The Call

It was a cold December evening.  The family was finishing dinner and the children went to their rooms to play with their Christmas gifts they had received the week prior.

Excited, I pranced off to my room to play with my prized possession!  My new tape recorder.  I lined up my stuffed animals along the wall and upon the bed and shelf.  My audience!  

I smoothed my blonde, short hair and straightened my robin’s egg blue dress and cleared my little eight year old voice and I began to speak.

“Today is the day of salvation!  Jesus came to earth as a baby so that He could give himself for your sin!”  “He died for you and for me.  He died upon the cross and HE rose again!  For God so loved the world that He gave His only son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish”.       

I started to go on…………….. but just then the door abruptly opened.  Standing in the doorway was my Daddy, tired from a long day’s work.   His face all too familiarly lined with rage.  

He picked up the tape recorder and slammed it to the floor, breaking it into a million pieces.  He grabbed me by the arm and said thru gritted teeth and a hatred filled voice said, “Shut the hell up! I don’t want to hear another word!”    He grabbed the teddy bear closest to him and threw it to the floor.   I knew that his real desire was to throw me to the ground but somehow he had stopped short.

A stream of hot tears fell down my face.  I picked up the teddy bear and put it back in place.  I picked up the recorder pieces and then let them drop from my hands back onto the floor.  Broken.  

I stood up, resolved to go on.  Wiping the tears and chocking back the cry,  I looked back at the animals all hungry for the truth and said, “Today, is the day of salvation!  There is a heaven and hell!” 

I went on to give the plan of salvation and all the animals accepted Jesus!

You see, I had just accepted Jesus as my own savior a few days earlier during a Christmas Passion play at Bethany Baptist Church.  There was nothing I could think of more than the love of the Christmas story and the salvation Jesus gave thru his death and resurrection.  Now, the words were bubbling up from my heart… and I couldn’t shut up the love that was being poured into me.

It wasn’t until years later……. My father, deathly ill with cancer, called me to his bedside.   He had asked Jesus into his heart a month earlier and had become a changed man.  He was asking each child for forgiveness of things he had done or had said as the Lord brought them to remembrance.

He said “Kristi, do you remember the day after Christmas and you were preaching to your stuffed animals?? You were just a little, little girl.”   

“Yes daddy, I remember” I whispered. 

“Kristi, I heard you that day.  The conviction of God came upon me so strong and I just wanted to fight it.  I wanted for you to shut up.  I was so mad.  I am so sorry. ”     He had tears coming down his face, a truly repentant heart.

I said, “It’s okay daddy”

“No, no it’s not okay.  Kristi, never stop.  Never shut up.  I never forgot those words and I am so sorry I destroyed your tape recorder and I am more sorry I hurt your heart.  Never shut up”

I forgave my father that night, or at least I tried. 

Not until just recently did I realize that from the beginning the Lord has had a plan for me.  Little did I know that the actions of my father were actually perpetrated by the enemy of all lies.  The enemy was trying from my childhood to shut me up from declaring the salvation and the love of Jesus Christ.  It wasn’t my daddy… he was just broken.

Jeremiah 1:4-10 (ESV)

 “Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

⁵ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

⁶ Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.”⁷ But the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
⁸ Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”

⁹ Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.

¹⁰ See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”

Jeremiah 29:11-13

New International Version (NIV)

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

John 10:10

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life,and have it to the full.

Father God,

Thank you for all your children weather old or young.  Thank you for the calling you have upon their lives.  I pray that the mouth of the enemy is shut and his hand is removed from their lives.  I ask Father God, that you renew and reestablish the call you have upon them.  I declare and decree that they walk in the fullness of everything that you have planned for their life!

I pray Father that each of your children has a desire set upon their heart to seek you and as they do this you promise to be found!!

I thank you, that we can hide ourselves in you as we seek your face.

In Jesus’ precious name I praytt