Whose children are they?



Dancing to Vivaldi.

Parenting is hard.  Parenting with purpose is even harder.  Ours isn't the first anti-life, anti-child culture.  God condemned Judah for the same thing over 2,500 years ago.  They were sacrificing their children to the Ammonite god Molech.  We sacrifice our children to the idols of self and humanism, materialism and feminism, through abortion and abortifacient birth-control.  Our culture is divided over the issue of abortion with people lining up on either the pro-life or pro-choice side.  Some Christians welcome into their family as blessings as many children as the Lord gives them and others believe in planning their family size.  The following verses show that we've rather missed the point.

Moreover you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to Me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured.  Were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you have slain My children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire?  Ezekiel 16:20-21

God didn't see Jerusalem's children as her own to do what she wanted with.  And He doesn't see ours that way either.  Our children are His children.  They're His whether we choose them or not and they're His whether we dedicate them to Him or not.  They're His whether we have two children or twelve.  They're His.   They were His when we bore them and they were His before the foundation of the world.


Queen's ice cream sandwhich face.

We are stewards of God's children.  This is our supreme purpose in parenting.  To take care of and train up God's children for His purposes.  It's a high calling and one we're utterly dependent upon God, His Spirit, His Word, and His grace to accomplish.

I have to confess to you that I think of my children as mine.  I thank the Lord for them, but at the essence of that thanks is that He's given them to me.  Reminding ourselves daily that our children are His, just like our finances are His, is the first step toward good stewardship.  And I long to someday hear from my Lord, "Well done, good and faithful servant."