If you could see as I see, you would know that those apparent & seeming burdens are one of the greatest blessings, treasures & privileges ever bestowed upon you.
Children are a vessel of whatever you have the faith to fill them with. They are the incarnation of the verse, ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ Have faith that they will become a blessing, that ‘Blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them’... Start appreciating those arrows for what they are. Not mere useless, ugly & dirty sticks that are causing you nothing but trouble, but arrows, which, when combined with the bow of My weaponry & the skill of the Archer’s hand, namely Mine, can go further than you ever have or will...
It’s another trick of the Enemy, to have deluded folks into thinking that kids are a burden. Open your eyes & look beyond what you see in the flesh! Look at My unlimited potential of opportunities! Despise them not, but seek Me for all I can do in their lives! ‘Suffer little children to come unto Me!’ Let them come unto Me & don’t be of a cold, harsh, cruel,
unbelieving heart
“Children are an heritage of the Lord,” and by rejecting this heritage, selfish people are forfeiting their heritage & their part in Me. Only the selfish dislike children.
Children are a more important factor than many realize. They’re the fruit of man, although some have come to accept the concept that the fruit more worthy of bearing is their little colored papers... The love of money is the root of all evil, and if you consider money a greater & better fruit to bear than children, then you’re on the Devil’s track, not Mine!
Your children will still be your heritage from Me, even long after the last bill of paper money will have gone down the drain. Welcome them with arms wide open, love them as I have loved you, and that love will never return unto you void.
Even IF the Enemy gets a hold of them temporarily & twists & warps their minds & turns them against you! Let it be a test of unconditional love, like I have loved you unconditionally, even when you turned from Me. Forgive them as I have forgiven you and continue to forgive!
Your children ARE important to Me, and they should definitely be to you! You should do the best you can for them, and you MUST be faithful in that which is not really the least: your little ones.
Have you watered your little plants? Have you cared for your garden? Have you been faithfully sowing My seeds into their hearts? Is your sample such that your children would want to assume your life-style?
Who would have thought that that child or that youngster could have turned into a brilliant mind, a shining light & beacon to many under your influence & tutorship? Who could have suspected that they were wide-open treasure chests, waiting to be filled with what you had to give them?
I’m handing out a crown of great glory to those who had the vision, who were faithful, who led My little ones & guided them by the hand, who had an unselfish love to pour their own lives into those young & brittle vessels, often at the cost of giving up their own dreams & visions & goals they had for themselves.
Praying is not only an essential part of love a parent should have for their child, but it’s actually the most important &
effective thing you can and must do!
A baby brings many new “burdens” in the form of a greater work load. But in My eyes, that babe may be the purpose you’re here for, for what else is life all about but learning to care for someone else, learning to help those who are weaker?
Soon it will turn out to have been the biggest blessing & richest source of rewards in your life you could have ever dreamed of.
A baby is able to do nothing but trust that his mother will feed him & take care of him. A baby is a picture of perfect trust.
You gotta be a baby to get a taste of that heavenly peace & trust & faith. Just trust like a baby!
You must look into the future. When Abraham was alive on Earth, not many folks knew about him, comparatively speaking. He had his encounter with the king of Egypt & with maybe a few hundred or thousand others, but none of them were aware of who he was going to be. What I made him, I brought about through a tiny little baby. Something anyone can do: make love & have a baby. But it was something special I did, just like the Father did the most special thing in all history by sending down a baby...
Sometimes the whole impact that tiny little baby had, that seemingly insignificant life of faith, is only revealed years, decades, or even centuries later, as is so often the case with people who are considered saints in the World: they're hardly ever considered saints during their life-time.
I give you everything so that you give it back to Me. If you receive everything from My hand & thank Me for it & are willing to give it back to Me every time (like the picture of a parent playing ball with a toddler: the toddler has to be willing to throw or roll the ball back to the parent, otherwise it won't work...), then you'll eventually find out that this game works, and it's actually fun, and that there's a sense to all this give & take, even though you (the toddler) may not see it at first...
Children are a factor you can't just ignore. You can't just ignore the little things, the little people and the details, in favor of a potentially big thing.
