Giving Your Children Back to the Lord

A friend recently admired an old picture that I had on the internet. I hadn't looked at it for some time but it is one of my favourite pictures. It's a picture of Brad and I dedicating Benjamin, our first born, to God. We believe fully that children are a gift from God and as such we wanted to commit to God that we would do our best to raise this child to love and honor Him. We wanted to symbolically give Benjamin back to God's safekeeping and ask the Lord to watch over him. That was twenty-one years ago and yes he is serving the Lord today.

A baby dedication doesn't guarantee that your children will grow up to serve the Lord. Each person has to make that decision for themselves. But it reminded us as parents what our role was to be in that child's life. We were making a public declaration that we would raise this child in the ways of the Lord. That we would teach this child about God and His love.

 Looking at the picture, I see how young we were and how seriously we took this solemn ceremony. My Dad was standing right beside us, raising his hand in praise to the Father and giving his blessing to what we were doing in the witness of the entire church. It was a special moment in our lives that I am so glad someone captured on film.

In the Old Testament, Hannah prayed for a child and the Lord heard her prayer and blessed her with a son whom she called Samuel. When Samuel was weaned Hannah took him to the temple and there she dedicated her son to the Lord and His work. The Lord blessed Hannah with five more children and we don't know if she dedicated them to the Lord as well, but I think she did. Hannah was a godly woman who realized that her children were a gift from God and as such they belonged to Him.

Years ago, almost every born again Christian couple that had a child, brought that child to church and in a ceremony of dedication, gave that child back to the Lord. Nowadays it doesn't happen as often. We have been pastoring for quite awhile now and over the years we have encouraged parents to dedicate their children to the Lord. We have taught on the subject and explained but have only had a very few parents make that decision. I don't know why.

I'm glad that we chose to dedicate all three of our children to the Lord. We committed their lives to His protection and His leading. We have tried to the best of our ability to raise them to know the Lord and His Word and to raise them in a Christian home. We are not perfect and yes, we have failed our children from time to time, as all parents do. But we have done our best and it all started with starting out right by dedicating them back to the Lord.