My God dream

Since my last blog, God has been doing a work in me. He is showing me a little more of the BIG dream he has planned for me. We have been doing a series at church about Joseph the Dreamer. It is specifically speaking to the “God dream” that we each have. Joseph was given two dreams as a teenager which God fulfilled many years later once Joseph was ready and in position. He went through so many trials and a few triumphs on his way there, but God was faithful through it all, and Joseph learned how to be faithful and trust God to keep his promise. God saved a nation through Joseph. Who could have guessed that when his brothers sold him into slavery.

One phrase from last week’s sermon has really stuck in my mind – hindsight provides clarity. I love hindsight. I love to look at a particular situation in my life and rewind through my life to see all the events that led to this point. If I have not done ____, I would have missed _____. If I had missed _____, I would never have met _____. You get the idea. God seemed to be telling me that he has wired me to minister to children. Children are my mission field. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense, but I have been fighting that for a while. I have down played the significance of working with children and investing my life in them. I confess I was looking for something more glamorous.

I started serving in the nursery at our small church when I would about 10 years old. I loved being in there snuggling the few precious babies we had. I didn’t mind changing diapers, and I thought it a wonderful challenge to be able to calm a crying baby who missed his mommy. I worked as a babysitter through junior high and high school for cousins and neighbors. One summer I did it full time for two kids who are now in college or maybe finished with college by now. (I feel old.) I mentored teenage girls in foster care when I was in college. Tyrone and I trained kids at a tennis club after we were first married. I coached JV girls’ basketball and Varsity track for 7 years in South Carolina and Indiana. I lead children’s ministry at our small church plant back in South Carolina for a year before we moved to Indiana. I read stories to kids in elementary school and planned parties as homeroom mom. A couple years ago God put it on my heart to feed kids who are hungry. We started with one family. Now our house is becoming “the place to be” after school for some kids in our neighborhood who just need a place to play, and they usually need a snack too. They walk home from school with us just to talk.

I have been working part-time as the Children’s Ministry Director at our church for more than a year now. I took the job out of obedience because I felt it is what God was calling me to at the time. It was something I said I would never do again (never tell God never). I figured it was another step toward that BIG thing out there in the distance that I was meant to do. Now I think it IS the beginning of the BIG thing. The clarity of hindsight has shown me that God has been getting me ready all these years. Now he has positioned me in a thriving church (in a state I never thought about living in) where I can have great influence on a community of children and families who need Jesus. By making a difference in this community and pointing young children toward Jesus, they will be able to go out and reach the world with the Gospel. A wise person told me recently that I must be doing that in my own home first or I have missed the point of the position I have been given. She was so right! It begins right here in my own home with the 4 (wow, I still have trouble with that number) children God has blessed us with. They are gifts from Him. Four hearts that desperately need to see Jesus and find relationship with him. I am so thankful that Jeremiah and Maiesha have already made that decision. Those little eyes are watching through my successes and failures  as I model a relationship with my savior each day for them.

This is the beginning of my BIG thing – my God dream. I am here to, as the Greenhouse mission statement reads, grow kids in God’s grace and love to lead them toward a fully-devoted world changing relationship with Jesus Christ. This dream is bigger than a job at a church. It’s bigger than working in ministry. It is a life style, a culture, as way of living. It is wherever I am. I will always be a mom. My kids will always have friends. We will always have neighbors.

Some people brought little children to Jesus. They wanted him to place his hands on the children and pray for them. But the disciples told the people to stop.  Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me. Don’t keep them away. The kingdom of heaven belongs to people like them.” - Matthew 19:13-14 (NIrV)