The Best Gifts For Our Children
December 23, 2001
by Tom Barrett Editor@ConservativeTruth.org
This Christmas, as is our tradition every year, we will give our daughter
three gifts. This is because the Baby Jesus received three gifts on the
day He was born, one from each of the three kings. My wife was born in
Cuba, so we combine the Spanish tradition of Three Kings Day with our
Christmas celebration. In Cuba toys were strictly rationed, so the children
each received one "big" gift and two small ones. We do the same
with Sarah, partly because of tradition, but mostly because we don’t want
our daughter to be a "material girl." We see so many children
who receive so many expensive gifts that they don’t appreciate any of
them.
But today I don’t want to talk about the kind of gifts that we wrap and
put under a Christmas tree. I want to share with you the best gifts we
can give to our children. These are gifts you won’t find under any tree.
These gifts don’t come from us. Rather they come from our Heavenly Father
in answer to our prayers for our children.
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Every night since Sarah was born,
we have put her to bed with prayer. We have prayed certain things
over her long before she could understand any of them. We continue
to pray these blessings over her today, even though, at four and a
half, she still doesn’t fully understand all of what we pray in her
behalf. We pray these things because, even though we love her with
all our hearts, the One to Whom we pray loves our daughter far more
than we ever could. |
We pray that she will come to know Jesus as her Lord and Savior at a
young age, so that she will not have to go through the trials that children
who don’t know the Lord in a personal way will experience. We pray that
we will be good examples to her, and that we will raise and discipline
her in a way that is consistent with His teachings. We pray for health
and protection for our little girl.
We also pray every night for someone who none of us know yet. We pray
for Sarah’s future husband. We ask the Lord to give him a loving family
who will teach him the same things that we are teaching Sarah, a family
who cares about eternal things and will point him to the Lord. We pray
for his health and protection, too.
We pray that both Sarah and the boy who will one day become her husband
will remain virgins until they marry each other. Some day when Sarah reads
this, she may be embarrassed that I have written about such things in
a publication read all over the world. But I like to think that she will
be glad I have shared a concept her mother and I feel is vitally important.
By the time she reads this, she will understand how important it is that
two people be able to trust each other completely in marriage. She will
understand such trust is greatly enhanced when each one knows that the
other had the self-control to wait until their wedding night.
You see, my wife and I believe in the power of prayer. We believe that
God cares about every aspect of our lives, and He has the power to answer
our prayers. We believe that the reason many children don’t receive the
gifts I am talking about is simply because their parents don’t ask the
Lord for them. Some people reading this have so much money that they can
afford to buy their children anything they ask for materially. But the
poorest among us in terms of the world’s wealth can afford to give our
children the best gifts.
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