You seem to be so afraid that I'm incapable or too heartless to take good care of those I have given you. Can you keep them from death? Can you keep them from prison, and the paths of darkness they have chosen for themselves in their lives? No, not by caring for them every waking hour of your life could you keep their spirits from wandering into the depths of darkness, if that's what their choice is. But I can. IF you will commit them into My hands, which will often mean, first letting them go out of your own hand & trusting Me for them.
My ways are unlike your ways, and they're mysterious ways, and you don't always comprehend them. But does that mean that they cannot be good? Does that mean you know better than Me? Does that mean I have failed, I was absent or asleep when this or that bad thing happened?
What if all those supposedly bad things you see Me allowing to happen to them are in reality good things that draw them closer to Me, that would wake them up from the error of their ways, if you would not attempt time and time again to protect them from My chastisements?
That baby may only be a small source of noise & trouble in your life today, eating up your resources, and making you wonder what else it could possibly be good for, besides giving you trouble, but a look into the future with the eyes of the vision that I can give you, of what that baby can become one day, if you'll only rear it with the right kind of attitude, will give you a completely different outlook.
My dealings with you aren't all that different from your dealings with your children. That's another reason why having children is such a blessing & one of the major purposes in life: there is hardly a better example of My relationship with you, hardly any better parallel which explains to you better how I like to interact with you, how much I love you, how I wish for you to learn to obey Me, etc., than having children.
Ask and it shall be given you. Those are the only conditions. You need to ask. You don't run after your child all day long &
ask, "What is it you'd like now... Do you want this? Do you want that?" The best is not to spoil them too much, but let them ask if they want something. You can lead them in a certain direction, as to what the available options are, but they've got to do the asking themselves... usually.
The Devil is always after the young, and their battles are often more intense than yours & it takes My kind of sensitivity to tune in to them, to be aware of what's going on with them; to communicate with them about it & to draw them out of themselves, as a doctor would with a patient, so that you know what specific Word medicine to give them.
Once you hear them out, show genuine interest & an effort to tune in to them, & concern for them, they'll open up & will be ready for your solutions, providing you're applying them to your lives yourselves. They'll only accept tried & proven advice.
Ask Me to help you tune in to them, help you connect your hearts to theirs, to reveal to you what their particular needs are, to shine a light into the dark area, that question mark in their hearts & minds that parents & grown-ups seldom have a clue about.
Once they'll be able to tell that you are genuinely concerned about them, their hearts & souls, & willing to sacrifice your time for them & to change things for their sake, they will also become more willing to listen to you and accept your solutions wholeheartedly.
Come to Me regularly regarding the particular needs of your children, before problems occur, & thus prevent them from happening.
You can change everything today, the way you look at them, their way of seeing you, your whole lives & interaction together. Being open to change is a key factor; being willing to change your sample.
Few people recognize the extent to which the Devil is invading their own homes, lives & families.
The younger a person is, the more the flesh "rules" them, and they see things with their carnal minds, not like I do. They think that physical harm is the worst that can befall them or their child, when in My eyes, the spiritual dangers, which draw them away from Me, are something to be much more concerned and alarmed about than the dangers of physical harm, which I often use to draw a person closer to Me.
Abraham was willing to trust Me, that I knew better what was the best concerning his son, that My hands were the place he was going to be best cared for, even if I asked something as absurd of him as to sacrifice him unto Me. Evidently Abraham had enough faith to believe that even if Isaac would die, it would be better for him than what could have happened if Abraham had disobeyed Me.
Now, modern parents are very, very far away from that kind of faith. They think they have to do all that is in their power to protect their children from any physical harm, danger or abuse, and if necessary, even to protect them from Me. They don't believe that the best place in the universe to place their child is in My hands, they don't have the faith of Job who said, "though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," and much less the faith of Abraham, who practically said, "though He
ask me to slay my only son, yet will I trust in Him."
Today's parents' faith is so weak, they scarcely even know that I exist, much less would they consider that I have anything to do with the rearing of their child. They consider raising their child the duty I gave them, but in their eyes, that duty does not include Me, or trusting Me for their children. They want to take it all into their own hands, just like they try to take their own lives and its substance & insurance into their own hands. They place their trust in money, instead of Me.
But consequently, they also make grave mistakes, since they don't consult or seek Me about any of these things. They often fail & fall flat on their faces & wind up confused, wondering what on earth they might have done wrong.
