give a saint back to God

When parents receive a child from the hand of God, they receive a life to be shaped and molded--most of that shaping and molding taking place, psychologists say, during the first seven years (and some say by far the most impressionable years are the first three). Their job, in the words of Janet Erskine Stuart, is 'to give a saint back to God'. Who is sufficient for these things? This small package of living flesh, with their blood coursing through its tiny veins, their features alarmingly recognizable on the wizened face; real, workable fingers, ten of them, capable of a damp, hot, strong grip on one of theirs; lungs that can produce the most heartbreakingly soft coos and unbearably harsh cries; skin so smooth, so silky, so tender you want to weep when you touch it. And they are responsible for this? Solely responsible--to give a saint back to God!
-Elisabeth Elliot, in her book, The Shaping of a Christian Family, p. 125

Stewart and I feel keenly our responsibility to live and parent in such a way as "to give a saint back to God". This is an immense task--not one we are ready or willing to entrust to just anyone. This is a large part of why I don't plan on returning to a full-time, away-from-home job as long as we have children around our home. We don't want to leave the spiritual training and influencing of our children up to someone else. No one can tailor their teaching directly to meet my child's spiritual and developmental needs the way we can. Stewart and I know our child best, and we want to keep it that way. We realize that is in the day-to-day living, teachable moments, and modelling a life devoted to following Christ, that we will influence Micah. We strongly believe that evenings and weekends spent with our child are simply not enough to accomplish this, particularly during these first few years of life.

I know that financially it is not possible for every mother to stay at home with her children full-time. Please do not feel condemnation if you are someone who needs to work to make ends meet. That is not my intent. However, I also know that looking carefully at our situation, there would be many who would say that this past year I should have worked to help out financially. No matter how tight things got financially, we decided that Stewart would work, and I would stay at home, caring for Micah. We live simply, and we made sacrifices--but God always provided all that we needed.

Children are a blessing from the Lord. The responsibility of parenthood is not to be take lightly. Stewart and I have chosen to make our family a priority--over our careers, finances, even ministry. Our ministry, careers, or financial stability will not matter, if in the end our children choose to not follow Jesus. We feel that we must do everything in our power to influence our children towards Christ--'to give a saint back to God'.

**Theologically, we believe in election: we are God's children because He chose us before the beginning of time, not because we chose Him, or our parents did a good job of parenting us. But we also believe in predestination: that God has chosen us as Micah's parents to be the primary communicators of the gospel to him, in both word and deed. And after we've done all we can, we must trust Him, knowing they are in His capable hands.**