Kayden.

I have the honor of working at Victory World Church and every Tuesday morning before our staff meeting, we come together and pray over our nation and various things/topics/people. Something that I really love is that we pray over every single prayer card (prayer request) that is turned in from the weekend. This past Tuesday, I picked up 4 cards and one of them came from a second grader named Kayden. His prayer request was written in crayon and many of the words were spelled wrong, but his prayer was:

I pray my daddy starts to believe in God.

I read the card about 3 times, wanting to make sure I was reading correctly, taken aback that a second grader was praying such a big prayer as this. Although I do not know Kayden, I felt his seven-year-old heart through that card. As tears fell down my face, I prayed for Kayden and his dad. I prayed and cried because I could hear Kayden so desperately calling out to God as best he knew how, to save his dad. And I knew in order for Kayden to want his dad to be saved and have a relationship with Jesus, it was because Kayden himself had one with Abba.

How sweet and glorious that picture was in my mind—Kayden calling out to his heavenly father about his earthly father.

As I was praying, God was speaking. He was not only giving me the words to pray, but he assured me that Kayden’s father would in fact be saved. And it was this one prayer request from Kayden that would establish the future relationship his father would have with God.

A seven-year-old has brought his father back to Jesus.

It challenged me. It lifted me. It breathed new life into me. My prayers matter. Who I pray for matters. What I pray for matters. And so, does yours.

Who are you praying for? What are you praying for? Are you praying for the lost to know Jesus or are you praying for you to simply reap? Let’s learn from Kayden. Let’s lift up our family members, friends, loved ones, neighbors, homeless, politicians, police officers, the world to have a relationship with Jesus. What if God was waiting on your ONE prayer for that ONE person to change the trajectory of their life?

So often we don’t pray for that person, or walk up to that stranger, or be nice to the person we see being bullied, or open our home to a new neighbor to welcome them in, or give up our time to the person begging to talk to us about the same old thing…but what if God wants to use YOU to steer that person in a different direction? What if God wants to use you to keep that person from committing suicide? What if God wants to use you to be his hands and feet and extend love to the loveless?

The days of claiming to be a Christian but not acting like a Christian are over! It’s time for the church, us, to step up to the plate and stop running from “hard things.” It’s time for us to stop talking about how such and such needs to be a better person and start being a better person ourselves. It’s time for us to stop waiting on God to “save us” from our mess and start pulling up our own pants and figuring out what role we play in solving the equation. It’s time for us to stop waiting for Jesus to come back and start showing the world that Jesus is still alive! If you call yourself a Christian, I am putting you on notice that every single word that comes out of your mouth is either leading people to Christ or away from Him. Every single thing you do is either making people feel valued or devalued.

Don’t be that person.

Be a Kayden.