What I want for you Most

To my boys…my little arrows…my warriors in training:

I often think about what I want for you most.  Hopes deep within my soul turn into prayers poured  from my heart and oftentimes whispered from my lips throughout my days. Do I want you to have good health and talent and success and a life of happiness? Well, certainly those things would be wonderful blessings. Do I desire for you a well-adjusted childhood? Academic and athletic achievement? Loyal friends? A solid career? Financial stability and ease? What parent wouldn’t want these good gifts for their children. I hope God sees fit to bless each of you in some or all of these ways during your life on earth, but the truth is that I rarely pray any of these things for you. They are not the most important things. They are not what I want for you most, and they are not what I want for you at all if they come at the expense of what I want most.

What I desire for each of you more than anything is that God would grow you into mighty warriors for the Kingdom of Christ–the Kingdom of Light. In Psalm 127, God tells us that you boys are a heritage to your dad and me. You are a reward to us from God Himself. As children born into a household built by the Lord, God’s Word describes you as “arrows in the hand of a mighty warrior.” The passage goes on to say that warriors who fill their quiver with these arrows are  abundantly blessed. While your dad and I are not warriors in a physical sense, we are very much warriors in a spiritual sense. Ephesians 6 tells us that, as followers of Jesus, we are warriors in a battle that we cannot see with our eyes but a battle that is very real and very intense, nonetheless. This battle is not against flesh and blood, but it is a battle against a very present darkness in our world–a battle against spiritual forces of evil.

You will not have to live long in our world to see this darkness. It is pervasive. It has left our world broken and seemingly beyond repair. Broken hearts. Broken bodies. Hatred. Violence. Abuse. Dysfunction. Destruction. Despair. Death. Things are not as they should be and it hurts so deeply. No one is unaffected. Suffering comes to all, and the burdens of this present darkness are too many and too heavy for us to bear. The worst part of it all is that the darkness starts in you and me—in the deepest crevices of our own hearts (Jeremiah 17:9), and God’s Word says that we love this darkness (John 3:19). My precious boys, you will never become warriors against this great darkness in our world until you first recognize and mourn the great darkness in your own hearts. You will never fight for the light until a supernatural and transformative Light shines in your own hearts. This Light is my greatest hope and prayer for you.

“. . .the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord . . . For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Only Jesus has borne the full burden of our brokenness through His death in our place on the cross of Calvary. Jesus alone is the Light that will shine in our hearts and vanquish the darkness. Look to Him, little Arrows, look to Him. And one day, I pray you will fly from our quiver and into the world as strong Warriors–full of integrity and kindness– ready to do battle for The Light as you love others deeply and make an eternal difference here on Earth to the glory of God. May every part of my parenting be shaped by this deep desire of my heart—what I want for you most.

I Love you deeply.