My family is growing and I am loving every minute of it! On January 29, at 5:32 p.m., God blessed Janice and me with another grandson. His name is Benjamin Robert Lillard. He weighed 7 pounds and 14 ounces. He was nineteen and one-half inches long. He is brilliant! You may not believe this, but the day after he was born I was able to spend quite a bit of time holding and rocking Ben. I looked into his beautiful face and he looked back at me.

I said, “Granddaddy loves you, Ben.” And can you believe it? He said to me, “I love you, too, granddaddy.” It was a wonderful moment! Wait a minute. Are you saying you don’t believe me? That’s what everybody else said, but I heard him say it, plain as day. Well, maybe he didn’t exactly say it, but he was surely thinking it.

The grandchild count at our house is up to four. Love just keeps multiplying in our hearts until I feel that our hearts are going to burst. God is so wonderful in the blessings that He has poured out upon our lives. Every day as Janice and I pray together we are finding that our prayers are getting longer and longer. As the family grows, the needs and challenges grow as well.

I was so naive a few years ago. I actually believed that once our girls were married and out of our house into their own homes, Janice and I would find that our lives were significantly simplified. Boy, did I miss that prediction by a country mile! Our lives are more complicated, more filled with prayer concerns and momentarily mindful of so many more people who mean all the world to our hearts than ever before. Our children may be out of our house, but they will never be out of our hearts. Now our daughters have added to our prayer list, husbands and babies. As the family grows we are learning that there is always something going on that requires our attention and our prayers. Now I understand why senior adults are such prayer warriors. As their families have grown, so have their prayer lists.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the finest thing that our churches can do is provide well for our families. We must lift up the family, pray for the family, teach the Word of God to our children and pray for the day that they will trust Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord. I look forward to the day when our grandchildren will publicly make known their love for Christ. When our girls were growing up I was their pastor and I took the responsibility to lead our church to emphasize the essential nature of making a personal decision for Christ. I accepted the responsibility of seeing that our Sunday School was evangelistic, that Vacation Bible School, Children’s Camp and Youth Camp were evangelistic and provided opportunities for our children to be touched by the Spirit of the Living God. Now, I am not my family’s pastor and I find myself praying for the men who serve as pastors in the churches where our family are members. I pray for evangelistic preaching, for an emphasis upon the invitation, for an emphasis upon the essential nature of salvation.

There is so much to pray for, but you know, God is faithful. I trust the Lord to hear our prayers and to answer them for the good of our family. There is a saying that states, “The family that prays together stays together.” So much truth is packed in those words. Can we expand that saying by just two words? “The family that prays together stays together for eternity.” Now, that is what I am praying for. Aren’t you?