Children Belong to the Lord

In his book, Pray Big for Your Child, pastor Will Davis Jr. tells a hilarious story about a wedding
he performed near the beginning of his career….

He was marrying a sweet young couple just out of college and he said he felt good about their chances at making it until he met, as he called her, Momzilla. Shortly before the wedding was going to start, the bride’s mom took the pastor aside and said, “Look, preacher, I don’t know what you do or say at other weddings, but this one is different. When my husband walks our daughter down the aisle, you will NOT ask the ‘Who gives this woman to this man’ question. You won’t say anything about giving anybody away. Find something nice and polite to say, but you won’t even mention us giving away our daughter. ‘Cause we’re not! We’ll share her.We’ll welcome that boy into our family. But we are NOT giving her away. Got it?” Pastor Davis went on to say that he did exactly as he was told!

That story is a funny way of saying that it’s very easy for us to fall into the thinking that our kids
belong to us. And we come by this honestly sometimes. In the process of nurturing them, we
bond with them so tightly we sometimes forget that they aren’t really ours. We see in Psalm
127:3 that children are a gift from the Lord.

We know from scripture that EVERYTHING we have is from God and IS God’s.

We are stewards of ALL things, especially our children.

Matthew 25:14-30 (Parable of the Talents) gives us a good idea of what we are to do with what we have been given. The Lord has entrusted us with His children, His masterpieces, His
creations and we are to steward them well. We did not actually form their inner beings, He did,
so He has the rights to their lives, if you will.
One thing I read as I was preparing for this called us, the parents,”parent-stewards”. As
parent-stewards who recognize that our children are His masterpieces, we must make sure they
know from Day 1 two very important things:

1. We love them

2. God loves them.

We show them we love them by taking care of them, providing basic needs which change the older they get, getting to know how they most feel loved and showing them that love by disciplining them.

One of the ways my father loved me was through notes. He always wrote me notes, when I
lived at home, when I went to college and he’s still doing it today. He also writes my kids now.
Sometimes it’s about Jesus but most of the time it’s just to let us know we are loved and prayed
for. We show them that God loves them by teaching them scripture, modeling how to pray,
weaving God and His truth throughout our daily lives. It also means keeping them in a Biblical,
Christ-following church where they are surrounded by godly role models and friends.

I have a cross tattoo on my wrist that I put there to say much more than that I am a believer. It says, “This is what matters most for my kids. This is enough.”

As parent-stewards we MUST know and trust the Master. In the Parable of the Talents, the
servant who was described as worthless misused the money because he didn’t truly know his
master and what his master really wanted. It is imperative that we know our Father intimately
and personally and that we trust Him. I heard a little metaphor for this recently. Us making
decisions for our kids without knowing God and what He wants for them is like trying to watch a
parade through the slats in a fence. We can only see what is right in front of us whereas God
from up above can see the whole thing, all the way to the people in the back!

I’ve often heard people say that women of God should prioritize God first, then our husbands, and then our children last.

In my studies I ran across a woman who said it differently and I liked it. She said
we should be worshipers first, then wives, then parents. There is nothing that brings more
closeness and intimacy with God than worshiping Him.

Lastly, we as parent-stewards must, as Pastor Will titled his book, Pray BIG for our children.

We, as their parents, are the ones who go before them paving the way for them through prayer. Whatever it takes, we can’t miss this. I love how Priscilla Shirer says her boys never left for school without her praying the armor of God over them. They need prayer that they would always belong to God and we need prayer for wisdom to help them do this.