You’ve Got To Be Grown Up To Pray

You’ve Got to Be Grown Up to Pray

Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” Luke 18:16-17

One of the marvelous things about working with children is how their faith can rub off on us if we’ll let it. When I pray with kids, I love the simple petitions they offer for friends or family. But they also have a heart for people they’ve never met who live thousands of miles away. When Hope Smith, a nine-year-old, was researching and writing a report on Mongolia for a homeschool project, one fact she learned about that nation moved her deeply. In a missions magazine she read that there were very few Bibles and that instead of worshiping God, the people knelt at Buddhist altars in their tents.

The fact that more than 98 percent of Mongolians were spiritually lost touched Hope’s heart, and she began praying. She asked God to replace the Buddhist altars with Bibles and to send more missionaries. But she didn’t stop with a onetime prayer. On her own, she remembered to pray every day for a spiritual awakening for this nation. After two years of prayer, Hope came across another, more recent, article in the missions magazine, this one titled “Hope for Mongolia.” The feature story described a revival during which five hundred Mongolians came to faith in Christ as their Savior. Hope felt this was God’s way of saying he had heard and answered her prayers.

During the next year those five hundred believers grew to a thousand, and the people started a church called Hope Assembly. More than two thousand Mongols gathered to worship Jesus at their first-ever Christmas service, and this church has planted others in Mongolia.

Do we have to grow up, go to seminary, or gain advanced knowledge for God to use our prayers? Hope’s story shows that prayer is all about God and that he can use the youngest or least experienced person in our midst to have an impact on the world. —CHERI

Grant me the faith of a child, O Lord. Dispel my doubts, and inspire my prayers.

The prayer of the feeblest saint on earth who lives in the Spirit and keeps right with God is a terror to Satan.

—OSWALD CHAMBERS (1874–1917), SCOTTISH BIBLE TEACHER, YMCA CHAPLAIN IN EGYPT