Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is His reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man: so are the children of the youth. Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Psalm 127: 3-5
I always dreamed about having a large family and by the grace of God I married someone who has the same dream as me!! People always ask us how many children we want and our answer has always been “As many as God gives us!”. We have never felt like we could label the number of children that would make our family complete…that is God’s job! He is the one that builds the house, the one who creates life! But here I am, living my dream, my heart’s desire!
And here I am thinking about the magnitude of living my dream….these tiny, precious souls are a heritage of the Lord! They are arrows for the kingdom of God!!
Have you ever really looked and thought about what it means to be a heritage of the Lord?
These blessings God has given us are not our own…they are His! He has entrusted us with them. He has given us, as parents, the responsibility of training them, showing them truth and sending them off into this dark world to win souls into the kingdom of Heaven!
They are like arrows in this dark and evil world! What does an arrow do? And arrow is launched into the sky to take down an enemy before he even reaches us! Arrows help us fight the battle before us. Think about how powerful this idea is!! These tiny humans are not just given to us to make us smile, laugh, cry, and everything in between until they reach 18 years old and then leave us. They are given to us as blessings from God and as powerful weapons to defeat the enemy of our, and their, souls!!!
Things have been kind of hectic in our lives recently and I’ve been convicted about how I have lost my temper or how many times I’ve told these blessings to leave me alone and go play because I just “need a break!” (Yes, we all need a break sometimes but this has been excessive.). Sometimes I wish we were not homeschooling and I could send the big girls off to school for someone else to teach. I wish I could trust other people to take care of them so my husband and I could get some true alone time.
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6
But I’m always reminded that they are our responsibility. When we stand before God we will have to answer for why we let them stay at this person’s house, being influenced and minds filled with television and the other things of the world. We will have to answer for why we compromised on this or that.
I know I’m stepping on toes here and I know the arguments will come about “you are sheltering your children from everything! You are not allowing them to see the real world! You are to overbearing….” and all the others I have heard before. But we as parents are told to train up our children in His ways, not the ways of the world. We can’t just send them to “church” twice a week and to the world 5 days a week, call our parenting “Christian” and expect them to be prepared to fight the spiritual battle we are in! (Ephesians 6) And to be honest, I’d rather follow the word of God and train them up in His ways than allow them to be influenced by the world. That doesn’t mean we hide things from them… actually just the opposite. We have conversations with them, let them ask questions and always bring them back to scripture.
Mamas, we all have to answer to God in the end about how we trained up His arrows. I for one do not want to hear Him tell me …
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6
My prayer is that God would give me to strength and wisdom to train up these precious souls in His truth no matter what the world around me says. I pray for the bold ess to stand firm in His word when the attacks come from especially those who claim His name. And I pray that all of you reading this are doing so with a heart for the things of God! With a heart willing to see the value and magnitude of what the Lord has blessed us with. And I pray that He gives you the strength, boldness and wisdom to stand on His word regardless of what those around you say…regardless of what it who you have to lose in order to do so.
In Him,
Brittany