Some call it luck. I call it fruit.
I am fortunate enough to travel and meet fascinating people because of my work. In almost every case, when someone asks me if I have children, my introverted dam breaks and out pours a river of words teemed with wisdom from someplace deep within. And when the torrent finally slows, they all say the same thing: passion like that needs to be written down!
So that is what this is – my attempt to put my passion on paper.
One of the most amazing and memorable moments in our lives happened on the way to church for the Love and Deed service. It was Wednesday, January 10, 2005 and we had just passed Friendly Baptist Church on 31 East. While sitting in the back seat, Randal quietly said that he “needed a new heart, a big heart.” After asking him to repeat what he just said he became more insistent and said louder, “I need a new heart, a big heart.” Glancing quickly at Vance with much uncertainty, I said the only thing that came to mind: “pray and ask Jesus for a new heart – then be quiet and listen to Him.” So he did. Randal prayed out loud and asked Jesus for a new, big heart. After a few quiet moments, Randal exclaimed loudly “Jesus said He go in my heart.” Vance and I exchanged a curious glance and kept going.
When we made it to Love and Deed, I started looking for an explanation. Maybe he heard the phrase at church or on a video – or maybe, just maybe, it was a real encounter. When I made it to the nursery, I asked the coordinator if they had been talking about salvation in nursery – but they hadn’t. I kept looking. I ran across our very wise and very prophetic pastor, Kerry Kirkwood, and shared with happened. His counsel? Pray. And so I did. I earnestly prayed for confirmation and pondered it in my heart. Then it happened.
We were headed to church once again when the confirmation came. It was February 14, 2005. While sitting at the stop light at 31 and the loop, Randal exclaimed from the back seat, “Mommy, Jesus has a book,” to which I absentmindedly replied, “that’s nice sweetheart, is He reading to you?” Randal quickly replied, “No, Mommy, He wrote my name in His book, He showed me. It says ‘Vance Randal Purtell, Jr.”
This was a defining moment for me. The holiness of that moment in the car did not escape me. I blinked away tears as I continued down 31 to church. I listened to Randal make noises in the back seat while Alathia slept too afraid to interrupt this holy moment. God had spoken to my son. My son heard God’s voice. God spoke to me through my son. God heard my prayer and petition for confirmation and answered in a crystal clear, undeniable way. Randal had heard the voice of God and recognized it. A holy fear took a hold of my heart and it humbled me. I was undone. The Valentine’s Day dinner at church is a blur in the recesses of my mind. Like most parents in our circle, I dedicated Randal to the Lord when he was an infant, but it was at that moment that I realized Randal was God’s child first and foremost and I had an incredible responsibility before me. The experience of God encountering our son awakened something in me. If God was speaking to our son, and I had evidence that He was speaking, it was critical that we be in line with His voice. While I treasured the experience in my heart, the need for counsel led to me reluctantly sharing with our beloved pastor who I was pretty sure would think I was making this up. But Pastor Kerry is unlike most pastors. Gifted with a prophetic voice and wise beyond his years, his response was simply this: that sounds like prophetic parenting to me.
The car encounter ignited an intentional pursuit to understand what it meant to parent prophetically and through this pursuit, God begin to give strategies to unlock the vision in our heart for our family. Our approach to guide our children based on the visions in our hearts and the realization that He could – and would – speak through our children, required complete and utter dependence upon God. Though we are still in the parenting journey, friends and family have asked about our parenting approach and philosophy. We’ve shared bits and pieces but there isn’t a simple “canned” answer. We haven’t used one approach or philosophy. Instead, we found ourselves so incredibly dependent upon God – literally asking Him moment by moment what to do with these children He had given us. That’s the key to prophetic parenting really – pray, listen, obey. Seek God intentionally – ask Him how to respond in situations – and when He answers, obey. Moment by moment, He dropped truths, strategies, and ideas into our heart and now onto these pages.
