I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know the name of every child in our ministry. I’m not a bad children’s pastor. I’m really not. And it’s not that I’m battling some debilitating memory disease. You’ll have to agree that it would impossible to know every name of the 1,000+ children who attend our children’s ministry. Add to that staggering number, I’m not with every child every week. We do have those who are with us almost every week. Then, we have children who are with us every other week so that they can rotate weekends between divorced parents. Finally, we have the CEO’s (Christmas and Easter Only) children. This causes me to walk through the mall or Walmart and smile at every child … after all, they might one of my kids.
Whether or not we know every child by name, I know this statement to be true … we don’t know everything that is going on in a child’s life. Some children come to church wearing their Sunday best and everything looks so, so good. They’ve got their Sunday smile, their interaction with their parents looks great, they are angels in class. What could be wrong? Oh, if we could only see what heaven sees.
Thankfully, whether or not we know every child by name and whether or not we accurately know the details of a child’s life, we can flawlessly and powerfully pray for each and every child. How? By praying in the Spirit.
“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know
what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit
prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”
Romans 8:26 (New Living Translation)
It’s time to step into a new arena of ministry. We must move to a higher realm by expanding beyond the ministry done in front of the children. In order to completely fulfill our ministry assignment, we must join together with the One who knows every child by name and the hidden circumstances in their lives and allow Him to pray with us and through us. We must become more and more dependent upon the Holy Spirit in our prayer life.
Ready to be the minister that God has called you to be? Thankfully it won’t require taking a memory enhancement course to learn the names and details of our children. Let’s learn how to pray in the Spirit!
Hey Billy, We are just about ready to leave for Brussels, probable the end of August. I am hoping we will be able to work together in Europe again in the future. Youth and Children there are desperate for the Holy Spirit. Your conference will benefit every church you can get to.