In my last post, I shared about how God led me to Children’s Ministry and began to teach us to take Him more seriously. Now, let me share just a few God stories from those early years.
Parents began telling me that when they were driving by the church building that they'd have to distract the children so they wouldn't see the building. If the kids saw the building, they would start to cry and want to go. Early in the morning, the kids would ask, "Is it church today?" The parents would say, "No honey, it's three more days." The kids would mark days off the calendar.
It should be that exciting! We're talking about God here.
We've had many parents tell us their kids were begging to come to church. I had this one lady call me and she was in a terrible circumstance. She was very depressed and she told me the only morning she would get up was Sunday morning because her kids were at the bottom of the stairs saying, "Mom, Mom, can we please go to church?"
That kind of stuff we cannot do. That has got to be God's movement.
A blood-curdling scream
I remember another story where my sister was walking a gentleman back to the kids’ classes. He had a third grade boy and a 2-year-old on his hip. He was telling my sister that they were not going to go into the children's ministry. It was their first time there.
She said, "Fine, why don't you just take a tour? Look around and then head into the auditorium." She walked down the hall and to the dad’s surprise, his third grade boy just walked right in. He looked at my sister and said, "I don't know what that was about. But I can promise you, you're not getting him" (talking about the 2-year-old). He explained that the toddler was never away from them, didn't go to daycare or babysitters. She said, "Okay."
So they were walking up the hall and I'm in the other room with the door closed, and I hear this blood-curdling scream, which you never want to hear in children's ministry. I thought there must be blood attached to that. So I came out of the room and this is what I see: A 2-year-old holding on to the door frame, trying to get in a room and Daddy holding him back. It took me a minute to process what I was seeing until I looked into the eyes of the servers. And I recognized the look. It was, "There goes God again!"
A divine meeting in a pet store
Back then we were very small and there was a family that was inviting another family to come to Blue Ridge. But the family was an atheist family. They did not believe and did not want to come.
But I guess after you invite someone enough times they'll give you that one shot. That's what they said, "We’ll come one time."
They let their friends know that if their 2-year-old did not like it, did not want to go in, did not want to come back, then that was going to be the end of it. So we let our 2-year-old guy, Mr. Glenn, know that this little boy was coming.
We were ready. We had the bubble machine going. We had teams ready to pray that this 2-year-old would love this place. And so to the parents' surprise, the 2-year-old did go right in, without any problems. In fact, when they came to pick him up, he didn't want to leave.
But we got word back from the family that they had very full busy lives and they just didn't need this in their lives. And so they wouldn't be back. That was very sad. Prayer requests went out for the 2-year-old that he would come back the next Sunday.
Well, I prayed, but I didn't honestly think a 2-year-old could bring them back after just one visit. But this is what happened: The next Saturday night Mr. Glenn was at the pet store with his children. And he looked down and there was the 2-year-old standing right beside him. And he was able to lean down and talk to him and get him all excited about coming back. Don't you know the 2-year-old screamed and cried the next morning and he continued to cry [each week] so the parents continued to bring him? And both parents ended up accepting Christ!
We are not that good. There is no toy that exists that will do that for a 2-year-old who has separation anxiety. We know this was God. We were getting to be a part of this. We knew He was doing these things. There was no way we could do this. He was really leading this ministry.
In the next blog, I’ll begin to share from the serving values God revealed to us in the years to come.