Some do apply genuine & sincere love, which cannot fail. But often they forget or don't know that to a child, love spells t.i.m.e., & while they're working half their lives away in order to ensure their family's physical well-being, they neglect the spiritual.
You would like to give your children a treat that they can remember as something not boring, but that's because you want to appeal to their mind gear of "what can I consume today, so that I can register this day as a success of some kind?" It's that manipulated mind gear of constantly having to receive, unlearning the ability to give or contribute something and registering that as a success instead.
So, in order to really do them a favor, you should not adjust to their mind gear and bend to their wishes, but you should instead seek for opportunities for them to learn from you, which will be useful preparation for the future. If you bend to their scheme, you'll just spoil them & render them unable to cope with life later on.
Your kids have to learn to appreciate the little things & that they must give in order to receive, otherwise they're going to be lost later on, unable to contribute anything valuable to others, only selfishly seeking their own pleasure & satisfaction.
They've got to do their part in order to feel truly satisfied in the long run, finding pleasure in giving and contributing their share to the workload, which is much more lasting and important than the fleeting little pleasures of consumption.
If your child is giving you trials because of stubbornness, disobedience or laziness, you should ask yourself whether there's a chance that I might want to work on those same areas in your life. If they are causing you trials because you feel rejected or unwanted by them, you must ask yourself why.
Often, children have a completely wrong concept of their father, quite similar to people's false perception of Me, their heavenly Father. Ask Me to show you what you can do in such a situation to rectify and perhaps correct their view of things.
If they give you trials because they prefer to spend their time with their friends to the extent that they hardly come to see you anymore at all, welcome to the way that I feel in relation to many of My children!
Often it's because someone else fed them negative information about you, similar to the way the Devil tells lies about Me.
Other times it plain & simple selfishness, & they just know that having to face you would only convict them & make them feel bad about themselves.
There is more truth to the verse that I created you in My own image than meets the eye. In a way, you're all little carbon copies of Me, just like children often are the "spitting image" of one of their parents...
Sometimes your children feel resentful toward you because they think you neglect them & don't care about them, similar to the way many people think that I couldn't care less about them or I wouldn't bother with someone as "unimportant,"
which is really one of the standard lies the Devil spreads about Me.
Fathers are ideal scapegoats. You can blame a lot of things on them that are going wrong, because they didn't do this or that for you, etc., or they broke this or that promise. That's why one of the best & most effective educational milestones in life is having kids on your own, because it will ultimately show you that you're not the perfect mom or dad either, and for once you're able to put yourself in your parents' or even My shoes!
When you come to face it, that's one of the main reasons why kids can often give you trials: it makes you deal with your own weaknesses, failures, wrong attitudes, selfishnesses & everything that's ugly about yourself that you hadn't even realized until then.
Having children reveals that you're not any better than your own parents at all, when you thought you were light-years ahead of them. And that process also moves Me a bit closer to you, because all of a sudden you can begin to see why I'm doing things the way I am, or why I allow this or that to happen... Things start making sense all of a sudden.
So, those trials about being a parent, though the most painful of all they may be, are worth it! As unimportant, trivial or mundane as dealing with children may seem to some people, raising kids, and all the lessons that go along with it, is pretty much the epitome of the meaning of life.
While some parents think they're missing out on life because of their kids, missing out on all the fun that singles or childless couples seem to be having, if you pay attention to what I'm trying to teach you in life, you'll actually notice that it's those others, who are missing out on a lot.
Parents are leaders. Leaders are always envied, resisted, rebelled against, rejected, opposed & fought against by some people some of the time, but that's exactly the kind of adversities that make a character strong. So, if you thought your kids were robbing some of the value of your life, if they're making you feel worthless, like you're no good and you blew it, think again: they're actually the very factor that will accelerate your maturation, and increase your usefulness to others as a counselor, comforter, or person to trust & rely on, more than any other factor.
Parents are leaders. Leaders are always envied, resisted, rebelled against, rejected, opposed & fought against by some people some of the time, but that's exactly the kind of adversities that make a character strong. So, if you thought your kids were robbing some of the value of your life, if they're making you feel worthless, like you're no good and you blew it, think again: they're actually the very factor that will accelerate your maturation, and increase your usefulness to others as a counselor, comforter, or person to trust & rely on, more than any other factor.