Isaiah 9:6
For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
….. And His name will be called Wonderful.
Almost everyone brightens up in the presence of a baby. Even the most cantankerous can be moved by the giggle of a child.
When God brings a child into this world, He gives them natural traits. This childlikeness, is essential to the maturing process. The PARENTS role is to develop these childlike traits in a healthy environment.
Wonder
Optimism These develop the ATTITUDE
Naïveté
Dependence
Emotions These develop the RESPONSIBILITY
Resilience
Free Play
Uniqueness These develop the SPIRITUALITY
Love
Isaiah 54:13 All your children shall be taught by the Lord, And great shall be the peace of your children.
One of God’s best teaching tools is signs and wonders. We understand signs, but do we really understand wonders. Wonders are things that are unexplainable. Things that make you wonder, or ask questions. The answers you find to these unexplainable things are meant to lead you to the God of all wonders.
- Children have natural hope and optimism.
- Naiveté is the core of their innocence.
1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things
Dependence
Emotions These develop the RESPONSIBILITY
Resilience
1. Children are dependent and needy by nature, not by choice. Children depend on parents and parents need to depend on God. PARTNER WITH GOD IN PARENTING.
2. You have to realize that God is helping you to raise your children. You need to ask Him for advise.
Psalms 127:1-5
“Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain. 2 It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep. 3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,The fruit of the womb is a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. 5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.”
3. Two emotions are unique to human infants—laughter and weeping. It is natural for children to laugh and to see the humor in all sorts of things, whether they be real, imagined or of their own creation. Humor is one of our earliest and greatest natural resources. Babies giggle and laugh before they can even speak or understand.
Romans 12:15 “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”
4. Children who are shamed for weeping are many times damaged in their development. Many children had their weeping repressed, when it’s a gift from God to help them come to resolve.
5. My advise is instead of “scold them, hold them.”
As an adult that the ability to weep will mean the difference in survival and dying on the inside.
6. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from distress. Just watch a child learning to eat or to walk – This resilience makes them courageous.
7. The word courageous comes from the Latin word, cor (heart). Children have heart. They are courageous adventurers. The opposite of that is dis-couraged, which means you have “lost heart.”
Ephesians 6:4 And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition (legal council – lawyer) of the Lord.
Free Play
Uniqueness These develop the SPIRITUALITY
Love
1. The qualities of —freedom and spontaneity—form the structure of play. That’s how we also describe worship.
2. When kids go outside to play, they start jumping, skipping and laughing before they even start playing. They are expressing FREEDOM.
Every person is UNIQUE- Psalms 139:13-14 “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.”
6. Uniqueness
Although a child is immature, he still has a sense of wholeness, of I AMness. A child gets this from the GREAT I AM.
7. No one else is exactly like him. This specialness makes every child truly precious. Precious means “rare and valuable.”
I know adults who are still looking for the thing that makes them special and unique. Interestingly, in the theophany of the burning bush, God told Moses that his name was I am that I am (Exod. 3:14).
8. The New Testament is filled with Jesus reaching out to the “single one”: the one lost sheep, the prodigal son. HE WENT AFTER THEM, BECAUSE IT’S THE ONLY ONE HE’S GOT. THERE’S ONLY ONE!
Ephesians 5:1-2 “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet- smelling aroma.”
9. However, the child must first be loved before he can love.
10. Doing life TOGETHER!
- The google generation has knowledge at it’s finger tips, but we must give them experiences.
- Love is more than affection, it is about DOING LIFE TOGETHER.
- Illust- Macy mopping the screened in back porch. If I would have had her to do that alone, it would have been a chore. Because we did it together, she perceived it as me wanting to be with her and she had fun. She would say, “papa, I’m a good “mop girl” and I would reply yes, and I’m the “water boy.”
