I don’t even know how many stories I must have told the girls about God coming to my rescue. He is our great provider, both physically and emotionally. Emmanuel is with us, working for our good, even in dreadful or perilous situations. Trusting God is something important we need to teach our children.

My younger daughter Leanne learned this in Sunday school and other formal settings, but she learned it best seeing scripture become reality in her life. Her first memorable lesson took place in the fifth grade.

As I turned out Leanne’s light one unsuspecting night, she burst out crying. Actually she was sobbing.

Not being too awfully busy or just plain crazy, I turned the light back on, went to her bedside, and asked her what in the world was the matter.

Leanne couldn’t talk yet, so I held her until she could stop crying, washed her flushed face with a washcloth and waited.

Finally she could tell me the source of such pain. Her best friend at school had told her earlier that day that she didn’t want to be her friend anymore. In a fifth grade class with 21 girls and 8 boys, there were always problems, but this was serious.

The “ringleader” of the class had decided she wanted Leanne’s best friend to be her best friend. So Leanne was alone—all the more so since she, weirdly enough, had been instructed not to play with any of the other girls either.

Alrighty then. Now it was my turn to talk. And talk I did. I said every wonderful thing I knew to say.

I told her how we couldn’t make other people do what we wanted them to do or be what we wanted them to be. I discussed the difficulty but importance of turning the other cheek. And I elaborated on the ugliness, futility and self-destructiveness of any sort of revenge.

Then I tucked her in again and reached for the light once more, thinking how lucky Leanne was to have a sage for a mother.

That’s when I heard another sob, less hysterical, but much more pitiful. “But Mama,“ she said, “I don’t want to lose my friend.“

Oh yes, well, there’s that.

And standing there in the dark, I remembered all the “But I don’t want to’s” of my own life, and knew Leanne needed more help than I was capable of giving her. When I sat beside her this time, all I said was a prayer to the one who could and would help us both:

Dear Father—many time I have knocked and knocked and knocked, and I do not mind. I trust your timing. But if it’s in your will, please answer this request now. Please
somehow give Leanne joy and peace in what for her has become a scary and hostile environment. I have no idea how you will do it, but I trust that you will. And I thank you for this problem, because Leanne is going to see for the first time in her young life, the power of her God!“

At 3:15 the next afternoon, Leanne literally burst through the front door with joy all over her little face.

“This,“ she announced, “has been the happiest day of my life!“ She told me that everything was fine. Her friend still didn’t speak to her, but a new girl named Krista needed a friend that day, and they played all day and had a great time. “Actually, Mom, I knew everything would be okay when you left the room last night.“

In my heart I thanked God for helping Leanne begin to understand and rest in Hebrews 13:5: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.“

When she was 24, Leanne proved her faith genuine and her trust in God mature. I’ll tell you about that next week. (By the way—Leanne, who will be forty this July, just reconnected with a friend from grade school and junior high. They’ve been having the best time. Her name is Krista.)

Applying what is around us every day to spiritual truth is another great way to testify.

One Saturday afternoon when I has taking the girls to meet friends at the mall, they told me a story that affected me so much that I pulled the car over to the side of the road and cried. An analogy was about to explode from my heart onto my stunned daughters.

They had told me about a segment in a program called That’s Incredible that they had seen on television the night before with their dad.

The parents of a boy diagnosed as hopelessly retarded were advised to put their son in an institution. The parents refused, and in this case, the love of parents nurtured even such a severely handicapped child.

When the boy’s mother died in 1979, his father took full responsibility for him-dressing him, giving him his shots, and helping him with the smallest tasks such as crossing the street. But that wasn’t what was incredible.

What was incredible was his one, and only one, great ability—to paint. Despite the fact that he was born with cataracts inside both eyes, blocking the light and causing him to paint just a few inches from the table, he paints enough, and well enough, to have had eight one-man shows in one year alone! Some artists don’t accomplish this in a lifetime.

It takes him only three hours for a small picture and two, three or four days for larger ones. He is unbelievable at details and can remember and recreate scenes he’s seen long ago. In order to get the exact color he remembers, he often uses layers of color.

I had been thinking about priorities at the time.

