Children – God’s Blessing

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by Dr. Chuck Baynard

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The Bible says that children are the glory of the father and a blessing from God. It warns against harming a child and in particular teaching them to sin. The worship services of Israel always included the whole family. Family is the gift of God and I believe is intended of God to show us just a touch of what life will be in heaven where we as children live forever with God the Father.

I place special weight on the subordination shown in Scripture between the members of the Trinity while at the same time Scripture is careful to teach that each is fully God. I think God intends for such harmony because the family should be one even as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. Each has a place in family and society and should be joyfully about serving there where God has placed them. Jesus prays for such a unity in John 17.

Within the last two weeks I have watched a mother desert her husband and children, a father desert children and worse. For 15 years I have been a part of the child advocate program of the South Carolina Governor’s Office to try and protect abused children. I have always marveled at the number of cases of child abuse in York County.

Something is wrong! This is obviously an understatement of the real facts. What is wrong is a nation that plays games with God and only gives lip service to serving God and being one in God’s covenant (church). A man and two sons donated two Saturdays of rigorous physical labor to the church when they could obviously be elsewhere and enjoying things more. This display of commitment to God is what I am talking about and its absence from our nation as a whole is why families are being destroyed and our nation is declining. Christ says if we love Him we will obey Him. Destroying family and not loving all other human beings is not obeying the Bible.

How we treat children is a good indication of how we will treat everyone else when put in a position to do so. Anger and rage are the watchwords of the day as each carefully asserts their rights and well being at the expense of all others.

Children are under God’s special care and have their own personal angel looking over them. The Guarding Angel isn’t fiction; the Bible says it is true.

God hates divorce and yet even among the churched the rate is passing the old fifty percent mark for the failure of new marriages within five years. The failure rate for second and third marriages is very dismal with some polls putting third marriage failures over 80 percent.

Integrity, respect, and many more virtues have been tossed out in the current wave of popular opinion for individual rights and a so-called freedom. Either you serve God or Satan; you will not do it your way though you may think that is what you are doing for a season.

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Dr. Baynard is an Associate Editor of the Christian Observer and Senior Pastor at Clover Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Clover, South Carolina

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