Day 3 …. Brave Moms, brave kids…reflections and give away!
Here we are on Day 3 of what has turned into quite a week here at the Journey…not only am I attempting to steer all of you into the possibility of winning the drawing for a copy of this book Brave Moms, brave kids to give or keep…
God answered prayers for someone to help me with the tech side of it all and my new friend Robin has been busy, busy…fixing up the back end of this little slice of the internet.
There are all kinds of changes and if you subscribe by email...spoiler alert…we changed systems yesterday, so you may get TWO for a couple of days…but that will end.
If you haven’t subscribed…easy peasy…just enter your name and email in the sidebar <3
And now on to the message for today….
Another chapter in my copy of Brave Moms, brave kids by Lee Nienhuis that is completely marked up with arrows and circles and underlings would be Chapter 9….Vigilant Prayer
She uses one of my go to passages from the years I prayed early in the morning while three little and then teen Reimer kiddos slept in the rooms upstairs.
Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger a the head of every street. Lamentations 2:19
Back in those days, with their activities sometimes overwhelming our calendar…
and the influences of others outside the walls of our home becoming increasingly more powerful…
with personalities developing and independence from us being guided in the right direction…
during crucial relationship development with friends and mentors we did not know well…
prayer was just that.
My crying out did go through the watches of the night and the lifting of my hands was done in the wee hours of the morning over coffee and a dogeared Bible and spiral notebook …. both getting generously marked up with my pen, my tears and a few drops of coffee for good measure.
I could see clearly in those days that we would never be able to navigate their journey from tots to adults if God did not step in mightily.
Their mom was too emotional…too hypersensitive…too prone to bury her head in the sand…too reactionary…too frail herself to be the guide….too afraid of conflict…too selfish…too addicted to comfort.
And so pain and lack drove me to cry out for the help we all needed to bring them up in the fear and training of the Lord.
Seasons when things are going well…those didn’t usually drive me to my knees. And when you have three children spanning six years of development…there will be a measure of discomfort mixed in with all the fun.
And so, as Lee points out, we can look at the increasing opposition of the enemy at work through deceptions and shiftings in every area of life these days…home, community, schools, government, world…and yes..the church…and see that God is calling us to a new level of vigilance in prayer.
“With the increasing ferocity of the Enemy in our generation, and with his nasty strategy of picking on our children, attacking our marriages, and deceiving the people we love, we cannot afford to be wimpy prayer warriors. We must become vigilant in every way, recognizing that the way through is to stand firmly in the power of Christ and pray, pray, pray.” Lee Nienhuis Brave Moms, brave kids page 119
Lee has a Facebook page for Brave Moms and recently I watched a live video she did showing how she prays the Scriptures.
After writing the passage at the top of her notebook, she began to meditate on what it said about God…what it shows of His heart and His desires for us.
Then she marked off sections for each of her family and she prayed and mediated on the Word as she applied it to each individual.
You could tell it was early morning and at first she said she wasn’t going to show her own early morning face to us…yet eventually…one by one….little ones of her flock began waking up and joining her on the couch.
As she shifted her recording device, you could see them snuggling in with blankets and bedhead and such as she continued to show us her notes.
She allowed us to see the real her…praying real prayers over real kids…warrior prayer.
Vigilant prayer.
Honest prayer from a mom who loves the children the Lord has blessed her with.
This is the most powerful force known to man.
Prayer from a humbled, genuine, Jesus-loving, Christ-Following, obedient heart will change the tide of a culture that will lie to our children and tell them they don’t need God and then leave them abandoned to die.
But God.
He will not leave us or forsake us.
Now more than ever…we must ask Him to stir us up to vigilant, watchful, joy-filled, confident prayer for this generation …. for the babies and for the great grandparents…for all to know Him and to know His power available to those who belong to Him through the blood of His Child…His Son…Jesus Christ <3
Be blessed today and remember … if you want to enter your name in the drawing to get a copy of Brave Moms, brave kids:
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