Mission Abundance
John 10:10b, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
She was refusing to go to school for the third day in a row. I decided to try a different parenting approach than the previous day’s suck-it-up-you-still-have-over-a-decade-of-school-left tactic as we sat on the bottom stair waiting for her carpool ride. So I assigned her a mission. I reminded her of her status as a princess in God’s kingdom and her mission is to give away the love God has given her. The slump of her shoulders told me I needed to turn up the heat on the assignment, so we dug into the what and how details of her mission possible…
- Use your words to make three people smile.
- Give your teacher a hug and tell her thank you.
- Write a kind letter for a friend (during writing time).
- Finally, you have to report back to me at the end of the day over after-school snack.
We can know about God and know about the Bible and still miss out on the abundant life God invites us into because we don’t know how a relationship with Him applies to our every day. In John 10:10 Jesus says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Part of the abundant life we have in Jesus is the joy of freely giving away love to others. It can turn a mundane Tuesday into opportunities for making a positive difference in the lives of people around us. There are important stories and verses throughout the Bible we want our kids to know by heart. They’re foundational components of our family’s faith taught at bedtime, in church, at summer camp, around the dinner table and story time. However, along with the head knowledge, we need to experience the applied truth of God’s Word and see that He can and will transform us from the inside out.
My strong-willed, homebody daughter didn’t magically start skipping off to school excited to fulfill her God-given royal calling, but she does come home with stories of seeing how sharing scissors with a classmate or telling the lunch helper thank you made her smile and her heart happy. I tell her it’s the presence of God’s Spirit going with her in her day, and she smiles. As parents, we see her strong personality and intentionally choose to speak to the princess in her as often as possible. She’s experiencing firsthand how faith and love are action-oriented verbs with no duty too small for significance in God’s kingdom.
Faith & Family columnist Jena http://UnravelGrace.comMeyerpeter writes from Lenexa. You can catch up with more of her writings at UnravelGrace.com.