{"id":5564,"date":"2019-08-30T14:56:31","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T19:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/?p=5564"},"modified":"2019-08-30T14:56:31","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T19:56:31","slug":"help-them-know-how-much-you-love-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/2019\/08\/30\/help-them-know-how-much-you-love-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Help Them Know How Much You Love Them"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cLord, help them love You a little more everyday.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the prayer I prayed most often for my children until just over a month ago, and while I still pray it, it\u2019s no longer my \u201cgo-to.\u201d Now I more regularly pray: \u201cLord, help them know how much you love them<\/em>\u2026 a little more everyday.\u201d What changed? I\u2019d say it\u2019s an awareness that I was starting in the wrong place or more accurately, with the wrong person.<\/p>\n

About six weeks ago, I was having lunch with a friend who is becoming my mentor, although she probably doesn\u2019t know it. She\u2019s a few years farther along in the parenting journey, she\u2019s been ministering to children a while longer too, and she\u2019s got a contagious joy and depth of wisdom that comes from years of faithfully serving God. As we were talking over our meal, she looked up at me and said, \u201cYou know, if I had it to do all over again, I\u2019d pray a different prayer over my children \u2026 I\u2019d start by praying that they would know how much God loves them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I sat back in my seat, a little stunned. Her words were similar to mine, but they were different in a significant way. As I listened to her unpack what she was learning, I realized that while my prayer had been a good one, and one worth repeating, it wasn\u2019t the first one I should pray either. Her prayer asked God to make a growing awareness of how much they are loved by Him, the foundation of their lives. The truth in these words is what we find in John 3:16: \u201cAnd God so loved <\/strong>the world\u2026\u201d and Romans 8, which reminds us that nothing can separate us from the love of God.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s what we mean when we say we must \u201cbe<\/em>\u201d righteous before we can \u201cdo<\/em>\u201d anything righteous. After all, \u201cWe love because He first loved us.\u201d (1 John 4:19) This prayer my friend was teaching me begins with an acknowledgment that discipleship starts<\/em> not by my children loving Jesus more, but by awakening to His love for them.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was our Sunday School launch for the new school year, and we walked the halls of our church, found my daughter\u2019s new classroom, and said hello to her teachers like we\u2019ve always done. However, this time as we headed out of the children\u2019s area, we were handed a beautiful card with this year\u2019s theme verse from Zephaniah 3:17: \u201cThe Lord, your God, is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will <\/em>rejoice over you with gladness; he will <\/em>quiet you by his love; he will <\/em>exult over you with loud singing.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Our children\u2019s ministry director who put forth this theme is also the friend I had lunch with that day, the one who gave me my new<\/em> most-frequently prayed prayer for my children. While her biological children are grown and not getting a nightly bedtime prayer, she continues to disciple her \u201cchildren\u201d by showing the kids of our church where discipleship begins: with God Himself. As all these children memorize this beautiful verse over the course of this year, I pray that they, along with my own, will know that the foundation for their faith begins with Jesus, not them, and that they can rest easy and love more fully, because they are beginning to see how deeply they are loved by their heavenly Father.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":5565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,4],"tags":[940,1169,1127,167,48,1124,1122],"class_list":{"0":"post-5564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-childrens-ministries","8":"category-discipleship-ministries","9":"tag-940","10":"tag-discipleship-story","11":"tag-kristi-cain","12":"tag-parenting","13":"tag-prayer","14":"tag-quarter-3","15":"tag-steadfast-in-prayer","16":"entry"},"title_es":"Ay\u00fadalos a saber cu\u00e1nto los amas","content_es":"

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\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","author_name":"Kristi Cain","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/08\/KM-Q3.2-Story-Graphic-Cain-e1567194553475.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T9u2-1rK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}