Bedtime prayers

One of our favorite parts of the day comes at the end, when we all gather together in one of the rooms and pray as a family. Each of us pray a prayer. I've been working with my children in teaching them how to pray. With younger children (and adults), one of the easiest patterns to fall into is to pray a repetitive prayer, almost a rote recitation of requests to God. At times, after hearing a prayer that sounded familiar, I've asked my children if they thought about what they said. Other times I've heard my children stop in mid prayer after reciting a cliche' and start over, communicating from their heart to God.

We always pray for Lovette and Yekekou. They also pray for Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Anouk and their adoption. Tonight they added a request for some families that they don't even know. They are the ones that I referred to in an earlier post. It touched my heart to hear them praying for the adoptions of these families and for children that in all likelihood they will never meet. Still, they are learning what it means to intercede for others in prayer.

I've received some comments about my earlier post, both public and private. Some have alluded to something that I wanted to say, but perhaps didn't articulate very well. It came out in our prayers tonight. We love Yekekou and Lovette. And the sincere desire of our heart is to bring them into our home. But at the same time, they are not ours. And that's not because the Liberian government hasn't granted them to us, or because we are awaiting approval of the United States Department of State. Lovette and Yekekou, even if the adoption is granted and we bring them home, still will not belong to us. Like our biological children, they belong to God. If God is gracious to us in allowing us to bring them into our home, we will be granted both the privilege and responsibility of making these children disciples of Jesus Christ. Scripture is not at all ambiguous about the charge to parents to instruct children. And while the task is daunting, and beyond our capabilities, we know that God's grace is sufficient to enable us to fulfill this task.

Tonight as we prayed, we acknowledged God's sovereignty in this whole matter. And we prayed, sincerely, for the salvation of Lovette and Yekekou. We would not, for one moment, want these children in our home at the expense of their souls. And while we believe that we would be faithful in our responsibility to teach them about Jesus, and that they would have every opportunity to respond to His call to repentance if they were in our home, we asked God to bring them to Him, even if that meant that he didn't bring them to us.

After we prayed, we checked our e-mail, and received some new pictures of the girls. Was it a sign? Of course it was. It was a sign that God is gracious, and provides us with blessings that we could never deserve. Keep them in your prayers. Of course we want everything to go smoothly with this adoption. But even more than we want them in our family, we want them to become part of God's family. So pray for them to that end. God knows best how to accomplish that, and we trust Him completely.