Beyond Material Needs

Newborns enter life naked and naturally beautiful. The adoring eyes of parents and grandparents delight at the innocence of their precious infant. However innocent a child may first appear, no one is born intrinsically good, and all parents can attest to how quickly the innocence disappears. Consider St. Paul’s words:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned (Romans 5:12 NAS).

It is hard to see that a child’s greatest need is spiritual, and not physical, mental or emotional. Every person born into this world has a pressing need to be spiritually alive to God.  Parents diligently provide sustenance and comfort for their children. They want them to have quality medical care, new clothes, healthy meals, and a wide variety of toys and activities to stimulate their mind. What parent does love to hear pure giggling pleasure from their child? In providing their child these good things, a strong sense of safety and emotional stability is established. Unintentionally a child spiritual health is easily overlooked.

During a very trying time or an actual crisis, people tend to focus on spirituality. For example, after violent storms ravage cities with widespread destruction, even lose of life, we see people quickly understand that relationships are the most vital part of life, and for a short time, attendance grows at churches. Suffering pierces the thin line between physical and spiritual realms, and the emptiness of life alone, apart from God, is more clearly revealed through painful experiences.

Mankind’s personal relationship with God is the greatest gift to obtain in life. No preparatory preschool, athletic finesse, musical skill or quantity of material belongings, can satisfy the spiritual need of a child. As parents, we must, from our child’s earliest days, teach him to know and love God through our example of a personal prayer life, meditative Bible study, and a disciplined moral lifestyle. In doing so, we demonstrate how God has provided abundantly for our spiritual needs. People remember stories. That’s why Jesus used them so much. And, they put more power to your words.

Because of man’s sin, which is common to all, Jesus took the form of man and was birthed through the body of Mary as her firstborn son. Jesus, though, was not fathered like all men but by the Holy Spirit. He is the only begotten son of God, through Him we have this hope:

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:17).

You see, it is by Jesus’ sinless life, that parents of every child can believe the promise:

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

Faith in God must be taught and the best way this is done is through demonstrating God’s sacrificial grace-filled life with our children and one another. The spiritual re-birth of a child is truly the greatest day in their life!

Bio: Lindy Abbott, raised in New Orleans, met her husband of 27 years at the University of AL. After they wed, they moved Nashville, TN where they placed their roots and homeschooled three precious children. Lindy has a Bachelor’s Degree in Education. She is a published author in the book Out of The Overflow and a frequent writer of articles in magazines and online sites. Her weekly column, Letters From the King for Take, Root and Write has been her most popular. Lindy has a passion to see broken people find healing and encouragement in God and through His ministering believers. http://lindylou-abbott.blogspot.com