Children Are Not an Inconvenience

“They are considering having children.”

To most ears today, this phrase carries all the urgency of selecting a vacation destination or choosing a Netflix series. We treat the decision of whether or not to bring life into the world as optional, a lifestyle accessory, a personal preference among many. Children? Sure if you’re into that sort of thing. If not, no big deal.

But this casual posture toward parenthood reveals something deeper, darker. It exposes a cultural drift from seeing children as a gift to viewing them as a burden. We have come to believe that human life the most precious and sacred gift God gives is a disruption to what really matters.

Scripture tells a different story. And if we fail to recover it, we risk not only losing our legacy, but abandoning a central part of what it means to image God in the world.

The Cultural Lie: Children Are Optional and Obstructive

Today’s world whispers to young couples: Do what you want now. Travel, build your career, indulge your freedom. You can always have kids later if you still want them.

What’s even more sinister is that we’ve redefined responsibility. The responsible thing, we’re told, is to delay childbearing indefinitely until every financial, emotional, and career goal is met. Children have become something you fit in after your life is already exactly as you want it.

We’re raising a generation that sees motherhood as imprisonment and fatherhood as a setback. Children, we’re told, sap our energy, kill our dreams, and rob us of personal fulfillment.

And sadly, these messages aren’t only heard outside the Church. They’ve found a home inside our sanctuaries too.

But make no mistake: the lie that children are inconvenient is not a neutral narrative. It is an all-out assault on the image of God and the design of creation.

The Biblical Truth: Children Are a Heritage

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Psalm 127:3

From the opening chapters of Genesis, God commands humanity to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). This is not a polite suggestion. It’s a divine commission. And it’s rooted in the imago Dei the image of God stamped on every man, woman, and child.

We bear God’s image not only as individuals, but as generations. Our dominion on earth is not carried out in isolation, but through multiplication. To produce and nurture new life is to participate in God’s plan to cover the earth with His glory.

And yet, in our pride, we’ve come to believe we know better. We exalt personal peace and affluence over obedience and legacy. We’ve swapped dominion for distraction, seeing children not as arrows in the hand of a warrior (Psalm 127:4), but as weights to be avoided.

God calls children a reward. The world calls them a risk. Whose voice will we believe?

The Real Inconvenience: A Life Lived for Self

If we’re honest, the resistance to children isn’t ultimately about economics, timing, or readiness. It’s about self.

Parenting demands sacrifice, and sacrifice is precisely what our comfort-driven culture can’t stand. Children require sleepless nights, long days, messy homes, and humble hearts. They stretch every inch of us emotionally, spiritually, financially. But that stretching is exactly how God forms His people into the image of Christ.

Motherhood and fatherhood are not detours from your calling; they are your calling. They are missions of eternal significance, where God uses your ordinary days to shape immortal souls.

The real tragedy is not that people have children and suffer inconvenience. It’s that many choose never to have children and miss the sanctifying, joy-filled, soul-deepening road God had for them.

The Enemy’s Strategy: Cut Off Legacy Before It Begins

Satan has no power to create life. So instead, he wages war against it. From Pharaoh’s slaughter of Hebrew infants to Herod’s massacre in Bethlehem to modern movements that reduce babies to “clumps of cells,” the attack has always been the same: silence the next generation before it speaks.

The enemy knows that children represent the future of the Church. They are the next worshipers, the next missionaries, the next intercessors, pastors, writers, and witnesses. Every little one who learns to call on the name of the Lord is a defeat to darkness.

So what better way to hinder God’s kingdom than to make childbearing look foolish, outdated, and optional?

If Satan can convince couples to delay or deny children not because of genuine hardship, but because of personal preference, he doesn’t need to strike the Church with persecution. He only needs to starve it of sons and daughters.

The Glorious Vision: Little Images of God Running Around

When we look at children with spiritual eyes, we don’t see inconvenience we see glory.

We see a generation rising up to declare the works of the Lord (Psalm 78:4). We see nations being discipled, one family at a time. We see the face of God, reflected in the tiny hands and messy faces of the least of these.

And when we see birth as a miracle, not a mistake…
When we view toddlers as blessings, not burdens…
When we believe God’s plan is better than our five-year forecasts…
Then the nursery becomes a battlefield, and every lullaby becomes a hymn of defiance against the darkness.

A Final Word to the Hesitant

If you and your spouse are “considering having children,” know that God is not indifferent. His Word is not silent. Children are not a side quest to a meaningful life. They are at the heart of God’s design for marriage, mission, and joy.

You may not feel ready. You may have real fears and struggles. But don’t let a comfort-obsessed culture rob you of the adventure God intends.

Yes, children will cost you. But what of eternal value doesn’t?

Trade in the lie of inconvenience for the truth of inheritance. Lay down the idol of self for the joy of legacy. And trust the Giver of life not just to provide children, but to walk with you every step of the way.

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