A WAKE-UP CALL

We walked into the parenting seminar expecting the usual — tips and tricks for raising kids. Oh boy, were we wrong. From the first moment, Joy set the tone: this wasn't a seminar, it was a call to war.

She led us straight to the grace of God, reminding us to humble ourselves. We simply cannot carry the weight of raising these little humans on our own strength — we need His grace to sustain us. 

Every achievement, every academic milestone, every carefully curated comparison we've paraded on social media — none of it comes close to the one thing that actually matters: praying for our children to encounter Jesus personally.

It broke our hearts to realize how negligent we had been. We hadn't seen the enemy's strategy at work and how the enemies strategically had been slowly but surely pulling our kids away from Christ. Our kids are 14 and 12— old enough, we thought, that we could finally take a back seat. We thought we could rest. But Joy reminded us that while we rest, the enemy does not.

He has been aggressively stealing our children's attention, distracting them with the glitter of this world and its endless entertainment. We told ourselves it was enough that they went to church, attended Christian school, showed up to youth group. It wasn't.

There were so many nuggets of truth throughout the message. Joy spoke with a power and fire and we broke down in tears and in repentance. We caught that fire and carried it home.

*****

That same night, we held our kids' hands and started family devotion together. We picked up the guitar — the four chords they'd learned were enough — and we worshiped, in tears, seeking God's face like never before.

Our lives will not be the same. We thank God for sending Joy to minister to us. For our family, this is the legacy we're choosing, starting tonight, until the day we die: to serve and love the Lord — and to raise our children to do the same.

-Louis Rahardjo & Jessica Wahyu

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