Within My Heart

You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!

-Ackley

We sat together on her bed, praying before she went to sleep. My four year old daughter prayed and then looked at me thoughtfully. A beautiful smile spread across her face.

"Mommy, it's easier to pray with Jesus in my heart!"

I've been thinking about what she said ever since. Such simple, untarnished faith combined with depth not expected of one so young. But what she said is absolutely true.

In our little homeschool-preschool, Hannah and I talked about the death and resurrection of Jesus the week before Easter. On the day we were talking about the Passover, and it's prediction of the sacrifice of Christ, Hannah became quiet. I put away the Bible and got out her math and alphabet work. She stopped me.

"Mommy, I want to ask Jesus to come into my heart." she said, and didn't wait for an okay from me. She bowed her head, closed her eyes, and asked Jesus to forgive her sins and come into her heart and "never leave her."

All the time I'd spent wondering how to help her understand, how to explain salvation to her, and she didn't need to know anything except the basic facts. Jesus loved her, Jesus died for her sins, Jesus wanted to live in her heart and be her Lord for the rest of her life. And she wanted that too. I didn't need to do anything besides model the joy of living in His Spirit and loving Him myself.

It amazes me to know that Hannah was chosen by God long before my fervent wish to become a mother finally became reality. He knew that she would follow Him before He even made the world. That fact, that His will and His wisdom is so far above mine, is what makes it possible to be a parent.

When Alfred Ackley wrote the hymn "He Lives" I quoted above, he was answering the honest question of a young Jewish man, who wondered why he should worship a dead Jew. I don't know what the man's response was. But I do understand Ackley's answer with all of my heart. At the age of six, I realized what Hannah realized, that I needed, and wanted Jesus to change me. I realized, on some level, that Jesus had to die to take care of the wrong things I had done. That he rose again in victory so that He could be Lord of all, and Lord of me. And I welcomed His Spirit in.

He's never left me. That's why I can promise Hannah that He'll never leave her either. And that is the source of my peace, and my desire that others also know Him. Not because I want another check in my file that says I got another person saved, as if we get extra points in heaven for bringing friends. Because I see all the heartache this life provides, and I know, I know Jesus is the answer! Not because I'm paid to sell Him, because I know what He's done for me, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that His Spirit dwells within me and guides me, comforts me, gives me strength and hope for each new day.

I pray that every reader of this blog entry knows the same.

"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with it's commandments and regulations." - Ephesians 2:14-15

"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" -2 Corinthians 5:17