The Holy Spirit in Our Children

Praying aloud about a situation, I automatically began speaking in tongues at the end. My five-year-old was coloring at the table and asked, “What did you just say there, Mommy?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “The Holy Spirit gave me that prayer, but we can ask Him to tell us what I prayed.”

“What did Mommy say, God?” my kindergartener asked. She paused. Then going back to her coloring, she said matter-of-factly, “He said, ‘Revelation for you.’ ”

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him,” says Luke 11:13. It is such a simple and yet wondrous thing that we can ask for more of the Holy Spirit and God the Father will freely give!

On another occasion, my daughter came downstairs one morning in tears. She told me that she’d had a dream that I’d died and gone to heaven. This was within a day or two of me asking for a fresh baptism of the Spirit for her. I took what she said seriously, and asked her to pray with me for protection. Later that day, as I drove full-speed down a country road, another vehicle pulled out right in front of me. Though the accident left my SUV totaled, neither I nor the passengers of the other car were hurt at all. I never even felt contact with my airbag.

Children are indeed a blessing, especially when they are filled with the Holy Spirit. My kindergartener consistently prophesies to me more than anyone else. She doesn’t do it in a formal, churchy way. She simply says what the Spirit lays on her heart, and it ministers to, encourages, and convicts me as I go about my daily routine.

When I picked up my four-year-old from a church function recently, the teacher told me that my quiet, keeps-to-herself preschooler had laid hands on and said a healing prayer for another child who’d hurt himself. Age and personality type matter little. The Holy Spirit is looking for vessels He can use. Like John said, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
(3 John 1:4)

Peter, quoting the prophet Joel, said, “ ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days,’ saith God, ‘I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’ ” (Acts 2:17). If the Holy Spirit will come upon all flesh, how much more will the children of the covenanted be blessed?

The Holy Spirit must especially delight in ministering through children. Generally they are more sensitive, they aren’t hung up on doctrinal issues, and their faith is uninhibited.

How about you? Do you regularly ask for more of the Holy Spirit for yourself? Do you ask God for more of the Spirit for your children? How do you teach your children about the Holy Spirit and how to listen to him?