The school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary changed my prayer life. Back then, the road I drove to and from work was loaded with schools. I prayed for each one of them and thought of all the children, what kind of homes they come from, if they’ve ever been shown kindness let alone love. If they knew Jesus. What kind of futures the Lord has in store for them.
My prayers changed focus daily, sometimes I’d pray for the innocent ones, other times I’d pray for the ones considering murder and suicide. But then, as I got into it more on a daily routine, I began to feel the Spirit direct me to pray solely for the Christians that attend the schools. Their presence carrying His, their witness dispelling darkness. Then I began to pray that the schools would be blessed and would have the best year in their history because of the Christians. That it would be seen how the Lord blesses those places because His followers are there. That even those who target Christianity and try to shut the school doors on Jesus would find that they would rather He be in the schools than locked out.
Honestly, I’d get rather passionate in my prayers and every time I thought of those kids taken so cruelly and so tragically early, my prayers got fierce. I began to envision the plans of the Lord overwhelming those of the enemy. Light flooding the schools so much that all forms of evil had to leave.
Then by the next year, I had moved. The schools may or may not have had their best year, but I knew a new door had been opened in my
heart. “Do not hinder them,” Jesus said.
When I would pick up my kids from preschool, I made it a point to know as many names as I could, give high 5’s, and ask how each were doing. That was not me before.
Love is too important to keep quiet. Love is too vital to life, our kids need to know it. It is THE way to not hinder them. The enemy wants to take their lives no matter how he can whether before they’re born or after, and I wanted to do what I could to show that Love wins.
If the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these, then they are royalty, all of them.
God bless our children.
-Brian Carter