What is the Only Reason to Have Children?

Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Of course.  The tragedy is that so many of our churches have not received life from the families in them but have rather received death because each family has been a closed unit on its own that has been utterly claustrophobic.   And loved ones, dear brothers and sisters, don’t you see it is death to have children for any reason other than that it is God’s will.  It destroys the children.  If you have a child to fulfill the life you have failed to live, or to fulfill the frustrations that you feel, or to live over again now that you feel you’re getting beyond new achievements, or if you want children so that you’ll have some kind of security in your old age, or you want children so that you’ll have a sense of life in your home, that is an insult to God and an insult to the children, and just an insult to your dear partner.  Loved ones, those are no reasons to have children.

The only reason to have a child is that you believe, you’ve both prayed about it and you believe God wants you to have a little one.  If I could just say in closing, don’t you see that we’re in a dear old lonely world?  Don’t you?  Don’t you just look around and you see the wee souls walking in the streets and you see how much they need a family and a home, and you see how close we keep our own possessions to us?  You see how close we’ve kept our own homes to us?

Brothers and sisters, there is a need for a new generation of God’s people who will not concentrate on making their own little homes for their own satisfaction but will see themselves as being joined together by God to provide a home, and a picture of heaven to thousands, and thousands of people not only in this country but in the other countries of the world.  God is dying for a generation of his children who will have that attitude rather than what has often become a very selfish claustrophobic attitude.

We get children so that we will have a little fortress of our own and we’ll be able to have our own heaven.  Do you remember, there’s an old English poem that ends, and they did that and they found themselves in hell.  You know, after they got everything around them it became a hell of selfishness.  The very opposite really of God’s plan for us, you know.  Let us pray.