And a Small Child Shall Lead Them
Having childlike faith is not always easy, but it is possible with the right inspiration!
I got my inspiration from our granddaughter as she grew in the first year of her little life with us. Of course, I shared it with Homie (Boyce) first because I was so excited by this new revelation!
Now, I want to put it in writing form and share it with you all!
Before our granddaughter, Boyce and I always prayed for our children. When they became teenagers and began dating, we started praying for our grandchildren too. This may seem strange, since we didn’t have any at this point. But looking around us in today’s culture where children were born outside the boundaries of God’s perimeters, the ones He set in the beginning with the first marriage of a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, to single moms and even single dads, worried us.
From our own teenage days, we understood how children wanted to be accepted by the culture they were growing in. In this culture, I’ve known single girls as young as 13 begin having babies with different fathers. This wasn’t accepted as the norm in mine and Boyce’s day. Most of the people we knew were married, for better or for worse, before children.
This is no judgment from me on anyone because I know I’m just a sinner saved by grace, like everyone else.
My testimony and revelation today that I am sharing with you are not about that, but about our granddaughter!
Boyce and I prayed for our children that they would not have children until they married and were ready. The years went by and finally they were married, but we had been praying for our grandchildren all that time too; so many prayers.
I was with my daughter and son-in-law when our granddaughter was born. I saw her lifted up the minute she came into our world and the doctor laid her on her mommy’s tummy. When she was face to face with her mommy, she smiled.
Yes! You heard me right. She smiled at her mommy 5 seconds after delivery!
I was shocked and almost yelled it out…almost, but said a little loud, “She smiled at you, Casey! Our baby smiled at her mommy!”
Of course the tears spurted from my eyes as I began boohooing.
As she began to grow, we noticed that she smiled more. When her little eyesight began to clear up where she could see clearly, she smiled even more. Everywhere we took her she smiled at people. And people began to flock around her. And she smiled. Everywhere we went people fell in love with her and wanted her. Every restaurant we took her to the waiters, waitresses, and sometimes even restaurant owners wanted her. All our church members wanted her to smile at them. And she smiled at everyone.
When she came to our house early in the morning, because Boyce and I decided to keep her for our daughter to go back to work, she greeted us with a big, sleepy eyed smile. It made our morning so much brighter and wonderful because we smiled back!
When she was eight months old, one morning I was praying for her, and I saw a vision of her in my mind, and she was smiling.
As I enjoyed the vision in my spirit, I began to see her in a different light. I saw her wrapped in our prayers, smiling. The Lord showed me why she drew so many people to her. When she smiled, and her smile was so genuine, it beamed out to them. And she smiled at everyone with such joy of life and acceptance of them. She accepted everyone. Black or white, male or female, big or small, she smiled at them. Saint or sinner, she smiled at them. She wasn’t judgmental, raciest, or bigoted, or mean spirited towards anyone.
Everyone was welcome in Hadley’s world. Her smile drew them and welcomed them into a great place to be, her little ray of sunshine.
In this vision, the Lord taught me a lesson. As Christians we should be like Hadley. We should smile a genuine smile at everyone we meet, or greet. We should be accepting of all people, smiling past any racial divide, religious divide, or cultural divide.
As God’s people, we should allow the Lord to fill us with his joy. For the joy of the Lord is our strength.
No matter what our situation, we should be filled with the joy of the Lord and his strength. As we smile a genuine smile at people and bring them into our world of joyous salvation, they may want to know why we are so happy.
Praise the Lord!
And we should tell them! We should be ready with our testimony of how we were lost but now we are saved! We should be a ray of sunshine proclaiming the Lord, the Son of God, and be a witness of how he had changed our lives!
No testimony is too great or too small! Every testimony has the life saving potential of touching someone.
During that time, our Pastor preached a message about this, how we are commanded by Jesus to go into the entire world and testify of him! We should all be a ray of sunshine, beaming outward the joy and glory of God into the world around us. God has placed you in your world for that reason!
I know every day is not great, but every day we are faced with multiple choices. One choice is if you are going to live out of your circumstance, or, are you going to live out of the “joy of the Lord?” In living out of the joy of the Lord, I get in touch with my gratefulness, gratitude, and a heart full of thankfulness that I am alive in Him, my God and my Savior, Jesus. I am thankful every day that I am no longer dead in my trespasses and sin. I love Jesus, and therein lies the source of my wholehearted joy in him. Gratitude, we should never be more than two spiritual steps away from it.
So, beam him out, draw people in, then testify and give Him glory. He changed the world with one message and twelve disciples. He came and died for our sins and rose on the third day. We are this day one of his disciples with the same message that can change the world around us. Are you ready to change the world around you? Are you ready to change the world for someone else? Are you ready to smile for the Lord?
Are you ready with a joyful “Hadley” smile; one of sincerity and acceptance of everyone you meet? Are you ready to draw them into the SONshine of Christ that is in you. Are you ready to beam Christ out and draw people in?
I am ready today, because of the lesson the Lord taught me through our granddaughter, to smile as big-of-a-watt-smile that I can to beam the joy of the Lord outward and draw people in, whomever they may be!
Being lead by our granddaughter, through the Lord, was so awesome that morning. I just wanted to share a smile with you today and beam a little of Jesus out into your world.
I hope it changes your mind set about the way we look at others as it did me.
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Inspiring to love,
Love, from Romance and the Homestead,
Della
Author Della M Strickland 