We reactivated the adoption process about a week ago because we know God wants us to do this and are now praying God will bless us with another child.

We just finished a biography of Adoniram Judson. I think 8 of his 11 children died during his life as a missionary. In the midst of poverty, hunger, pain, torture, and persecution, he viewed each new life as a blessing. Each child was a gift and each one has an eternal soul. By the grace of God, those blessed relationships can now be enjoyed in Heaven for eternity.

Jesus also says pray that the flight not be in winter or on the Sabbath, and God, clearly (whatever one thinks of whether the Sabbath has been fulfilled in Christ) does not believe the Sabbath to be a curse or a burden.

Whether one sees Matt 24/Mark 13/Luke 21 as fulfilled ultimately in the eschaton or in the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, we all agree that the fall of Jerusalem is at least typological of the final tumult of which Jesus speaks. Josephus tells us about what happened to the children in those days. The curse, for Jesus, isn’t the children; it is the hostility to them.

I think Jesus thought there were bad times to have kids. And he doesn’t curse the kids, but he pronounce woe to those having them.

“This is what the Lord Almight, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into Exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. INCREASE IN NUMBER THERE; DO NOT DECREASE. Also, seek the peace and propserity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (Jeremiah 29:4-7)

If God is for us, who can be against us? Neither atheist nor nihilist, socialist nor objectivist, capitalist nor individualist, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And let us pray heartily for the work of the Holy Spirit in our childrens’ hearts. :)

Very refreshing thought.

Gina and I are thankful to be parents of a beautiful baby boy. Our goal as parents is not to have a well-educated, popular, athletically-gifted, successful child (although those things are welcomed). Our goal is to raise a child (and hopefully children) that treasures Christ above all else.

If Calvin (our son) grows up to be a man who treasures Christ above all, then he will be, in the midst of a “perverse generation” a “city set on a hill.” He will be a “light” and a “witness” to those around him.

The darker the cave the brigther the light. This is no time to stop having children!! This is a time to have more of them while embracing the responsibility to raise them in the admonition of the Lord. Raising up an army of Christ followers that will storm the gates of hell behind Christ their King.

But what better time to have children? What better time to offer a picture of hope and a future of godly young men and women to proclaim the Gospel? Children are a wonderful picture of blessing and hope as well as a tangible correlation of the love found within the Trinity as seen in a father, mother, and child. If we ever needed more hope and encouragement in the love and hope found in the Gospel, children are an ideal picture of this to a nihilistic culture.

Children will wreck your life, it’s true! But they’ll wreck it in ways it needs to be wrecked, and in the aftermath is something glorious and frustrating and exhilarating and nerve-wracking and joyful…and good.

As Islam continues to grow in number and influence, I fear Christianity will decline in number and influence. This decline may happen not just because of a lack of evangelism, but also because of how we’ve been influenced by the secular world’s anti-child worldview. Imagine if Christian families grew at double or more the rate of non-Christian families in America. Without doubt, not all of these children would embrace Christianity, but we know that many would. Imagine the numbers we may have in two or three generations while other people are aborting their babies or having 1.2 children. There are tremendous Kingdom implications to how the Church views families and children.

Not all Christians are supposed to have large families, but I suspect there are many more that should but won’t because they have bought into the worldly anti-child view. Some fear that children may be indoctrinated into the secular worldview of our culture, but we should be more concerned about the parents who have already swallowed it.

Indeed, I could build a pretty strong historical case for the idea that his children stand as good or better a chance to distinguish themselves in their zeal for the Lord by growing up in a time of difficulty and opposition to their faith than by growing up in a time of ease and acceptance. If we live in the midst of an anti-Christian nihilism, it is the children who grew up in a much different environment who have given it to us.