Calling All Prayer Warriors!

*NOTE* I just posted a detailed update yesterday on our situation, God's movement as well as the good, bad, and ugly - so if you are interested please SEE THE POST BELOW.

There are so many things that transpire in a day that I just can't type fast enough and keep up to record all that is taking place so it took me a while to get that one finished and posted and today I needed to request your prayer on the situation that I am describing in this post.

I knew when God would do something amazing with opening this door for Vince to have his unique training opportunity in Texas, that the spiritual warfare would intensify. Sometimes I honestly don't know how much more intense it can get. I don't know if you have ever experienced spiritual warfare that is so intense that you can just almost feel the demons and angels in the room fighting and if you could see into the spiritual realm you would definitely see that taking place, but that is where we are these days. I don't mean to be heavy here but we have really been experiencing it, especially with trying not to give into certain thoughts and attitudes.

It is just like Satan to take your fears and insecurities and just continue throwing all he has at you until you begin giving him a foothold. We have been amazed that just when a negative thought hits and Satan begins trying to work us over something happens on the complete opposite end of the spectrum that comes from God to encourage us. There is definitely a war that is taking place where God is giving us all the strength we need to resist. Now, I am not trying to spiritualize everything but today Satan changed up his game plan entirely and left me dumbfounded with something that happened with Grant. I will be the first to tell you that sometimes children just do the wrong thing, plain and simple. There is no spiritual warfare taking place, they are just acting in their flesh. However, I believe what is taking place is nothing more than spiritual warfare that is directed at our kids and affecting us too. I've said before that Satan can throw all he has at Vince and me individually and at our marriage and while it may knock us down, with the strength of God, we get back up again. However, when you mess with our children, it becomes a whole different ball game.

For you parents out there, you know there are some days that your children wake up and you wonder who this child is and almost as quickly as these bad behaviors suddenly appear, they suddenly disappear. I know with my kids they will go through some weird phases and then they get out of them. The past few days Grant just hasn't been himself. While he certainly is far from perfect, he is a child that has a very unique understanding of God (even though he hasn't come to the point of accepting Christ as his Savior) and the things of God. I have never seen this kind of desire and eagerness to learn the things of God at such an early age. There are things that he will say that actually challenge me and things that he will pick up on from a Bible story that I've never even thought about before. He has such a sweet heart and is the type of kid that if he has two treats, he wants to share one with Peyton. He is also overly honest where he will tell on himself when he does something he should not do. However, this sweet Grant has just not been the same lately. Today, he had a rough day at school with talking back and being disrespectful. This is the first time we have dealt with this kind of behavior from him with a teacher. Now I know that most children go through a period of talking back but in the past few days we have dealt with lying, manipulation, talking back, and trying to get Peyton in trouble (all of these behaviors are so unlike him).

Now, my initial response was lowering the boom and staying the course until he shapes up which is exactly what has happened the past couple of days. We have certainly seen that with our children staying the course and being consistent doesn't always reap immediate rewards but eventually it pays off and you see the fruits of your labor. Some of the things we have been working on, we are just now starting to see the results more than a year later. When I talked to his teacher, I just thought what in the world is going on with this child? My first thought was to again lower the boom and help him get through this phase until I asked him what was going on with him. I said Grant are you scared? sad? mad? and went through different emotions because I know that all we are going through has an impact on our boys too, so I'm trying to understand what he is feeling so I can help. I was not prepared for what he said. He said, "Mommy I don't want to be good and grow up to go to heaven." He went on to say that if he does bad things then he won't grow up and that he didn't want to grow up. I'm not sure where he got this train of thought from but this is what he believes right now and I have to figure out how to replace those lies with the truth. This is a child who weeks ago had all kinds of questions about heaven and said he wanted to grow up quick so he could go there. Now, he is telling me he is scared of heaven because of this bad man that is there which then got us talking about there is a place called heaven and then there is place where bad people go.

Recently, Vince and I have been talking to him about being a leader and that good leaders choose to do the right thing even when others may not be doing the right thing. We've also told him that he is getting to be a big boy now and we expect him to do the things he knows is right. Maybe that is why he felt like if he did bad things he wouldn't have to grow up. Who knows? I remember just saying, "God what do we do?" As I listened to Grant go on to tell me different things about the Bible that he used to have a good understanding of (now I know he is only four, but I have been floored with some of the things he will tell me about what he remembers from our Bible stories and he is right), it was like now all of a sudden these truths had been twisted in his mind to cause him to feel fearful and to where now he is saying he does not like God and does not want to go to heaven.

Kids can be fickle and tomorrow he may feel completely different but as I listened to what he was saying, I thought isn't it so like Satan to take truths and twist them to bring about fear and misunderstanding and then we take those misunderstandings and believe them as if they are truth. It also reminded me that Satan will also take truths we give our kids and try to twist them as well. Here, we had good intentions of teaching Grant about leadership and as he grows up choosing to do the right thing and be a big boy and Satan takes those good things and somehow plants thoughts in Grant's mind that if he grows up to do good things he will get older and as he gets older he will go to heaven (a place that Grant used to think was great) where Grant thinks there is a bad person there (well, at least he did until we had our G-rated version of heaven and the "not nice" place).

While I firmly believe we need to deal with the behaviors and there must be consequences, I was reminded how God deals with me as His child. I am also reminded that Grant's perspective of God will largely be formed by the way we as his earthly parents discipline, love, and treat him so my first plan of action on how to punish him shifted slightly. If that doesn't motivate and challenge you to really know the character of God, I don't know what will! I know that with me sometimes when I'm in a downward spiral, I can sometimes stay on that path unless I am rescued from myself or receive some type of encouragement. Sure, there are times when I receive the natural consequences for my sin or it is some type of punishment that really hurts but what I have experienced over and over again is God's grace. While I'm certainly no parenting expert, I firmly believe God reminded me that in the midst of allowing natural consequences to take place and sometimes painful consequences to help our children remember the error of their ways, there must still be room for grace. For the past two days, Grant has received spankings, privileges taken away, time out in his room where he did not get to talk or play. We've had that conversation where our choices either lead to good or bad things. If you choose to do something wrong you miss out on fun but no matter how strict the consequences have been the past few days, I've seen him spiraling down and he needs to be rescued and I firmly believe God was telling me to show him grace. So today while he received spankings for being disrespectful to his teacher and had time out for 90 minutes (I know you are wondering where the grace comes in and I also know that you are supposed to have 1 minute of time out per the age of the child but 4 minutes just wouldn't teach him the lesson he needed to learn), I decided that instead of making him stay in his room for the rest of the day, he will have his time out for what would have been his play time in his room but once he admitted his mistake and takes responsibility, then we will continue with the rest of the day in hope and I'm throwing Grant the rope to hopefully pull him out of his downward spiral just as God has done so graciously to me over the years when I needed it so much.

I would be curious to hear any wisdom from those of you who have been there and done that with your kids. I would also really appreciate your prayers for our children as I firmly believe they are also being targeted in the midst of our family's spiritual warfare.

*I'll update later, but since writing this post and praying with him, there has been a 180 degree tranformation from Grant! We had a great rest of the day and he is back to being sweet. He said he loves God and that the bad man that he thought was in heaven is in that not nice place and that what that bad man said about "the Bible is blame" (not sure what that means) is not the truth.