That boy’s story and my somewhat illogical thought that sprang from it deeply touched me. That’s why I pulled the car over, and with tears streaming down my face, told the girls what I was thinking and feeling: “Girls, I should just pray that God would make me something like that boy. I wish he would give me one amazing ability, if I had no others—the ability to praise Him!“

I suppose that was too emotional, but for some reason the girls were not shocked or upset. God was real and our love for him real when we, sitting together in a car on a warm Saturday afternoon, desired to adore Him and never let Luke 13:34 apply to us: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!“

We talked about such things. And I think it made all the difference.

The girls have become mothers who testify. Stacey’s favorite Christian theme is the freedom Christ gives, and Jake was already beginning to understand that when he was only four. Stacey, who doesn’t cry often, was driving down the street, listening to Steven Curtis Chapman’s Christian song, “Free.“ Jake, after asking what it was about, said, “Is this song going to make you cry, Mom?“

I believe Stacey was testifying when she said, “It might, Jake.“

Another way we can testify is telling our children about the times God has heard us. We have done this over and over in our family, for He has heard us often.

One story we talk about took place when Stacey was not even two and her sister was only a few months old.

Stacey had been throwing up for days because of a stomach virus, and she developed a twist and block between her bowels. It could have killed her if her dad, home on Saturday, hadn’t noticed the slight swelling in her stomach and if she hadn’t had a very astute and observant pediatrician.

We took her to the hospital for a life or death operation. But before they could do the procedure, there were the preliminaries to be taken care of.

A nurse came into the room and asked me if Stacey were potty-trained.

“No,“ I gasped. Hello, I thought, she’s not even two!

The nurse explained to me that if she were not, then they would have to catheterize her in order to get a urine sample and to prepare her for surgery. I couldn’t stand that. I knew what catheterization was, and my mind could not conceive of such a tiny child having to have that done.

So with little hope on anyone’s part, I asked them to bring me a potty chair and to leave my baby and me alone for just a little while.

I felt like a baby myself as I knelt on that cold tile floor and unfastened Stacey’s diaper. As I sat beside her and held her on that contraption, I prayed, “Lord, please, unless it’s part of your will that I can’t see or understand (I John 5:15), please don’t let her have to be catheterized on top of everything else.“

So mundane. Such lack of eloquence.

Yet almost instantly I heard the sound that told me my prayer had been answered.

My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open in traditional amazement. And, in that moment, kneeling on that hard, impersonal floor, I was aware that my baby girl and I were in the presence of God. Whatever would happen, that knowledge meant everything.

I have said that he made himself known to a naive young mother that day. In that moment, I remembered his name is “I am.“ Those moments come.

Tell your children you can understand why Abram fell on his face before God when the Lord made himself known to him (Gen. 17:1-3). Then they will know every word of the Bible is preserved that we might understand God and the relationship he wants to have with us.

Testimonies can also come in the form of analogies. I’ll tell you about that next week, and then I’ll move on from testifying to trusting!

I wish I could remember the exact statistic and where I heard it or read it. I have no trouble whatsoever accepting what I recall, though, because of what so many people have told me around the country.

I believe it is true that fewer than 10 percent of us “testify” to our children. I think we assume they know what is in our hearts. But too often, they really do not know what we’ve experienced with God and how we feel about him. Somehow, and perhaps my personality had something to do with it, I thought to tell our daughters quite a bit. I’m so glad.

Each of my daughters on separate occasions during their high school years called me into their rooms to tell me something they knew would mean so much to me. They said they would tell their children what they had come to know about the Lord and how much they love him. They believe so many young people leave the church because they don’t see well enough the relevancy and beauty of Jesus and God’s written word. Our testimony can make a difference.

We can testify in many different ways. One of the easiest is to read the word in an age appropriate and significant way with them and then react to the word in meaningful application for our current situation. You can do the same thing with the Word in other mediums. Today very young children can be exposed to God’s Word in videos like the Veggie Tales series. There are videos available for older children as well.

I’ve also bought Christian music videos for our older grandson. They powerfully proclaim the word in moving and memorable ways.

Praying with our children also is a way to testify. Their hearing our praise, confession and petition leads them into those areas as well.

