Sacrificing our Children to the Lord

The multitudes of good parents that have lost their children to the world are a church wide tragedy. I constantly meet precious souls that were raised in good Christian homes that are now lost and often careless in their lifestyles. My wife has a wonderful doctor, so kind and highly respected, that was raised in another country by a Godly, Spirit-filled saint of God. We have had street ministry for years and I have never met a prostitute that was not raised in a Christian home. IÂ’m ministering to a beautiful, young woman right now that knows the truth of GodÂ’s Word. Her Christian mother is now with the Lord and this dear soul is living with her boyfriend. IÂ’m reaching to a couple from Honduras. This woman was raised by a holiness, Spirit-filled mother but is now living with a man out of wedlock. What is wrong? We are missing something.

God’s Holy Word has promised emphatically to save the family of any parent or parents that surrenders in abandonment to Jesus Christ. There is no excuse for Godly dads and moms to lose their children to the devil. Two promises have been my bedrock from the time my children were toddlers. Paul and Silas said to the Philippian jailer, “… Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” “And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.” (Acts 16:31, 34) “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverb 22:6) These truths leave no room for failure.

Abraham’s great test from the Lord may be our answer. His son, Isaac, was a young man and was the son of promise that Abraham and Sarah had waited on God to fulfill. God spoke to Abraham, “…Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” (Genesis 22:2) He left immediately with his son to travel the three-day journey to Mount Moriah. There at the foot of the mountain he left the servant while he and Isaac went to worship before the Lord. When Isaac was tied and laid on the altar and Abraham stood with the knife in hand, God spoke again. “And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.” (Genesis 22:11-12) A ram was caught in the thicket because God had prepared the sacrifice once the heart of Abraham and his son were fully set. Abraham in his heart had sacrificed his son to God and, as God had promised, received his son back again.

What a principle of child training and rearing! Parents of church families are rearing their children for the world, training them how to be successful in the worldÂ’s system, and then frustrating themselves wondering why they have no surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ. GodÂ’s method is to offer them as sacrifices to the Lord, rearing them with abandonment to Jesus Christ with an utter distaste for this worldÂ’s evil system. When our children have been placed on GodÂ’s altar from birth and are raised to maintain a proper distance from everything unclean, they cannot forget it. They must be taught to love everyone but to hate every form of sin. There is no room for prejudice by color or offense by the failures of others.

If children have been saturated with the absolute promises of God and the fact that “right always prevails in the end,” they will learn to wait on God. Our children must be taught that they are God’s property, that they have been sacrificed to Him alone, and that success is doing God’s will, whether it is big or small. Many parents have unfulfilled dreams that they try to impose upon the lives of their children. What a tragedy when God has a plan bigger and better than anything we could ever imagine. Obedience and surrender to God is happiness that cannot be destroyed. If we determine to impose our ideas of financial success – doctors, lawyers, and great incomes – but they miss knowing God, we, along with our children, will pay with unending sorrows and grief. The world’s system always fails in the end.

God Himself is our best example that we serve ourselves, along with His glory, by sacrificing our sons and daughters to Him. He sacrificed His Son at Calvary and then received Him back at the resurrection. When His Son arrived in the Holy City of God, the Father gave Him a name, which is above every name. That Son is even now at the FatherÂ’s right hand to intercede for us, and He is soon coming again in glory to rapture His faithful saints. God has a plan for your sons and daughters. His plan is nothing but a blueprint until you, along with your children, place them on GodÂ’s altar and teach them separation from all evil. Pay no attention to the spiritually blind who tell you that the glasshouses of child rearing do not work. Look at their kids that are taking drugs, listening to mind destroying rock music, and fornicating like dogs under the porch. Then, take your family to GodÂ’s altar and live there. It works!