The Real Reason Children are a Blessing

With five kids and another on the way, I don't have much time to do things I love. I can't remember the last time I got to play volleyball, go to a movie or even be comfortable because my body has been taken over with a giant baby sitting on my bladder. I don't get to sit cozy with a book by a fire hardly ever, go leisurely shopping, have a picked up and clean house or even shower that often really. Most of my days consist of training and disciplining kids, changing diapers, and picking things up non-stop. If I'm lucky I actually get to go to the bathroom without a scream erupting where I wonder who bit who and who or who punched who or wondering if it could actually be possible someone needs to go to the hospital. 

Kids are exhausting. Yet God says they are a blessing. So what really makes them a blessing? Is it that they "help" around the house, which really is harder work in training and helping them to do a job than actually doing it myself. Or maybe it's the cute things they say. But from what I've discovered so far that is from age 2-4. Then they just start saying how much they hate this and that and seem to be able to complain about the sky being blue. If that were it surely God would have said, Children are a blessing for a couple of years and after that, well, stick it out. No, there's got to be more to it.

Being an only child I think it took five kids for it to finally sink in, to realize the blessing is the friction, the hard, the iron sharpening iron. The inconvenience, discomfort and dying to myself and my pleasure for the sake of another, that is the blessing.

Perhaps the biggest reason kids are a blessing is because they force us to die to ourselves. {Tweet this} They cause us live as though life isn't about us and our pleasure and comfort. For unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it cannot bear fruit. "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." John 12:24  

Demanding our way, our pleasure, our conveniences is not the abundant life. Jesus came to give life to the full but it happens His way, not ours. Full, abundant life comes when we die to fighting for our "rights" and living for another, for another kingdom and by that God is glorified and we are most deeply satisfied.

About Laura

Laura, the founder of Missional Women is married and has five kids, two of whom are adopted. Laura and her husband have been missionaries to college students for 13 years serving with Master Plan Ministries where she is the Women's Development Coordinator. Laura has authored 5 books, including an award winning 12 week Bible Study on First Samuel, Beholding Him, Becoming Missional, Reach; How to Use Your Social Media Influence for the Glory of God, and A Devotional Journey through Judges, a devotional to accompany the free online Bible study at TheBookofJudges.com. You can find her on facebook,twitter, pinterest, youtube, instagram and her author site.


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