Heaven

Tonight was a first for me. Addison and I had our first real conversation about Heaven :)  I have been making a point to read her a Bible story every time I put her down for either a nap or bedtime. We had been letting her pick any book to read but now I read a story and if she asks she can pick another book to also read. Her "Jesus Story Book Bible" does an awesome job of having each and every story point to Jesus by the end so it gives us lots of opportunities to talk about how Jesus came to save us and how God loves us SOOO much that he sent His son so that we can be forgiven for our sins and go to Heaven to live with Him forever.  I must admit, I did not tighten down on this so that we can talk about salvation, although I praise God for these opportunities! My motivation was that maybe through the incredible power of God's Word He would change her disobedient heart that's been rearing its not so pretty head lately ;)  As is consistent with His character, He more than came through!
I am excited to see where these conversations take us :)

Tonight it went a little something like this:

Mommy: (after reading about Joseph and then about the Israelites' Exodus out of Egypt) Who is our Rescuer who came to save us?
Addison: JESUS!
M: That's right! God loves us so much that He sent His son, Jesus, to come and save us from our sins. He had to die so that we could be forgiven for the bad things we do, called sins, so that we can go to Heaven to live with him forever.
A: Why dey called sins?
M: Sins are when we do something bad like when you are mean to Kaitlyn or to Mommy. Jesus came and had to die so that we can live in Heaven with Him and God forever.
A: Where's Heaven?
M: It's where Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit live.
A: Why you say Holy Spirit?
M: Because God is like three people in one. Crazy huh? There's God the Father and Jesus is His Son and the Holy Spirit lives in your heart so that he can help you know the good things you should do and the bad things you shouldn't do.
A: Why he says about bad things?
M: Because it makes God sad when we do bad things. Bad things are why Jesus had to come and die so that we could go to Heaven.
A: I want to go to Heaven right now.
M: No, you can't yet...
A interrupting Mommy: But I want to riiiigght nooowwww.
M: No, we can't until we die or maybe Jesus will come back soon and then we can go.
A: But I want to go right now. Why we can't go?
M: Because we can't just drive there. We can't go until after we die and I don't want you to die.
A: Why we can't drive there?
M: Because Heaven is way up in the sky and we just can't go yet. Maybe Jesus will come back soon and then we can go.
A: It's in the skyyyy???? Why we can't go up there in the sky?

Somewhere around here we decided to pray and then I tucked her in after she got a hug from Daddy but I couldn't believe we had such a long and seemingly deep discussion about salvation! :)  I just love that little girl!