Love the Children

I have been listening to more sermons when I get a chance and trying to read more books.  It's not a coincidence that many of the sermons have been about adoption or abortion and I am reading a book on adoption.  They kind of go toghether.  I teach 2 Sunday School classes and Cubbies at our AWANA program, so I have a lot of interaction with kids.  And of course I have 3 little ones that I am with all the time.  God has been working in me to grow my love for people and He has started with children.

I have seen the mission field they are and everything has clicked.  I feel stupid for not seeing it earlier.  I was thinking about the opportunities God gives me to share the gospel, because most of the time I miss them.  Either I don't recognize the opportunity or I don't love people enough to tell them about Jesus. 

My love for teaching sunday school and Cubbies has increased so much.  I can tell in the way I teach.  Praise the Lord I am becoming a better teacher!  I'm not very good at teaching, and I still have a lot to learn about teaching little ones, but I am REALLY loving it now.  I look out at those little eyes staring at me when I am teaching them about how BIG and AWESOME God is.  All those sweet, precious eyes that CAN soak in truths about who God is and the depth of their sin and the wonder of the Cross.  And I have an hour, 30 minutes, 15 minutes (whatever the age or attention span of the child) to point them to Jesus!  You can't get a better opportunity that that!  And children are great because they believe what you say.  Children don't reject you, they may wiggle and space out, but they believe what you tell them.  They do ask some pretty good questions though.  And the pastor's kids are a little scary because you know they'll correct you if you say Peter instead of Paul!  But that's all good. 

What about all those babies that don't get a chance to go to Sunday School?  They don't even get a chance to take a breath?  Every 24 seconds a baby is killed.  That horrifies me.  It makes me sick.   There are probably girls in the school where my husband teaches that are thinking about aborting their child right now.  They have been told it is just a blob of tissue, they feel pressure from family or their boyfriend to get an abortion.  They don't realize it is really a living human being until the abortionist leaves the room with a sack saying, "It was a boy."  And then their life is changed forever.

There are babies in orphanages that are silent. They don't cry because it's no use, no one will come to their need. They sit in their crib all day. Brooke had a diaper rash the other day along with eczema and she was miserable. I was changing her many times and putting cream on her. What about those babies that don't have anyone to do that? 

God cares about these babies, and He wants us to care.  There are some that say a baby isn't really a baby until it's born, or until is is so many weeks along.  What about Psalm 139:13 which says, "For You formed my inward parts; You wove me together in my mother's womb.  I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works and my soul knows it very well."  A baby is a person, no matter what stage of development, we are all a wonderful work of God, and the bible says our soul knows that very well! 

And then there's Psalm 127, one of my favorite chapters in the bible. It talks about how children are a gift from the Lord. Children are a blessing, they are like arrows in the hands of a warrior, and you are blessed if your quiver is full of them. I don't think it means you have to have 12 kids to be blessed, but I think you can get a quiver full of kids by being involved in their life. Teach them, babysit, have kids in your home, adopt them, love them. Be involved with kids and you will be blessed.

Then there's the part of the bible that talks about if a man hits a pregnant woman. If the woman has a miscarriage and the baby dies, it's life for life, the man that hit the woman is to die!  God is serious about protecting the unborn!  But what about a woman's choice?  Doesn't she have a right to decide what to do with her baby?  Well, yes.  She can choose if she wants to keep it or give it up for adoption, she has that right.  But just as she does not have the right to shoplift, to speed, murder, abuse her child or to break the law in any other way, she does not have the right to kill a child still in her womb.  How does the location of a baby determine if it can be killed or not?

 One year ago today I gave birth to a beautiful little girl. In a split second she went from being inside my body to in my arms.  For months I had been feeling her move around, and I was very aware that it was a baby and not a big mass of tissue. The moment I actually saw what I had been feeling for so long was indescribable. A miracle that in just 9 months God formed a perfect little body with an eternal soul inside of me. She was the same baby inside of me as she was outside of me.

We do not have the right or choice to destroy what God creates. The good news is that there is forgiveness. Millions of women are hurting for making that decision. But God loves sinners so much that He sent His Son as an unexpected pregnancy to an unwed teenager. Jesus came as a perfect little baby. How perfect was it that He was a child that needed loved and cared for? He is the only one who ever did and who ever can live a perfect sinless life.  When He grew up he took on the sin of the entire world, and died on the cross so that we can be saved from our sin.  That is so amazing to me!  Even Jesus, God's perfect Son, became a fertilized egg and spent 9 months in the womb.  The womb was created to be a safe place for babies to grow and develop.  It is no longer a safe place for babies.  Christians, lets not sit back and miss this gospel opportunity!  This is proof that people need Jesus.