A Prayer for the Children (excerpt from tape "Who Put Jesus on the Cross")

It was our sin that put Jesus on the cross. But...His bruises ended in our healing. Shouldn't our response to this incredible sacrifice be a sense of our own unworthiness and deep gratitude with an awe and a joy and a confidence of our future? Our hearts are to be free to worship Him wholly.

4/17/1997

There are many young ones that have been entrusted to our care. The youngest ones, especially, don’t yet know the fullness of the inheritance of what Jesus has done for them. So we want to pray together for them, as well as for some of the older ones that haven’t yet seen the splendor of Jesus’ majesty and holiness.

Father, together with everyone, I want to lift up to You the children that You have given us and allowed us to love on, learn from, and grow with. I ask that You would take special care and special account, and keep a special watchful eye over each and every one of them. Please cause them to have opportunity in their lives each day to see Your Son. Give them a glimpse, just to be able to get a chance to see You, love You, and know who You are. I pray that You would pour out wisdom, direction and peace for all the adults, so that we would know how to teach them, raise them, and train them up. I ask that You would give a revelation of Your Son to each of the children that don’t know You yet. Please set out a path and a course for them to find You in a very real way.

Father I ask that I may know that each of them, at one point or another, come to the scandal of seeing their own hearts, their rebellion and their sin against You. Please take them to that place and draw them through it. Bring them out on the other side of knowing Your love, Your goodness, Your kindness and Your faithfulness. Father please do this for the sake of Your Son. Do this so that Your Kingdom might be built and so that our children will be a generation that would praise Your name and lift You up. Please Father, I ask that you give these things as we are gathered together in your name.

I know that there is a lot of responsibility, Father. We can’t really accomplish anything in the process of showing Jesus to another person. Nor can we show You to the person that is inside of them. We can’t accomplish anything; there is no tricky way or committed way to do the task, whether it’s with adults or children. For You to open eyes is an act of Your grace and kindness. We do know, Father, that we can either hinder the process or speed it up by the amount of love and devotion we have in our hearts toward You. So Father, we pray that You would do the things necessary in us, even if it’s the hard way, for us to learn how to love You, abandon ourselves into Your care, and trust You. We ask that our children and others would catch us loving You and loving each other at times when it’s not the slightest bit religious, planned, or simply external. Rather, let them see the overflow of our hearts. We want those around us in the world or in our homes and neighborhoods to stand back in wonderment at what You have done with cruddy, selfish, stupid people like us. Please do this so that they would know You have passed this way and so that they would desire what we have.

Father, please touch our lives. Let us see into the children’s hearts, into their minds, into their little beings. Don’t allow us to only see them as objects to be tended to like laundry, or dinner preparation, or house cleaning. Help us to see into their little tender hearts and minds, to feel what they feel. In this way, they will know Your Love, as we grow in our love for You, Jesus, and for them. We ask that You do that work in us, so that we could be especially useful to You in that way with our children. Amen.

•  Who Put Jesus on the Cross?