{"id":2247,"date":"2009-02-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/contentfeeds\/2009\/02\/children-are-gifts.html"},"modified":"2009-02-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T00:00:00","slug":"children-are-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/02\/children-are-gifts.html","title":{"rendered":"Children Are Gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I watch my children sleep at night, I marvel that God entrusted me with them. Not only are they a huge blessing to me as a mom, but their presence and need cause me to run to Jesus more. As Dr. Dan Allender writes in How Children Raise Parents, &#8220;Our children raise us to the degree that we are willing to receive them as the gift God gave us to mature us to be like him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Not only does God give us children to help us grow into devoted followers of Him, but He gives them simply because they are a blessing. How have your children helped you mature in God? Write a note to each of your children expressing your gratitude for how God created them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/maryedemuth\">Mary E. DeMuth<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>This is part of Mary E. DeMuth&#8217;s guided journal, &#8220;Creating the Family You Always Wanted,&#8221; a 12-week journey in Christian parenting. Twice a week, you&#8217;ll receive a new journaling prompt encouraging you to think about your family&#8211;and God&#8211;in new ways. Use these prompts in your own journal or in group discussion. If you&#8217;re joining this journal mid-way through, you can start journaling at any time, and stay subscribed at the end, when the journal will restart and you can receive the prompts that you missed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I watch my children sleep at night, I marvel that God entrusted me with them. Not only are they a huge blessing to me as a mom, but their presence and need cause me to run to Jesus more. As Dr. Dan Allender writes in How Children Raise Parents, &#8220;Our children raise us to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":235,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-journal-with-mary-demuth"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Children Are Gifts - Content Feeds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/02\/children-are-gifts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Children Are Gifts - Content Feeds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I watch my children sleep at night, I marvel that God entrusted me with them. 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Not only are they a huge blessing to me as a mom, but their presence and need cause me to run to Jesus more. 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