Presentation – Life Lesson # 4
“And which of you that is a father shall his son ask for a loaf of bread, and the father gives him a stone? or a fish, and he gives him a serpent?” Luke 11:11
Our heavenly father wants to reveal His nature as a good father. Maybe we didn’t have the best fathers, or husbands or even spiritual leaders. But, I know God wants to present good things to us.
I remember my son Colt when he was about to graduate his second year of college, wanted to go backpacking in Europe over the summer. My immediate thought was, “No, I can’t provide, I’m a single mom and I’ll be worried about him.”
“What if something happened and I couldn’t get him back home?”
So, in my insecurity as a single mom my response was to blame shift and I said, “How are you going to get to Europe, you can’t even keep your room cleaned? Have you prayed about this?” His response, “So if I clean my room can I go to Europe?” I was waiting for him to add, “Where God guides He provides!” But the sweet son that he is, he didn’t add that in there!
“Now that is a negotiator for you!” Colt should and could have been a hostage negotiator with the government.”
“What was I to say?”
So, like any good mother (thinking he would never do it), said, “Sure, If you clean your room and keep it cleaned you can go to Europe this summer providing you have the money.” Feeling very smug and safe that not only he wouldn’t keep his room cleaned, he didn’t have a job, so he would never be able to raise enough money in time.
So like any good mother who wanted her son to accomplish his dreams, I put a sign up on his bedroom door reminding him of his passion to go to Europe. It read,
IF YOU CLEAN YOUR ROOM YOU CAN GO TO EUROPE.
Now anyone that knows my son, Colt knows he is extremely brilliant, a very good negotiator and would have every detail of this trip planned out in his mind. But, he is also a procrastinator! He has a very dry but sense of humor that is simply amazing. Unlike his younger brother Maverick, you rarely see him belly laughing. He can tell the funniest joke with a straight face that makes it even funnier….
One afternoon I pull up to my house beside him and was overcome with laughter because of his laughter and inability to get out of his car. He was belly laughing so hard. It almost scared me because I thought he might be intoxicated or something of the same nature.
Instead, he gets out of his car and asked me, “Did you call my logic professor at school?” I stopped laughing and said, “No, I don’t even know who he is. Why?”
He then began to tell me probably the funniest but most awesome presentation my son ever had to do in college. Colt went on to say, “We had a pop quiz today, and everyone had to draw out a slip of paper and argue why or why not their statement was a logical statement. I looked and felt like an idiot when I had to argue why my statement was logical.” “Why was that?, I replied. My statement was, “If you clean your room, you can go to Europe.”
Honestly, I felt like I was in a dream. I knew at that moment God was speaking to my son.
“Colt, I would say this is a confirmation that God wants you to go to Europe.”
Luke 2:49 “And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Knew ye not that I must be in my Father’s house.”
I think this was the moment I realized my son was no longer a little child, a toddler, a teen but he had reached manhood. The words Jesus spoke to his mother and father when they turned back after realizing Jesus had stayed back in the temple teaching at the age of twelve flooded my soul. Later it was not only a test of Colt’s faith, but sorely mine, when I put my son on a plane to Europe with only $35 in his pocket. But God provided for him every step of that journey. I was a nervous wreck, but I knew God was preparing and presenting my son for his purpose and calling here on this earth.
Maybe you are a single mom, maybe it looks like you don’t have anything, and trusting others is difficult and there are days when you don’t know where, when or how you will survive, but I say this is a lie from the pit of hell. If you belong to Jesus, then you have resources at your fingertips. And even if you don’t know Jesus, you can still ask God for His help, and I believe He will help you.
My idea of what we are to “look like” as Christians has changed so dramatically over the years. Each one of my four biological sons and many spiritual sons and daughters are in different places, different cultures and different stages of their walks with our Heavenly Father. I have to believe God is allowing and planning things for them that will draw them closer to Him. As their mom, I believe my job now is just loving and praying for God’s best for each one of them!
It’s another life’s lesson on letting go and letting God do the work in them. I love my sons and I love what the Lord is doing in my life and in theirs.
Searching for God’s Treasures,
Marlene
Marlene has been called to go and serve others
wherever God calls her.
She combines teaching, prayer, worship with the prophetic, words of knowledge and wisdom to bring salvation, deliverance & healing to those who are lost, hurting helping each other prepare for ruling and reigning with the MOST HIGH GOD!
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