I was chatting with 2 cell members over lunch after a training session on deliverance, at a coffee shop opposite church, when our conversation suddenly turned to how my 11-year old boy became so spiritually hungry. This is a source of great interest from many Christian parents I have encountered.
I have been wondering the same thing myself, and keep asking him "When did you suddenly become so interested in God?". He can't really remember himself. But I think this is what I remember:
It was around Feb/Mar 2023 period, when he suddenly slowed down a lot in his daily things. He took longer and longer to do his homework, to shower, to eat, to even brush his teeth, such that I remember sitting with him from 3pm until 10+pm to finish his homework! And he would do his work so slowly he left lots of questions blank (like the whole li2 jie3, half the speed math paper) when he took practice test papers. That was also a time when he would sit stoning, staring into space, looking mopey and sad. And he would act tortured when his siblings commented on him. I remember bringing him to watch Ant Man and Quantumania and instead of enjoying it he just put his head in his hands the whole time and curled up, like he was being tortured. And when I took him to Botanic Gardens, he would walk far behind us and have a long face the whole time, like he wasn't having any fun. When I looked at his work, I saw how many times he cancelled out what he wrote, and wrote the same thing after that. It was like some mental issue. He also wasn't eating. And after many night talks with him, I realised:
- He said often he didn't know if he was sinning (maybe it was him listening to my teaching on holiness on 4 Mar)
- He didn't know what to do next, like whether it was God's will, but on further asking, it was little things like should he do this piece of homework now and that piece of homework. It was analysis by paralysis.
- I remember at one point, he was scared that he would encounter the end times, cos of some lady who came to buy Sylvanian family figurines from me, and she said her pastor said it was very soon now.
At some point, Commandant Catherine told me (when I told her about my boy's problem), that as a parent, an authoritative figure, I had to take control and pray for my child. So me and Ben went into a room and took authority and prayed for him. He became better after that!
Slowly, he even smiled and laughed at things, and eventually, he became his usual jokey self, laughing really hard at jokes. I recall when he was at his low point, his brother showed a video of him filming himself and being a real goofy show-and-tell person, and he was such a far cry from it. He is now more relaxed, and enjoys talking to people, but hasn't quite regained his old comedic self.
But instead, as he came out of his funk, it was replaced by this deep desire to read the Bible and love of Bible study. He would harrass me to do Bible Study with them, and he loved hearing me read the Bible in a dramatic voice, and after that he would always ask me, "so what's the lesson?" or "so what's the key takeaway", or "what does this mean?". And I would have to explain it, and if I succeeded, he woudl smile and say it was a good Bible study and go to sleep happy.
He loved to attend cell group, and after church camp, where he hated for it to end and even got a "Best Camper" award, and wanted to start his own cell group, and become a pastor, his love for cell group and all things church became a full-blown mania or love affair. To the point now, he loves Sundays, especially when my husband would be doing Bible study with his cousin (my boy would be the first person sitting there listening attentively with his Bible), or to come to any training sessions on Christian things with me.
Many Christians have asked me, how did I raise up such a godly boy, and I wish I could say it was from his observations of his role model (who is his mummy), and it is from him seeing me do my quiet time daily, kneeling at my bed, or praying aloud earnestly whenever I encountered difficulties, but it is not. My quiet times are sketchy and irregular, and far from my ideal state (which from the book I read, is to spend at least 1.5 hours daily in worship, Word, listening, prayer and journalling, in a secret closet), and at times I break into sporadic 40-day prayers for people (more on that later), when I am burdened or convicted to do so, although I sometimes lose steam, especially when I am doing it alone. Sometimes I come back from a high (e.g. my Cambodia mission trip) and do my extended quiet times (e.g. 1 hour a day) quite regularly for a while, only to lose steam again and go back to guerrilla-style QTs. I do not talk about God much in my daily life outside of church, and I hardly spout verses, and the only spiritual example I set them is in my regular, non-negotiable attendance of church and conducting of cell groups. Also, the spiritual instruction I have been giving them is sporadic Bible studies, which me or my husband conducts, and we try to go through a gospel, although now we are skipping around some epistles as well, and what is useful is I read a short passage and then we discuss how to interpret it and the right applications for our lives. I find this a useful girding of biblical perspectives and understanding of what God expects out of us, in living out the Christian faith. I also get the sense my kids don't take salvation for granted, judging by the number of times they ask me "how do I know I am saved?" and moaning that they don't think they are, and my eldest even often wishing he was a dog, "cos all dogs go to heaven". I had to explain the salvation thing to them over and over again.
