What do Kingdom, Kindergarten and Sabbatical have in common?

They all collided in my classroom at church today!

A year ago in Herrnhut Germany God spoke extremely clearly to me to go home and teach Kindergartners again. Praise God I was immediately obedient, called Pastor Shondarius Williams the day after my return and was teaching the very next Sunday!  It has been a testing in patience and grace, but today: “Oh Sweet Jesus, THANK YOU!”  the Kingdom of God came on earth as it is in heaven in several beautiful moments. Set 5 minutes aside right now!  You do not want to miss these encounters with the heart of our Father.

Over the past 4 weeks the Lord has used my precious Brother Nate Vander Stelt our EVP at GACX (Global Alliance for Church Multiplication), my darling precious Bride, our wonderful praying without ceasing P.I.T. Crew and His own voice in my heart to affirm that I have been running on empty and need to take my first ever sabbatical. So I’m sitting on a little chair with 5 of my precious Kindergartners explaining: “A sabbatical is taking 8 weeks away to be alone with God.” Precious Sienna, sitting next to me and really listening says: “So Brother Colin, are you going to heaven?”

Oh WOW!! My heart just melted, I looked at her, smiled from the depths of my heart and just hugged her saying: “Well kinda, yes Sienna, I’m going to be in heaven with God in a cottage on the seashore in Wales!”

Most of you reading this know that I do not miss too many opportunities to PRAY NOW! One of the ways I model this is to stop and pray short prayers throughout our class time together, this way the children are seeing we can talk to God for any reason at any time. So instead of setting time apart for prayer at the beginning and the end of class, which is, in itself, good, it is best when prayer becomes a part of who we are, by turning our hearts to God as though He was actually with us,!! This is of course exactly what He is!! WITH US.

It is just living out Proverbs 3:6 “Acknowledge Him in ALL your ways and He will direct your steps.” Sadly prayer often becomes just another thing on our to do list and consequently there is often very little Holy Spirit life in our prayers.  So here is how prayer can become Holy Spirit filled. Today in the middle of class, Sister Leeann reached in to drop my role list and instead of not noticing her, I paused and said: “Sister Leeann! Could my children pray for you today?” Turning to my children, squatting down to look them in their eyes, I said to them: “Come children let us pray for Sister Leeann:☺)”

I pray, they repeat: “Dear Lord Jesus”….”Dear Lord Jesus” their little voices echo “Thank You for Sister Leeann.”… and after just a few more short phrases we pray: “ in Jesus name amen.”….”In Jesus name amen.” Then I asked Sister Leeann to pray briefly over the children and by faith I am expectant that God will do what we have each asked Him to do!  So this is turning a 99% unseen activity of Leeann’s into a personal encounter with the living King and boomerang blessings are flying back and forth across the room and to heaven and back!!

Chkk-Chirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! Leeann walked out a refreshed daughter of the King and I’ll guarantee you she will never forget the day those little kindergartners prayed for her. Now I challenge you to take your own children, or parents, no matter how old they are and GO AND DO LIKEWIZE!! PRAIRcondition your lives by simply turning every day happenings into PRAYER OPS!

NOW YOUR HEART WILL MELT!!

As a class, one of our regular prayers is: “LORD TEACH US TO PRAY!!”  Every other week or so we go on a prayer journey!  Today I asked: “Children who wants to go on a Prayer Journey? “Yes please Brother Colin.” OK Let us Pray Now: They echoed this prayer: “Lord Jesus we thank You that You know who needs our prayers today so please, Jesus, will you put them in our path, THANK YOU JESUS!”

Down the stairs we went and I see Roger Gould one of our first impressions parking attendants walking by and we have a pretty similar pray now time as we did with Leeann. Two more PRAYER OPS! and you know what this is, it’s like prayer practice but the great news is that when you practice prayer IT COUNTS!! Melanie Sanderson just got so blessed and she too prayed for the children.

Then God dropped His presence from heaven. We were standing in the corner by the front door reception and  one of the boys sad “Brother Colin I think we need to pray for that man, with the big white beard. I asked his name and then said: “Brother Ray, thank you for being in church today, now if there was one thing my children and I could PRAY NOW for you personally, what would it be?” Quite honestly it looked like we had just hit him in the stomach he had such a need for prayer as he explained that his 32 year old daughter had been in a hit and run accident and she did not look like these little children and please could we pray for God to heal his daughter. The gravity of this request was on each child’s face and as we began to echo pray, Brother Ken began to weep and big tears just popped out of his eyes…. We prayed in Jesus name and I gathered the children in my arms in such a way as to wrap Brother Ken in a big circle of children’s and my arms giving him a squeeze tight love hug of Jesus!

The Holy Spirit was visibly upon the children’s countenances as we quietly walked back holding each other’s hands to our class room. I then prayed: “Oh Lord Jesus would You mark each of our hearts today and forever with this incredible picture of what You did through each of these children’s prayers (I named them one by one before the Lord) Oh Lord God make us Your people that pray at all times and in all places in Jesus name amen.”

Please watch for a short miraculous salvation story next week in which I will also share my “Sabbatical details and Prayer Missions.”

With the Chkk-Chirrrrrrrrrrrrrr joy and love of Jesus and encouraging you to be a Pray Now disciple worth multiplying,

Colin