Truly, our children are an undeserved gift from God. God could have chosen others to become parents of your children. Instead, God chose you to be a parent of your children. Let us then thank and praise God for our children. May we never regard them as a burden but as a blessing from God—from whom all blessings flow. And may God grant us grace, as we train up our children in the way they should go, so that when they are old they will not depart from it (Prov. 22:6). 

I cannot recall how many times I met people who honestly told me that they did not want to have children because children would just interfere with their lives. They viewed children as a burden, rather than a blessing. In fact, a certain woman frankly told me that she was too selfish to have a child. She did not want to have a child, because she knew it would mean an inconvenient life.
Do you know how many babies are aborted per day in the U. S.? The answer is heart breaking—approximately 3,700 babies per day. And 93 % of all abortions happen generally because of inconvenience.  Listen to the following statistics:
1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).
In other words, if you were to ask 100 mothers who aborted their children, “Why did you abort your child?” A large number of them would probably say something like this: “Well, because that baby in my womb would just interfere with my education or career.” Or, “I don’t want to have an inconvenient life.”
What?! You aborted your unborn baby simply because you didn’t want to have an inconvenient life?! Of course, it can be inconvenient to have a baby. You will experience sleepless nights as you nurse your baby in the middle of the night or rock your sick baby to sleep. You will have additional expenses, messes to clean up; and, your days will not always go according to your schedule. Children can indeed “interfere” with some of our plans.
Of course, it is difficult to raise a child. Being a parent comes with great responsibilities (you provide for your children, take care of them, train them in the way they should go, correct and discipline them, and the list goes on and on). Such responsibilities are not always easy to do, especially if a child has a physical or mental disability.
And, of course, it can be stressful to have children. Kids can sometimes be annoying. They can test your patience. Having children requires sacrifice. You need to sacrifice your time, your comfort, and sometimes your dreams. Oh, but the joy of parenting surpasses its stress and sacrifice. The blessing of parenthood outweighs its discomfort.
My wife and I have five children. Yes, I don’t deny the difficulty of parenting.
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Before we pray to God to revive the church in our country, we first need to ask God to revive ourselves. Revival must begin with us believers. The English evangelist Rodney “Gipsy” Smith (1860–1947) was once asked the secret of revival. His reply is convicting: “Go home. Take a piece of chalk. Draw a circle around yourself. Then pray, ‘O Lord, revive everything inside this circle.’” This ought to be your prayer and my prayer: “O Lord, revive me first.”

So what do you think is our greatest need as a nation?
Interestingly, in a Wall Street Journal article, written in 1947 (two years after the Second World War), a writer made this observation: “What America needs more than railway extension, western irrigation, a low tariff, a bigger cotton crop, and larger wheat crop is a revival of religion. The kind that father and mother used to have. A religion that counted it good business to take time for family worship each morning right in the middle of the wheat harvest.”
In short, according to this writer, what America needs most is a revival of religion—a religion that is based on the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In his book—The Secret of Christian Joy—published in 1938, Vance Havner (1901–1986) also made a similar observation: “The greatest need of America is an old-fashioned, heaven-born, God-sent revival.”
And I agree. I believe our greatest need as a nation today is true revival.
But what is revival? In his book, Revival: A People Saturated With God, Brian H. Edwards gives what I think is a comprehensive definition of revival: “A true Holy Spirit revival is a remarkable increase in the spiritual life of a larger number of God’s people, accompanied by an awesome awareness of the presence of God, intensity of prayer and praise, a deep conviction of sin with a passionate longing for holiness and unusual effectiveness in evangelism, leading to the salvation of many unbelievers.”
Noticeably, revival can only be experienced by believers—by those who have been made alive by the Holy Spirit through the gospel of Christ.
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