The interesting thing which is a major Thanksgiving is that my oldest boy is somehow quite gifted in evangelism, or it comes easily/naturally to him, through his chatty friendships (he is a chatty boy), and he claims he has converted or led to Christ 2 of his friends! This is so amazing to me. My second boy who is the "holy" one who wants to be a pastor, instead keeps asking me to pray for him to be able to evangelise, but he is the one who tries but scares his friends away, by talking about hell and stuff (the strange thing is my oldest boy did share about how someone died and saw these evil spirits and his friends instead were so scared they believed). So while my oldest boy is not as spiritually keen and crazy like my second, in that he still likes reading his children's books like Roald Dahl, Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and has other hobbies like playing computer games and soccer, he is also now quite willing to go to Sunday School, he raises his hands when he worships with me (no kidding), and doesn't try to escape at the last minute from Sunday School so I have to chase him all around the church or play hide and seek with him to catch him and force him into his Sunday school class (the things my kids make me do...). My second boy has no interest other than watching Christian movies, reading Christian books, attending Christian events and Bible study. Ahem... Yes. How did I get a boy like that? To the point when one of the ladies in the training session turned around and spoke to him after the first class and said when she laid eyes on him, the word "Special" came into her mind, and she just wanted to tell him he is very special in God's eyes and God is very pleased with him. If only he would develop some other hobbies and eat more. At this young age, he is also learning not to judge other people so easily, which kids are prone to do when they get it into their heads that something is right and wrong.
So, I wonder, how did all this happen? Well, I have no clear answers, but I like to think that my feeble attempts to set up a personal spiritual altar some years ago after reading the John Mulinde book, in my home helped kick-start things (I recall a few nights or early mornings, I woke up and did my prayer session at the second balcony, playing worship songs on my hp), and we had one or two attempts to do a family worship/Bible study/prayer session on a Sun night, and we have been doing nightly prayers regularly (which are quite extended, we use them to pray for other people too), and occasional Bible studies, spurred by my second boy's insatiable appetite for spiritual feeding and prayer. He wanders into my walk-in wardrobe when I'm doing my quiet time and asks me what am I doing, and when I tell him, he promptly sits down next to me, plonks down his own Bible and notebook and wants to imitate me and learn how I do it. My kids like a formulaic prayer, whereby we always start with confession, and then prayer requests. But it is like this verse shared at the Daniel Fellowship event from Leviticus 6:12 "The fire on the altar must be kept burning; it must not go out". And I feel that as long as we were keeping the home altar going, with my individual prayer times, my husband's, us praying as a small group of 2 or 3 nightly (me and my 2 boys, sometimes with my girl as well), the prayer altar was kept burning, and this slowly changed the spiritual atmosphere in my home.
Anyway, I have a lot to thank God for. Spiritual change in kids is not to be taken for granted and is hard to come by, judging from what a colleague told me from his observations of his cell members who are parents, and from my husband's friends' sharing, who are pastors' wives. And I really should have more faith in this PSLE at the end of the year. God will deliver me (I mean my boy) and show Himself strong and faithful. He always does. And I may then ask myself "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?", like what my mentor texted me one night. And even if the results are not what the world thinks of as a happy ending, I know that all things work for the good of those who love Him, and who have been called according to His purpose. Amen.
