Most nights we read from the Jesus Storybook Bible, which is Benjamin's bible. We love it and every story comes back to Jesus. Another {random} bonus: all the illustrations are culturally correct. There is not one white person in the whole book! The stories can be a bit long for Benjamin's attention span, so Patrick usually shortens it a little to help B stay with us.
Some nights are a struggle. Some nights our little boy has NO tolerance for snuggling up on the couch to read and pray and sing. Some nights he is all ears and is as quite as he can be. What I'm saying is - it takes mighty effort to make this happen and a great deal of patience. There's even some trial and error as we figure out what works best for us.
Recently, though, we created a prayer calendar to help us pray for specific things. This is a rough idea of what we pray for:
*Every day we pray for a different fruit of the Spirit. On Saturday and Sunday we pray for two since there are nine fruits and seven days :)
*Each Sunday we start praying for different missionaries we know (Weigner's, Cokenour's, our compassion kids, our church, ect). We pray for these people until Tuesday night.
*Each Wednesday we start praying for something different, until Sunday again. The first Wednesday is upcoming missions trips at our church. The second and fourth Wednesday we praise God through psalms. The third Wednesday we pray for unsaved nations.
It's been really great for Patrick and I to have a more consistent prayer time with Benjamin. And we're excited for him to learn and pray for the fruits of the Spirit. Plus, Benjamin is learning to pray for people all over the world who are sharing Christ and who need Him.
Things may change, and I'm certain they will, but right now we're loving that we can spend time together as a family praying for specific things. We don't just pray at meal times and after we discipline. We pray when we worship together, which has caused us to pray when someone is hurt or when we hear sirens or when Benjamin is sad. It's caused us to be more mindful of praise and giving God the honor and glory. And we're allowing our child to see, even now, that God always has an answer to prayer...even if it's not what we asked for.
Our desire is for Benjamin to fall in love with Jesus, to be changed and transformed and renewed by the power of the Gospel! We don't want him to just "have faith" because we do, we want him to want Jesus. Hopefully as Patrick and I live out our faith in our daily lives it will be real and meaningful to our children, not just rules or something you believe. To God be the glory!!!
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