Get Them in the Battle: Letting God Shape Your Kids

Don Mansfield:

Parents, you don't have to guard your children. One of the things that we found is if you can give them proper independence, but push it a little bit more than they're ready, it's a good thing. This is, we're not gonna hover over you. We're not gonna try to protect you too much because we have a God in heaven that loves you more than we do.

So one of the things we did – it was very interesting – is we decided, we were already involved in Project Arrow, which was this Albanian evangelical rural outreach, and we said we need to bring the whole family. Ian was 14 years old, Ryan was 12, and as we were driving to Peshkopi, which is over in the east part of the country, we were talking about what was gonna happen and giving them a little bit more of a briefing.

And Ian goes, “Dad, you're sounding like Ryan and I are not gonna be with you.” I said, no, you're gonna be on your own teams. “You want us to go out on our own with these other people?” Yeah. “You are telling us we're going into Muslim villages.” Yeah. “Are you sure we're okay?” And Ian kind of fought that. Ryan was kind of more stoic with deer in the headlight eyes, but they got a little bit of briefing and training and little confidence and sent 'em out.

See, they go out with nothing, not knowing anything other than we're gonna show the Jesus Film and see what God's gonna do. Well, three days later, because Arrow, you would go out to three different villages over three different nights, they came back. “Yeah, dad, no problem.”

Ian goes, “Dad, you know, we led the mayor of our village to the Lord last night.” That changes a kid's life to be in the battle like that. He then said, “You know, I want my friend Daniel to do this.” So the next time we go to Albania, Ian was in three villages on one team. Daniel was in three other villages.

At the time, Daniel was struggling in his walk with the Lord. In fact, his mother told us and said, “You know, I'm not, I'm not sure that Daniel's ready for this, but I think I want him to go because he needs to be in the battle and he needs to see that God is real.” Well, Daniel was in three tough villages. My son Ian, was in three incredible villages. They had huge percentages of the village in Ian's three who received Christ. It was incredible.

Daniel? It was not very friendly. It was actually a rarity, but they were met with rocks and guns. They literally had people come in at the end of the film with AK-47s shooting in the air, saying if anybody comes to the lights – which is what you do at the end, you invite people to come to the light to receive Christ – says, if anybody comes, we're gonna kill you. Well, Daniel's team leader says, “We're going as Americans.” And Daniel goes, “They’re gonna kill us.” But he got up. Some of the people stayed by the equipment to guard it. They went to the lights. Daniel was called to the lights. He decided to go.

The next morning, as they finished their three village cycle, they were gonna come back to the base camp. The Land Rover came to pick him up, and as they're waiting for it, one of the guys in the village comes by with a slide .45 automatic and shoots off the whole whole clip right behind them, as if to say, and don't come back. I hear about this as soon as they come in and I go, “I gotta go find Daniel.” I go to the little dorm area where our little room is and I pause, because Daniel is down on his knees. And I said, I'm just gonna back out. I'm gonna let Daniel have his time with the Lord. And you gotta remember his mother said, I don't know if he's ready for this. I say, “How are you doing?” He says, “I was just talking to Jesus.” I said, “You wanna tell me about it?” He says, yeah. He said, “I had to decide that night – last night – if I was willing to die for Christ 'cause it was real. And as soon as I went up there, I realized that's not the decision I need to make. I need to make the decision, am I gonna live for Christ?”

And I said, “What do you think?” He said, “Oh yeah, that's what I wanna do with the rest of my life.” And I just hugged him. I said, “You know, you're going back out there after another two days of training to do follow up. Probably not to those villages.” He says, “Yeah, I'm ready. Let's go.”

Daniel now is the campus director in Moscow, Russia. God has changed his life.

Be in the battle, seeing God real. Parents, you don't have to guard your children. You don't have to hover over 'em. Get 'em in the battle, and let God prove himself that he is real, that he protects. He's got a plan, and he can enable and equip.