"A Day of Praising" - Colton's Decision

Summer has termed today, "A Day of Praising", and that is exactly what it is!  Today, February 2nd, during breakfast, Colton made the decision to ask Jesus to forgive his sins and invite him to come live in his life and help him make right choices.  This in an answer to a daily prayer I have prayed since before Colton was conceived!

 Colton's Faith Story

Colton's journey to understanding his need for a Savior began early as we read his Bible daily and followed-up his disobedience with prayer for forgiveness.  This past year of being two he has really understood his sinful nature! ;)

His sister Summer has had a huge impact on him as well, as she is very excited and exuberant about her own decision to ask Jesus to forgive her sins and enthusiastically tells lots of people, including her brother!  She has asked him multiple times in the past year if he wanted to "ask Jesus to forgive his sins and go to heaven", to which he always replied "yes".   Summer would get excited each time, and then I would share with her that he needed to get a little older to understand more ;).  I wanted to wait until he understood what he was doing and chose to receive Christ's forgiveness on his own, unprompted by his sister.  Whenever we would discuss going to heaven or asking Jesus to forgive us, Colton would say  "I already did that" when asked about it!  Nevertheless, I didn't feel he fully understood.

This past Christmas (age 2.5) was a huge learning curve for him, spiritually.  We really focused on the Christmas story in the month of December (see videos at end of this blog post) and read it often.  He loved the story and we talked all about Jesus being the only one who never did anything wrong.  He would ask to read the story over and over.

He has also been saying/memorizing and discussing our verse of the week with us for over a year.  We memorize one verse a week, posted on a chalkboard by our kitchen table and say it at mealtime. Colton started joining in around 21 months by just repeating the words after me (see videos  #1 and #2 ).  Within a few months he started memorizing larger phrases (see video).  He currently can say most of the verse (last weeks two verses video) by himself.  Saying and discussing the meaning of these verses has prompted many spiritual conversations.  One verse about heaven that we memorized last summer (see video) has come up quite a bit in conversation since then and will be referenced in a later video in this post.

This morning we were reciting our verse of the week at breakfast.  Our verses this week were:

 As we were discussing these verses, we were talking about what it meant for God to be holy.  God is so holy that he can't be with us when we do wrong things.  I demonstrated this by walking into the next room and showing how God had to be even farther away from us than that because he couldn't be near our sin.  We then talked about that God loved us so much that he wanted to be with us.  He sent his only son (Jesus) - who is the only sinless one - to die on the cross to take the punishment that we deserve so that now God wouldn't see this sin in us and could be with God.  We also talked about that the only way to be with God is to accept this present/gift of forgiveness that he gave us is to ask him to forgive our sins.  Colton sat wide-eyed, listening the whole time, and expressed that HE wanted to do that!!!  (Sidenote: it was adorable watching Summer's whole body respond in excitement as she knew exactly what was happening!)

Colton was very concerned that he would say all the "right words" to God, and I told him that it wasn't about what words he said, but what his mind was thinking about.  We discussed a few things that he could say when he prayed but I really wanted him to lead the way.  This is a poor quality video because I was discreetly holding my phone but it did capture his little voice praying.  Here it is:



Here is the kids saying their verse of the week and I LOVE how Colton gets so excited about his decision at the end!



Here is the video Colton sent to Daddy, Grandparents, and Aunts/Uncles to tell them the good news.



We are all celebrating over here!  Summer made Colton this picture as soon as we finished breakfast...

We praise the Lord for his answer to prayer in working in Colton's heart and bringing him to the point of understanding his need for a Savior and choosing to claim faith in Christ's sacrifice on the cross! 
 
Romans 3:23
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 10:9-10
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
 
We will continue to pray that he will grow in his faith, sharing it with others and becoming more like Christ each day.  My prayer for him continues to be that he would be a man of God just like his Daddy :).