Greatest Christmas present...ever!

I'm always wary about small children accepting Christ. You just never know how much they understand and if they are doing it just to please someone else. There are so many stories of people "getting saved" at an early age, but realizing years later that they never really knew Christ.

For those reasons, I have been really reluctant to talk to my five-year-old about it. If he brings it up, then we will discuss it and I let him to dictate how much and for how long we talk about salvation and asking Jesus in our hearts. But I always have to remember that Jesus wanted the children to come to Him. He tells us we have to have childlike faith. I also have to remind myself that I still don't understand everything about salvation.

Sunday night, he was saying his prayers as usual. He said something about the people in Heaven coming back when they feel better. I told him that they don't come back because Heaven is much better than earth. It moved from there to how do we get to Heaven. We talked about having Jesus in our hearts. I asked him what he had to do,. He said you had to ask God to forgive you of your sins and to let Jesus come in your heart. I asked what sins were? Bad stuff that you do. Have you ever done bad stuff? Yeah, sometimes, but not all the time. Do you need Jesus in your heart? Yes. Do you want to pray right now? (At this point my heart is pounding out my chest, I really felt the Holy Spirit telling me this was the moment.) He said he wanted to pray when I left the room. He wanted to do it by himself. I left the room wondering what was going to happen.

Monday, I picked him up from school. I asked him if he prayed the night before. He said he did. i asked him if Jesus came into his heart. He said, "I think He forgot." I told Him he would never forget to do that and if He asked Him, He would. He said He did and that Jesus was in his heart.

I can do nothing but praise God for His saving grace toward me, my wife and now my oldest son. He said he is going down Sunday to talk to our pastor and tell him. I wanted him to get saved and be baptized at our church before we moved to Wake Forest, but I would not have pushed it on him for anything. I'm so thankful that God gave me the foremost desire: to see Wesley come to know Him and even my own selfish hope that he would be saved at our home church.

My prayer now is that I would show him Christ even more in my actions and my life. I'm so humbled at the responsibility and the challenges. I know that I am not up to the task, but Christ in me is. I hope I can give him the example that he needs as Wesley learns to follow Jesus. I'm praying that in a few years I will have the opportunity to see Jeremiah do the same thing.