When Family and Ministry Collide | Part 3
Global Impact Partners Josh and Brenda Lei Casey are committed to planting churches in Spain while also raising four daughters on the mission field. In this third part of their series on family and ministry, they share how they’ve learned some valuable lessons in listening to their children when it comes to leading them in ministry.
Children are valid and useful tools within the church.
If your kids have accepted Christ, then they have a spiritual gift. This isn’t something that happens when they turn 18 and become adults. King Josiah at eight years old was used of God to turn the nation back to God (2 Chronicles 34:1)! Children in whom the Spirit has produced salvation and soul regeneration do not receive a Happy Meal version of the Holy Spirit.
What’s more, God desires to use your child’s spiritual gift to build up and edify the body of Christ! We need to ask how are we facilitating, encouraging, empowering, and fanning the flame of the gifts He has given our children.
As parents, we must be on the lookout for our kids’ spiritual gifts. We should ask them how they want to get involved in the church. We should listen to and support their ideas to show God’s love to others. We need to frequently present the needs of the body to them and ask them how we should respond to those needs as a family.
We’ve also got to be careful to avoid so quickly praying the difficulties and trials out of our kids’ lives, because it could be those very trials that God uses to grow them and equip them for His work in their lives. Again, every protective parental instinct will shudder at the very idea of this.
But if we believe they’ve received spiritual gifts, we must encourage them to grow and press into those gifts, whether that means exposing them to as many different ministries as we can or holding onto them through the valleys of life.
In case you missed it, be sure to read Part One and Part Two of this series!