It has been one my all time favorite conference themes for kids and their families over the years. The “In Search of the Glory” conference was a collection of some of the deepest biblical topics I have ever taught kids. It was all about the glory of God from Genesis to Revelation. The word “glory” is thrown around so easily by Christians, but I have wondered how many of us even know what the word means. Yet it shows up repeatedly in scripture.
We taught on some of the most well know scriptures on the glory such as:
When God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was filled with His glory. When He created people, he crowned them with honor and glory. When mankind sinned, they fell from the glory. Moses cried out to God saying “Show me your glory.” When Moses met God on the mountain, his face shone from being in the glory. Uzza fell over dead because he had sin in him when he touched God’s glory. The Tabernacle was filled with God’s Shekinah glory.
Each topic brought fresh and new insight to a subject that I can say personally I have never heard anyone else teach children. One little boy told his mother after the conference was over, “I knew all the Bible stories she talked about, but I never knew how they fit together till this week.”
But what was more rewarding than seeing the intellectual lights come on and the dots being connected in children’s minds, was seeing how so many children had significant experiences in the presence of God, which is ultimately experiencing His glory!
One of the sessions I taught on was the “kabod” of God. Kabod is a Hebrew word meaning the “weightiness of God’s presence.” It says that in Solomon’s Temple the priests could not even stand to minister because of the kabod, or weighty presence of the Lord. We gave many examples of what that kabod could look like then and today. During the prayer times one little boy told us he was paralyzed in God’s presence. He simply could not move for awhile. A little girl told us she felt a hand on her back. She’d never experienced anything like it before.
Another boy said he had his hands and arms raised as he was worshiping God, and he was not able to lower them. They were frozen in place for a season. Still another 12-year-old boy was standing in a group of his friends when all of a sudden, he told his father later, he felt something go down through him starting at the top of his head going all the way down to his feet. I had seen him crumple and collapse on the ground, even though no one else was doing the same. From the look on his face. I knew something significant was happening.
In another service there had been a beautiful move of the Holy Spirit. Everyone found themselves face down on the floor worshiping God. One little girl. However, continued to sit in her chair. She had long dark hair. All of a sudden she began rocking forward and backward, slowly at first, but then with more energy. Her long hair began to flip back and forth over her face. She sat there for the longest time and just rocked and rocked and rocked. We all left her alone, not knowing what it was that the Holy Spirit was doing on the inside of her. The next day I asked her what had happened to her. She just grinned real big and told me that God had been cleaning her out. She said, “He cleaned all of the fear out of the inside of me. I’m not afraid anymore.”
Those are the kinds of experiences, we pray our kids will have at our conferences. Because it’s the anointing that will break the yoke. Teaching can inform them. But it’s the presence of God invading their lives that will change them. That is something no human being can do.
I was also extremely blessed to hear the reports that parents gave me after the mighty name of Jesus conference here in Bismarck. We had one service where we taught the children about the power in the name of Jesus and that they had the authority to use that power when they used his name. We talked about how they had the power to do things like healing the sick. One mother told me that her preschool son went to school the next week. He walked up to one of his little friends and said “Haley there is power in the name of Jesus!” Wow! It must have truly made an impact on that four-year-old’s life to tell a friend a week later.
Another mother brought all five of her children with her to the conference on the name of Jesus. She told me the next week she walked into her daughter’s bedroom and saw that she had set up three of her dolls on her bed. On each of the dolls she had placed bandages in various places. She was teaching her little preschool brothers how to lay hands on the dolls, pray over them in the name of Jesus, then pull the bandages off to see that the dolls were healed. It was exactly what I had done during the conference to teach the little tiny kids how to pray for the sick. Here daughter watched me, but was now teaching others what she had learned! The fact that they were imitating me at home was truly significant to the mother, as well as to me.
This is what we hope for and pray for. We want to impact the children and make them doers of the word, and not hearers only.
As I was preparing to do the very last conference on the glory, which was held near Chicago, I frequently prayed and said to my coworkers, “I just pray that we go out in a blaze of glory in this final glory conference.” And I can say that it truly happened!
If this is the kind of atmosphere you want your children to be a part of, do everything you can to get them into the right places, the right children’s ministries, and the right conferences where they will be impacted for life. Through the power of the Holy Spirit!
We will be holding a more family conferences next year throughout the nation. Be sure to stay signed up for our newsletters and check our website frequently, so you know when and where they will be.
