Okay..so I've been told by my daughter I need to put this on the "puter". She cracks me up...she said..yeah..that way everyone can read about it. She even gets that we all hear about things on a blog! Well below is a summary of what happened today with Madi.
Today on the way home from church Madi told us that we haven't been praying enough at night before the kids go to bed. I said..you're right Madi. But then I followed it up with that we can pray anytime of day, we don't have to wait till bedtime. We can even pray right now in the car on the way home. She agreed and I prayed as Jon drove. After that we agreed that we'd pray before bed tonight.
Tonight....bed time came and Madi said she'd like to pray...so she got on her knees and prayed. When she was done she looked at me and said..."Mom, I want to ask Jesus into my heart". So I said okay...why today Madi. What makes today special that you want to ask Jesus into your heart. She said I don't know..I just do. Well then I asked her if Daddy could come up with us for this and she agreed.
When Jon came up we talked with her about a lot of things. We asked her what it meant to ask Jesus into her heart and she said "so that when I'm really really old I can go to heaven. I might be young when I die but I hope I'm really really old". Wow! We then talked about John 3:16 and opened our bible up to it...she got so excited that the verse in our bible said the same thing as the verse at Brittyn's church (fyi-she just started going to Awana at Brittyn's church). So we talked more about what that verse means - that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son so that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have ever lasting life. I thought she was going to jump off the bed at this point she was so excited that she said this verse from memory. So we started talking about sin and why Jesus died for us on the cross. Next thing I know she starts saying...you know its like that song mom- "what song Madi"....my sin upon the cross....I of course knew she meant the song "Here I am to worship, Here I am to bow down, Here I am to say that your my God.....I'll never know how much it cost, to see my sin upon that cross". She loves this song and always has me play it in the car...I never realized how much she understood about the words. We sang that last part over and over a ton...it was so great to have the three of us worshipping together like that. Her eyes were just so sparkly and excited. We talked about a lot of other things...I think it was about 45 mins altogether we talked...she had a ton of questions about - What God looks like, will we be together in heaven as a family, will I feel different after I ask him into my heart...just good conversation. We talked a lot about Jesus as our friend and why he loves us so much. We talked about how people in this world (even friends) will hurt us sometime but Jesus never will. He's a friedn we can count on for anything...even if all our friends were gone. We also talked about why today...she said that her teacher at church said we need to do it now...something about its important to do it now before she's too old...now this is her (5 year old)interpretation of todays lesson...so we tried to talk to her about its important to do this because its what she wants to do not to just do what others want...we talked about this at length and I think for awhile Jon and I were actually trying to talk her out of asking Jesus into her heart tonight..but she insisted she wanted to do it. So we told her if this is what she wanted that she just needed to pray and tell God what she was thinking. So she said okay...here was her prayer.
Jesus
Thanking for dying on the cross
for all the bad things I do
Amen
Next...a big huge grin. Then of course she couldn't wait to tell everyone. I had to convince her she needed to wait and call Brittyn & Jaedon tomorrow. For some reason it was very importatnt for her to tell Jaedon..she followed that up with the comment that I needed to put this on the puter! I think she remembers when Jaedon asked Jesus into his heart and we read about it on their blog! So thanks
Howell's!
What a feeling....it felt so good to have her understand so much....its like a light just went off and all these questions she's been asking us for so long and worrying about, crying about, and just being scared about went away. She finally had enough answers to decide tonight was the night! Praise God! What an answer to prayer...
Thanks for sharing in our joy...and all those prayers that went up on our little girls behalf!
Jonathan & Kelly