10/25/2024
Nine years ago in the year 2015, during a lesson that I was teaching on Psalm 29 I shared with the class that my spiritual mentor, Jack Hughes, had once told me that if he was ever sick he would like to have little children pray for him. He had brought tears to my eyes when he originally shared this with me, and the thought of him saying it still brings tears to me today. Isaiah told us that God takes a special interest in teaching our children, and Jesus told his disciples not to keep the children from coming to Him, and that heaven was their inheritance. They are indeed a special gift, and a blessing to us. Don’t the prayers of children warm our hearts and cause us to give thanks to the Lord?
“All your children shall be taught by the Lord,
and great shall be the peace of your children.”
Isaiah 54:13 ESV
“but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 19:14 ESV
The Sunday morning after my Wednesday class I stood before the church with my intercessory prayer partners, (Jack Hughes, and John Saucier), and as we waited for someone to ask us for prayer, my attention was captured by three beautiful little blond girls in long brightly colored dresses. They looked like little angels and were coming down the side aisle towards the altar. I was surprised when they reached the front and were joined by their father who brought them bashfully to us.
Thankfully a godly lady in the church, Carol Sorbo, came over and asked the timid girls why they had come down... their response brought tears to my eyes; their Grandmother had been in the hospital and they wanted to pray with us for sick people to be healed. Jack, John and I gathered around them, got down on one knee, and began to pray with, and for, them. It was a precious moment that I never want to forget.
““I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
3 John 1:4 ESV
It wasn't lost on me that I was in need of healing, and that these three innocent children had chosen this particular Sunday to pray with us for the healing of their grandmother… and all people who were sick. You see, I had been diagnosed with cancer the week before, and was awaiting emergency surgery that week to remove a tumor from my body. I also recalled Jack's wish that if he were sick that he wanted children to pray for him. Jack was right, there is something special about the prayers of children, and their prayers that morning brought me much comfort… and today I am cancer free.
Some say that the surgeon healed me when he removed my cancerous tumor, but I know that it might have been his hands in my body, but moreover, it was the precious and innocent prayers of those three little girls that held my spirit in their hands that Sunday morning. So, to this day, I have remained cancer free. Do you pray with your children, or the other children in your life, and your church? Can you feel the Holy Spirit pouring from them as their prayers are offered up… awash in innocence and love?
Prayer:
Thank you Father for bringing your children into our midst, and for joining with us in teaching them the way that they should go, and for helping us as we grow them. Thank you for helping us raise them in their innocent faiths, so that they will love and pray to you,, and for us. Thank you for blessing the women who bear, and mother your children, but thank you more for those who mother all children and yet have never born the fruit of their own wombs. Abba we thank you for the precious and innocent prayers of the children who pray with such unobstructed faith, trust, and love. Help us to hold them in our arms and love them as you do, and to discipline them with care that they will walk the straight and narrow path of righteousness throughout their lives. Help us Holy Father to nurture your adult children as well, and lead them by our examples, sermons, and teaching, for we are all brothers and sisters with Christ, and your children; having been adopted by you. So hear our prayers Lord and hear our spiritual innocence in them, just as we hear the innocence of our children as they pray. We thank you for your love, mercy, and grace Lord, and we thank you for smiling and being pleased at the innocence of our confessions and prayers. In all that we are in Jesus we thank you, and pray that you will take us into your house, seat us at your table, and call us sons and daughters for all eternity. In this we pray that you are honored, and glorified forevermore.
“Praise the Lord!
Blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
who greatly delights in his commandments!
His offspring will be mighty in the land;
the generation of the upright will be blessed.
Wealth and riches are in his house,
and his righteousness endures forever.”
Psalm 112:1-2 ESV
““Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;
break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than those of the one who has a husband.””
Galatians 4:27 ESV
“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer”
Galatians 4:14-17 ESV
And may all those who hear, and all those who receive the prayers of the children, say in unison… Amen. Amen. Amen.
Rich Forbes