But when I think of testifying, I think mainly of telling of our personal experience with God. Our girls were deeply affected by the legacy of their grandparents’ conversion. This is one of the stories we tell often, reminding ourselves of what it means when we have Christ in our lives and when we don’t.

My dad’s favorite song begins: “Years I spent in vanity and pride, caring not my Lord was crucified, knowing not if was for me He died-on Calvary.“ I’ve seen him throw his head back and sing that song with such gusto. I know how much he believes it: “Mercy there was great and grace was free. Pardon there was multiplied to me. There my burdened soul found liberty-at Calvary.“ This song is his testimony.

Mom’s is simpler: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.“

I always say the church didn’t find my parents; my parents found the church. They were desperate, and somewhere along the way, they had heard of the grace of God. So when I was nine, my parents accepted Jesus, and amazing grace transformed their burdened souls.

And we children were never again left with a baby sitter on Friday evenings, standing at the window late, late at night waiting for them to come in from “partying.“ Never again did we lie in our beds hearing them scream jealous accusations at one another. Never did we find Dad “Passed out” at a dirty kitchen table or see him standing slump-shouldered and sad in front of the dining room sideboard with the word “divorce” on his lips. Never again did we see despair.

They were truly converted. Jesus was their love and their Lord. The old ways of doing and thinking were replaced by new. They sobbed when they came down the aisle to accept Christ, for it began at that moment and has continued for forty years—their celebration of Calvary and amazing grace.

There are other kinds of testimony. Next week I’ll discuss some of them before moving on. Meanwhile, what has God been doing for you or showing you lately? I hope you’ll find a way to tell someone.

On the phone this afternoon, our fifteen year old granddaughter Mariah asked us to “Come back!“ Come back? Are you kidding me?

We had left her house in Branson only the night before. She’s getting used to seeing us now that we are there so often checking on and working on the house we’re building down the hill from them.

She put pictures of the house in progress on facebook. She’s pretty excited. We were home alone for awhile yesterday. Her mom and brother were at an out of town ballgame, and her dad and papa were working on the electrical work for the house.

Mariah came upstairs after her shower and found something rare—a quiet house. I like quiet, so while she was downstairs, I had turned off the television and the music and sat reading in silence. She flopped down on the carpet near me, and covering herself with lotion, said, “Ma, this is so relaxing!“ She was amazed by the rest that comes from quiet. 

When we finally move into our house early this summer, she plans on coming down for a dose of quiet every day. I wish all the grandkids, including the three Meyers in California, could come down every day for a dose of quiet or laughter or hugging or snacking or chatting or any good thing we enjoy together.

These are some of the components of having fun with the grandkids, one of the two things our daughters wanted us to do for our grandchildren—our job description I call it. I can’t think of anything easier or nicer than enjoying them and loving them.

Such joy is epitomized by what our first grandchild Jake did when he was fifteen months old. We stood together in the doorway of the living room while his mother sat talking to us in the glider rocker in the corner of the living room.

Jake went over to Stacey and pulled on her as though he wanted to take her somewhere and show her something—which was his custom at the time. He did, in fact, take her to the middle of the living room. Then he left her there, came over to me, pulled me into the rocker, and climbed into my lap and let me rock him to sleep.

Let’s see. How happy was I? Grandchildren seem to provide endless happy and tender moments. When Mariah was three she told her mom she wanted to go to “Jopin” so her Ma could hold her and watch “Dalmatians.“

Our loving them has made the grand children as happy as it has made us. Jake, when he was four and living eight hours away, told his mom one day, “Don’t talk about my Ma, I’ll start cryin’.“

We’re off to California soon to see sixteen-year-old Jake and the other two Meyer grandkids (and their parents of course), and I can’t wait. If you believe their very believable voices on the phone, they can’t wait either. Loving grandchildren—what a job!

The other task on our job description is as important as loving and enjoying them. Along with the Deut. 4:9 mandate to teach their children after them, Deut. 11:19 serves as written objective: “Teach them (God’s words) to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.“

Many forces work against their relationship with God, but we believe we can help equip them to be faithful servants of the most high God. We are trying to equip them by doing the four things we did to equip our daughters.

Do you hear four blogs coming right up?