By Jake McCall

After recently being away for five days for a conference and study trip, I longed to get home to my family.

I badly missed my wife, Alana, and my 4-year-old, my 2-year-old and my 15-month old. It was great to get home in time for dinner with them and to put my children down to bed and pray with them.

And yet later that night, while they were fast asleep I tip-toed into their rooms to see them once more, kiss them, and pray with them again. I routinely pray for their salvation but on this night as they were dreaming, I fervently appealed to the mercy and grace of God.

So I went to each of them and asked that the Spirit of the Lord would come down in power specifically to unveil the eyes of my children so that they could see the true Christ and that He would grant them the precious gift of faith.

I prayed that they would be given a new birth—a kind that neither their mom nor I could give them. It’s really a helpless and humbling prayer and yet I believe I was led by the Lord to pray that way, which made it such a comforting prayer.

I am reminded that being born-again is what our children need. It’s what our family members need and what our friends and neighbors near and far need. The new birth is needed for those that grow up in a Christian home just as much as for those that grow up in a non-Christian home. It is just as necessary for the moral as for the immoral and even though my children have memorized the song “Jesus Loves Me,” they need the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in the same way that a child who has never heard the song before.

And so regardless of what nation we are born into, what era we are born into, or what family we are born into, we all need a new birth.

In John chapter 3, Jesus told Nicodemus (who had all the religious advantages of a Jewish birth) that Nicodemus needed another birth that would overcome his natural one and bring spiritual and eternal life. God promises, by His kindness, to use His people to accomplish His purposes, and so we should certainly go and minister His truth. Our plan is to continue singing “Jesus Loves Me” and continue reading Bible stories and continue to teach our children to live as we believe the Bible teaches us and trust that God will use those things to prepare their hearts to be introduced to their Savior. Even still, we need Christ to come down with His powerful hands and loving voice to rescue and preach to our children’s hearts. Give attention to Christ. He is the hope of your home and He is the hope of the world.

—Jake McCall is a religion columnist for The Clanton Advertiser. He is the pastor at Grace Fellowship Presbyterian Church.