Why should the Church emphasize the importance of children in today's society?

Kris Baines highlights the need for the Church to teach about the blessing of children, counteracting the selfish cultural narratives that prioritize personal pleasure and convenience over family values. In a world that often views children as burdens, the Church must affirm that children are a gift from God. This teaching challenges the prevailing mindset and encourages believers to embrace God's design for family life.

Children, according to Baines, are not just a source of joy and fulfillment but also play a significant role in shaping us to be more like Christ. Parenting requires us to live selflessly, pouring our lives into our children's growth and development. This process of investing in others aligns with God's plan, steering us away from self-centered living and towards a purpose-driven life that prepares children to be strong in their faith and equipped to advance God's kingdom.

Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV): "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

I think it's important that the Church is teaching about the blessing of children, counteracting the many unbiblical crazy ideas that are out there about family and about children. And essentially a lot of that finds its basis in selfishness. We live in a culture where we're encouraged to think about ourselves, think about our own pleasures, our own time. And that's contrary to the idea of having a family, having children, especially early on. But God says children are a blessing.

But they're not always a blessing in the way that we might expect. So we might think children are a blessing because everything's gonna go smoothly and wonderfully, but that's not the case. Children are a blessing in many different ways. And one of the ways is they help us to become more like Christ. Because as parents we are almost forced in a good way into a situation where our lives don't become like a cup where we're poured into.

Yes from the Lord, but our lives become poured out into our children's. And so there's that sense of living for others. There's that sense of investing in their lives. If we want to just live for ourselves, have our own pleasures, our own time, then that's just not God's plan. That's why he has children in our lives, because as he says in his word, that to be trained up is to be sent out.

And so, particularly as we consider the world around us, the need for the gospel, the way that Satan has a foothold in so many places, it is so vital that we raise up children who are strong in him, who are desiring to serve him, who fear him, and who we can launch into the world, to the front lines of battle, to do damage in the heart of the enemy and help to increase the Kingdom of God.