PRAY DAD PRAY

Kids can be the best teachers.  I mean, God gives them to us so that we can shape and encourage them to become productive members of His kingdom, but sometimes they show us just what it means to live.

I learned a valuable lesson one day when my oldest son was around 4 years old.  I decided to take him to play golf with me.  We could get outside and enjoy a little fresh air and he didn't know how good golfers were supposed to be yet so it was perfect.  

Somewhere around the third hole, my son comes up to me with complete joy in his eyes.  He had a bonding with nature moment.  He holds out his finger and with utter excitement tells me, "Look daddy I found a fly".  As I look down at his little finger I notice that on the end of it is not fly but in fact a huge bee.  Automatically I try to warn my son but as soon as I tell him to shake it off the bee, sensing my threat, defends his newly acquired territory and stings my son right on the tip of his finger.  

Now my son's face has transformed from that of wonder and amazement at his close encounter with another species to horror at the thought that this fuzzy little creature could cause so much pain and destruction to his body.  As he looks at me tears begin to well up on his face and he lets out this wail that I have heard many times with my boys indicating their dissatisfaction with life. 

As I begin to try to console my son, in the back of my mind I know that he is going to be ok, but he doesn't know that.  To him, he is going to die at the hands of a sinister little insect bent on taking over the world one finger at a time.  Finally, after exhausting all of my calming techniques, I ask him, "Just what do you want me to do!"  Without missing a beat he screams, "PRAY DAD PRAY!"  

Here I am, the man of faith and power, the one who people come to for guidance and prayer, and the one thing that I could do, the one thing my son wanted me to do, was the last thing that I thought to do. My son had heard enough sermons, enough lessons to know that there is power in prayer.  So I prayed for him.  I prayed a prayer of faith, power and victory.  I prayed a prayer of healing and restoration.  I prayed a prayer of vengeance for that evil bee that terrorized my son.  We had revival on the golf course that day.

And believe it or not, it worked.  By the time we reached the green he was healed.  He looks at me with tear residue on his face but smiling and says, "Dad, I'm all better now.  Your prayer worked."  From that day on, he has believed in the power of prayer.  Now you may say that he was eventually going to be ok and that bee sting pain eventually goes away but I am here to tell you that he was healed and that God heard that prayer and touched him that day.  

So no matter how big or how small your "sting" may be, just take my son's advice.  PRAY, PRAY, PRAY.  And if you see a fuzzy brown and yellow bee buzzing around the Hobbs Country Club, tell him to watch his back cause we are still looking for him.

LIFE LESSONS FROM A RUBBER BAND

Have you ever seen someone instantly change right in front of your eyes?  This happens on a regular basis with my toddler Charlie.  He can be in a raging fit; crying and mad as a hornet, then like the flip of a switch just all of a sudden calm down when you show him a blow pop.  The snap back to peace seems instant.  For whatever reason all the rage and fury subsides in an instant and he is back to normal.  

I am amazed by the elasticity of kids.  One minute they miss the winning goal and the next they are celebrating with ice cream sundaes.  Life for them can seem so carefree.  It makes me think that we should be more like our kids in so many ways.  I call it the rubber band principle.  A rubber band can give us so many life lessons if we just observe a few things.

One, a rubber band stretches to incredible lengths.  You can pull it back and it seems to stretch forever. Then when you let it go, it simply goes back to it's original form.  Life, many times, will stretch us to great lengths.  From pressures around us to things pulling us in every direction, it seems like we will get bent out of shape.  If we can truly have "elastic power" then no matter what life throws at us we can bounce back.  

Two, a rubber band is not worth much when it does break.  There are times when a rubber band gets to it's breaking point, then it will never be as good as it once was.  We must never get to that place where we think things are so bad that we cannot recover.  II Corinthians 4:8-9 gives us great perspective on this by telling us, "We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed."  This means that no matter how bad things may seem, we (unlike a rubber band) can choose when and where we will break.  No matter what, stretch till you think that you can't anymore, then stretch some more.  You are not crushed, in despair, forsaken or destroyed.  With Jesus in your life, you have that "elastic power" you need to see anything through till the end.

The third lesson that we can learn is that a rubber band only has value of what it is wrapped around.  Every day (except Mondays), a paper comes to my house.  That paper costs 50 cents on a news stand and dollar fifty on Sundays. A rubber band wraps itself around those papers and has the value of each days edition of information.  Take that same rubber band and wrap it around a wad of 100 dollar bills and that rubber band just got an upgrade.  Take that same rubber band and wrap it around the arm of one of my sons and it just became priceless.  When we wrap ourselves (like a rubber band) around things in this world (i.e.. jobs, relationships, etc) we only hold its value.  But when we wrap ourselves around Jesus, we just gave ourselves the ultimate upgrade.  

So stretch but don't break, and wrap yourself around Jesus.  Hold on no matter what happens.  Allow His love and mercy the opportunity to give you that "elastic power" that you need to survive a world that will stretch you to your limits.  And if you do break, don't try to fix it, give it to God.  Let Him make you new.  After all a tied up rubber band never worked very well anyway.