| |

He Loves Them More

ByLibby Snow

psalm 4.8

So my 6-year-old daughter has been battling some anxiety lately. It breaks my heart. She has also been asking me a lot of hard questions. After reading Psalm 4:8 with her before bed several nights in a row — “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord will keep me safe” — she wants to know exactly HOW God keeps her safe when she can’t see Him standing in her room with her.

In addition, we have been talking about fear, and how God promises that HIS perfect love casts out fear (I John 4)… and so she wants to know why she still feels so scared many times throughout each day. When we talked about how life-changing it is to have Jesus LIVING in our hearts, she wanted to know if it would hurt her when He lives there.

She is precious. And her questions are amazing.

The problem is, and the scary thing is, that I don’t always know how to answer them for her. I feel like I can typically come up with great analogies, share testimonies of God’s work in my life, point my kids to scripture, pray over them and with them… but I absolutely cannot always find the words to answer the questions hidden in the depths of them.

I was driving to take my oldest to school the other day, and I was thinking about a few of the questions that my 6-year-old had asked me the night before and thought about her prayers to God before I left her room. Here’s the deal — and this brought GREAT comfort to me, and honestly, this will STILL bring great comfort to me when my kids are teenagers, when they desire to be married, and when they become parents someday as well —  I AM NOT IN CONTROL. How I answer their questions will not deter God from pursuing them. And my love for my kids doesn’t even hold a candle to the love their heavenly Father has for them.

Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the lord forever (Psalm 23:6).

My children will make choices I am not fond of.  They will have hurts I can’t fix despite my desire to do that. They will have questions. Most importantly, they will always need God, and they will always need to seek him and trust Him ON THEIR OWN.

So as I was driving to school the other day, I felt such peace from the Lord. And I hope you can catch a glimpse of that today as well. We need to model, pray, lead, and love them. And we can do that best by clinging to Jesus ourselves.

And the kicker? We actually need to entrust these little ones to God with open hands. That is hard to do. But HE is so worthy!

Blessings,

Libby

Libby thrives on people and intentional relationships with them! She is a former middle school English teacher (nine years of teaching). She has been married to Ryan for nearly 13 years and has been a pastor's wife all along. She is blessed to be a mom of 3 little ones, yet is also anxiously awaiting meeting her soon-to-be-son in Ethiopia. Libby is refreshed by her oh-so-treasured quiet mornings in the Word and with her Savior. She also loves exercising, entertaining in her home, and her adoration to cook/create in the kitchen. You can follow bits and pieces about their adoption story at Snows2Ethiopia.

Similar Posts