Godly Labor

Childbirth is attended with much preparation, focused attention, and purpose: to bring that new baby into the world and into your family. You take childbirth classes, learn a special way to breath (hee, hee, hee, hoo), eat well, exercise, read mother-baby books, assemble the nursery nest, dream, and wait, wait, wait.

And when you are laboring to push your baby out, every bone and sinew and muscle is involved - your whole heart and soul is involved - in that one high and holy intense purpose. You want that baby OUT. You are not merely a disinterested bystander but a totally all-there participant. I’m sure sometimes you wish you could disembody yourself and watch instead of doing the labor required to hatch your baby chick! But like it or not, you are totally immersed in the experience.

You are to have that same focused high and holy attention and purpose, naturally given to the delivery and birth of your baby, and you are to apply it to ‘forming Christ’ in them.

Paul says to the church in Galatia: “My dear children for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…” (Gal.4:19)

Think about what Paul is saying. He is laboring, toiling, struggling, sweating, and striving industriously to bring them along in Christ, to grow them up in Christ, to make them like Christ!

You give such alert and all-there attention to bringing your little one into the world. In the same way, give your all to forming and shaping Christ in them, to raising them in the Lord and in His word. Apply that heart and energy to forming Christ in them throughout their babyhood, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, teen-hood and beyond.

This vital upbringing and training often falls to the wayside or is delegated to the scattered, occasional hit-and-miss. How then can Christ be formed in your children? I challenge all of us to evaluate our lives. Is the important, most important relationship with God squeezed out by the frantic, frenetic living of life?

We can be diligently faithful to get our kids to every sport practice and game, every music lesson and recital, but fail to diligently and faithfully bring them to God to feast on His word. Think about that. Evaluate. Eliminate.

If raising them in Christ and in His word is truly most important, then it should have daily precedence in our lives. Coming to God’s word with our children should be as daily and for-sure regular as sleeping, eating, and brushing our teeth.

To develop a love for God and His word demands taking time, coming to rest, and not just a quick slow-down, but a stopping. The years that your children are in your home - all the way through high school - are vital in establishing this vital routine and expectation in their lives. This diligence of coming to God is at the heart of knowing Him, of becoming like Him. Develop this habit and hunger in your children. God’s word speaks and works and they are never too young to benefit from the banquet available to them in the Bible.