Tuesday, March 30, 2010

the little children

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." - Matthew 19:14

I just watched Where the Wild Things Are. It just reminded me of how much children need God as well.. I work with kids every day, and I couldn't imagine doing anything else. My heart is so heavy for children. I wish that nothing bad would ever happen to kids. There are so many behaviors that are stemmed from their life situations... people think that certain kids are problem children and will be for the rest of their lives... I don't agree with that. I think that all a kid needs sometimes is for someone to take an interest in their lives and love on them. People tend to give up on these 'problem children' and write them off as a lost cause. Breaks my heart. God desires each person in their unique character and situation... especially children.

Sometimes, all we can do is pray.

Wait... that phrase sounds terrible. I stopped for a second and read that. "All we can do is pray"... Like it's a last resort or something? I don't think that's what prayer was made for. I think it was made for us to worship God. Sometimes, we only pray when we need something... when something is going wrong... when we're confused... when we're lonely... when we're bored... when we're feeling lost... when someone we know is facing a crisis... when we ourselves are facing a crisis...

How bout this... pray just because God is God. Pray because you want to talk with the only truth and love we really have: Jesus. Pray because you can't get enough of Him... because you simply want to know Him more... pray because you want to worship.

I think this quote from Oswald Chambers puts it quite bluntly (like Chambers often, ever so eloquently, puts it)

"If we are hard toward God, we become hard toward other people."

We become hard towards God by "dictating to Him what we want Him to do" through prayer. We can be quite bossy with our prayers...

I don't want to become hard toward other people... I want to love others. How can I love others and not become hard toward other people? By being honest with God while you worship through prayer. If I want to love these kids, I need to worship God so that I am in the place with Him that His love will flow out of me to those around me.

After all... God is love.

"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." - 1 John 4:8

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