Requested from God, then Given to God
Children are a wonderful gift from God. They are given to us by God, and they do not belong to us. We are to be good parents, good stewards, of our children, just as we are to be good stewards of all God gives us. It is very unfortunate that most people do not live by this truth today. They neglect their children. They do not raise them well, they just let them raise themselves. It leads to all kinds of trouble for the children and for the parents. We need to take a lesson from Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel. She was childless, and that caused her all kinds of grief. Therefore, when she was at Shiloh to worship the Lord, before the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, she went into the sanctuary and prayed for a child. God heard her earnest prayer and gave her a son. (I Samuel 1:20, 28) She named him Samuel, because she "requested him from the Lord." After he was weaned, she took Samuel back to Shiloh and gave him to the Lord for the rest of his life, and Eli, the priest, took care of him and taught him to serve the Lord. Samuel worshiped the Lord and served Him faithfully from Shiloh all his life. Let's consider this lesson together.
When God gives us a child, whether we prayed for him or her or not, we should be eternally grateful for the blessing. At that point, or even before they are born, we should be constantly praying for them to be right with God and used by God. We must not see them as "our children" to raise in our way. We should raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as the Bible says. Hopefully, we will also do what Hannah did, and we will give each of them to the Lord. We do not have to take them to the church and drop them off to live there, but we need to make a definite commitment of each one of them to belong to God and to serve Him well. Once we have given them to the Lord, we keep praying and no matter where God calls them or what they decide to do to follow the Lord's will. We are there to love them and support them. We are not there to be selfish and want to control their lives for our benefit. We give them to the Lord, so He will use them to benefit His kingdom. When this happens, it is one of the greatest earthly blessings we can have. The results are eternal, as well.
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Tomorrow, I intend to read I Samuel 2-4..