This topic has been a heated one in social circles lately. Have a lot, have a few, have none, have as many as you can like you're in a competition. Wait a year after getting married to start having kids, wait five years, or heck have that honeymoon baby.
God wants us to have a lot of kids, God doesn't care, God wants us to be responsible and only have as many as we have the finances for.
Kids are a blessing to us, we are supposed to bless our kids, have a lot of kids to care for you when you are old. Kids take away our freedoms, freedom isn't necessary - we need to be unselfish, (like that's any better, "*groan* kids, my life is misery because of you, but I'm okay with it, it's just God sanctifying me through trying circumstances", or it is selfish to have a lot of kids you end up parceling around to your older daughters who basically become modern day slaves. The list of opinions goes on and on.
My job isn't to convince anyone differently, that's putting myself in a role that doesn't belong to me, and likely wouldn't work anyway. Even my own outlook on having kids has changed since having one... No duh, real life experience tends to do that sort of thing.
I just want to share my thought and ask you to really, really think about history, the nature and words of our God, search your own heart and convictions.
HISTORY
I look back at the progression of our nation and put myself in satan's shoes for a sec. Yuck.
If I were Satan, and had heard God at creation saying "look at these humans that I have made, they are VERY GOOD!". Watching my plans for the fall of mankind thwarted again and again as God unwinds through the ages his plan for their salvation, His INCREDIBLE, unfathomable, overwhelming love for each beautiful, amazing, miraculous human being that He gave breath to throughout every age of the world...
If I were Satan, I would loath these usurpers of God's love and joy with every breath. And he does, Satan wants us dead, defeated, in hell for all eternity. But aha! What if he could see to it that many, many little humans never see the light of day? That would be even better!
...And so we witnessed that abortion became heard, then accepted, then embraced as 'a woman's right to choose'... all the while not realizing they were puppets in a master scheme. What a horrible, horrible legacy for our nation.
Satan, as he continued to make more disciples among men, then began to increasingly target that particular group in the secular world of career women to have less and less children, even no children. Sterilizing our ability to produce even enough children to replace the current population. We were no longer following that command to 'fill the earth and subdue it'... Instead environmentalism breathed life into the thought that animals, forests and grass have become the highest order of the earth. Babies? They will just grow up to become tree slayers and ocean polluters.
Sex throughout history ceased to be seen as God's gift to married people for joy, pleasure and bringing new life that God loves into this world. Instead, we have made it bring disease, exploitation, and we have become experts at methods that make sure babies are not conceived or allowed to live past a few days. We have whole stores dedicated to the worship of pleasure and thwarting the very design for which sex was created.
As a Christian young woman, I have been advised to do things which the secular world embraces. By Christians. I can understand the dramatic shift in homeschoolers of my generation, though. Satan always mixes a little truth with his big, ugly lies.
Many young adults witnessed too much hypocrisy, had such a bad experience being raised as servants to their parents' baby-making industry, and were told to live up to extra-Biblical standards. The 'ultra-conservative homeschool' circle, if you will.
For Satan had another "aha!" moment. If he could get these young people to direct their outrage at hypocrisy in their parents' generation towards the idea that large families must have been the problem, he could kill two birds with one stone! Turn their thoughts away from fixing the root sin issues that were at fault AND even get Christianity to embrace contraception as being the only way to leave behind antiquated hang-ups and get in step with contemporary culture. How attractive is that?!
If only we could see that Satan hates us. He HATES us. He hates you and me and my three month old precious baby boy as surely as he hates that little three week old baby in the womb.
And why? Because God LOVES us. He wants to destroy everything that God holds dear to His heart. If Satan cant destroy us, he spends every minute trying to make sure we are destined for hell.
I know I'm using some pretty strong language here. I also know this hardly even touches the issue. There are no rules in scripture that tell you how many kids to have, or how long to wait, or what you should do about birth control. That is between you, your husband and your God. I'm just describing the pattern I am seeing versus what God's word DOES say about babies.
But it is true that my heart's desire is for my fellow Christians, and eventually the whole world to see again that babies are LOVED. They are supposed to be WANTED. They are becoming harder and harder for some people to have, due to increasing sterility - and I don't think that is a coincidence. I think the decline of healthy food and habits are another side angle of satan's master plan against babies, but that's a topic for another time.
But even knowing all this, for some reason it has become a 'higher calling' to adopt than to simply have babies as married men and women. Or force your body to have so many babies it gives out so we as parents will receive more 'blessing'. As though something we do or don't do can make us more worthy to God. That is not the point, and I've seen way too many examples of either extreme.
My reason for having babies and establishing our marriage on the premise that I don't really need years of 'freedom' before entering the family stage is that God loves kids so I do too. Period. End of story.
Even though I don't understand it, we humans have captured God's special attention and grace, and I want to see more people - especially my babies, created in His image, knit together miraculously in my very own womb - come to know their great God as Savior.
What a high calling. I feel privileged beyond belief.
Now go hug your mother and thank her for having a baby...
...you.
