I Believe in Allen and God Believes In Me

Allen is a second grader at an elementary school I visit to tutor on Mondays. He's not normally my kid to tutor, but today his didn't come. So, I volunteered to take him into my group.

Allen is a pretty rambunctious kid. You can't get him to do his homework if it's a nice day outside because he'd pick running around over math. Today, I decided he was going to at least do half of his load of homework. We picked math. He didn't want to do it at first. He kept telling me, "But I'm scared it's going to be hard," and "But there's so many, let's just do two rows." So I told him,"Well, I believe that you have the ability to do this. I believe that you are a great mathematician and that you can do all of these math problems. So, we're going to do this because I believe in you and you can't make me believe otherwise." We took it one problem at a time and soon enough he was gaining confidence in his ability to add. He stopped guessing the answers and figuring them out on his own. Eventually, we got down to the last problem and I got to see his excitement for finishing all 5 rows of addition problems. I picked up the page and told him, "Look you finished all of these. I want you to look at what you believe about yourself and remember that just because it looks hard, it doesn't mean that you can't do it. You just have to put more of an effort."

When I reflected on this I realized that God does this for me all the time. Right now I'm definitely struggling with something that I haven't been able to conquer for a long time. He's teaching me how to be honest with Him about what's going on and ask boldly for things in prayer. It's very hard. I want to tell God just like Allen, "But it looks like it's going to be hard. I don't want to do this," and I bet God would tell me "Angel, you have all you need to get through this. I believe in you because you've conquered things with my help before. Now, we're going to get through this because you can't make me believe otherwise. Just because it's hard doesn't mean you can't do it."

So, now I'm encouraged. I know that my Teacher is going to patiently sit with me through each problem until it's finished. I know that He'll encourage me and teach me how to endure. He'll gently correct me and give me high fives when I, by His grace, do something right. I'm not alone and I can stop beating myself up about coming to God with the same thing night after night because He's sitting with me and teaching me.

Thanks, God, for believing in me. Thanks Allen for teaching me more about God.