On Sunday, February 7 2010 
, we looked at the topic of children together. Parenting is a popular and controversial topic, with so many different opinions out there. Instead of giving advice on feeding and discipline, we aimed to correct our thinking about children to how God sees them.
Children are a gift from God. Every child born is a miracle, but we see it most clearly when God gave children when they were previously not possible (as with Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah). Sometimes even parents don’t think of their children as a gift, and we need to be reminded, even when parenting is hard! The Bible also calls those who trust in God ‘children of God’ (as in John 1:12-13
). Having belief in Jesus is described as a new spiritual life, with God as our parent.
So the key example we have of parenting is God himself. Throughout the Bible we see God not just giving people faith, but sustaining and guiding them. Sometimes He spoke firmly with his children and corrected them. But in Deuteronomy 6 we see what God’s main aim in all this is – that people grow to maturity in God. The family is supposed to be a primary way in which children learn the things of God and grow to love Him.
So what does this mean if you are a Christian parent? Your main aim for your children should be different from everyone else. It shouldn’t simply be to give them a good education and want them to be happy; we should do all we can to help them to grow to be more like Jesus, with a stable mature faith. Are you prepared to do whatever it takes to encourage this? And all of us need to regain the wonder of being a child of God if we trust in Jesus. We have been adopted, cared for, given an inheritance by God, none of which we deserved. Our God is the most gracious parent we could ever imagine.