How should we, as Christians, view the presence of children in our lives?

Robert Bosley challenges the common societal perspective that children are merely an inconvenience or a burden. He argues that Christians should adopt a different mindset, recognizing children as a heritage and a gift from God. This perspective should bring joy rather than distress. While it doesn't necessarily mean having as many children as possible, Bosley suggests that a typical Christian family might be larger than those of their unbelieving neighbors.

Bosley also emphasizes the active role children should play within the family. They are not to be passive observers but are to stand alongside their parents, embodying their values and beliefs. It is crucial for Christian parents to raise their children to love the Lord and live for Him, equipping them to engage with, and stand firm against, the prevailing secular culture. This involves taking responsibility for their education and upbringing under God's sovereignty.

Psalm 127:3-4 (NKJV): "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth."

The mindset that we have towards children needs to change. We can't just have our society's view of children. That children are really a burden, that They're a necessary but inconvenient part of life. And even a lot of people today would dispute the necessary part. The Christian's mindset towards children needs to be different.

We need to see them as a heritage. They are a gift from God to you. So rejoice in having those children. I don't think this necessarily means we need to have as many children as we possibly can, but there is something to be said that Christian families should probably, as and again this obviously medical issues and all sorts of things that can cause this to be different. We're talking about the normal course of life, the normative situation for most people.

I think your average Christian family should probably expect to be bigger than your unbelieving neighbor's family. It's kind of a shame to us that when, like for instance, my family, we have six kids, my wife goes to the grocery store with six kids and the first question is we get, oh, are you Mormons? Oh, are you Roman Catholics? No, and no. The first response should be, oh, are you Christians?

Or we want to get really specific, oh, are you reformed? We need to have this mindset of children are a blessing and that should be reflected in our families, which will lead to an increased family size. And also this psalm gets into really how you raise the children. They're to be weapons in the hand of a warrior. They are side by side with their father in the city gates.

And the idea isn't just that they're passive, the children aren't just spectators to what their father's doing. They're with him, they're his character witnesses, they're with him in the argument, they're fighting side by side with their father. And so this gets to how we raise our children. We need to not just have a bunch of children and then turn them over to the government to be educated, or turn them over to the pagans to be turned into good Romans. We need to raise our children as best as we're able under the sovereignty of God.

Raise them to be Christians, and to raise them to love the Lord and to live for Him so they can fight alongside of us in the face of a pagan culture.