord in the most innocent and beautiful way I had ever seen. It reminded me of Mark 10 and Luke 18 where Jesus says unless we receive the Kingdom of God like a child we will never enter it. How many times do we over-analyze things or over-complicate the way God does things and miss what He’s trying to do. We need to have that faith like a child. Really believe what the Bible shows us about God’s heart for us. The truths of Ephesians 1 and 2 should be so real in our hearts that we just believe it. Why do we doubt that God really loves us and wants the best for us, when He says it over and over again in His Word. A couple of years ago He had me reading John 13-17 over and over. It gave me a much deeper understanding of the level of God’s love toward us. That while we were yet sinners, He came and died for us because He wants to restore relationship with Him. He longs for that connection with us that He had with Adam in the garden prior to sin entering in. John 17 is Jesus praying to the Father, that us as believers, would be in as deep of a connection with the Father as Jesus was. He longed that we could experience the deep, intimate love they share together. Not only with God, but with those around us that are also pursuing God. This one song from my seven year old, led me to re-evaluate where I am with God. I’ve stepped out of that closeness slightly, in all the life changes of recent. It reminded me that I need to return to the simple trust and belief that He knows me, wants what’s best for me and longs for me to come to Him constantly. I was also reminded of Proverbs 22:6 “Start a youth out on his way, even when he grows old he will not depart from it.” As parents Making Disciples begins with our children. They are our number one disciples. We should be teaching them to walk out the Christian life. How to read their Bible and have a love for it. How to praise the Lord in good and bad. Understanding their identity as sons and daughters of the King of Heaven. I’m overjoyed to see my kids begin to step into these things at such a young age. I pray that they never lose that innocent, heartfelt love for God. I hope that they grow up seeing Him in their lives so consistently that they would never want to walk away. If you are a parent, begin to pour into your kids. God has given them to you as a blessing and it is our job to steward them to Him well. If you are struggling with that, begin to develop it for yourself first. Get alone with God and cultivate a friendship with Him. As you do that for yourself, it will begin to spill out into your interactions with your kids. They will see how you spend time with Him. How you pursue Him. How you walk out what you say you believe. They are sponges and absorb so much of that without us even talking to them about it. Disciple your kids, but become one as well. Depend on God how your kids depend on you. They don’t worry about how bills will be paid, how they will eat dinner, how they will have clothes for school. You do that for them. God does the same for us, if we just trust Him like our kids trust us. He desires to be our Father, our Protector, our Provider, our Mentor, our Comforter.

• written by Eddie Chamberlain