Part One
What is a parent? A parent is one who not only gives birth to an offspring that takes on his own characteristics and heredity; he also becomes the father and creator of many things which that child will become. He opens the door of life to a child, but he never stops opening the door for that child to progress and to become something greater than human potentials could ever foretell.
A parent is not one who only sires a male or female child. Rather, a parent is one who gives birth to an entity whom he soon recognizes and evaluates by looking to God. Along with being a parent, the father can also be a prophet. The mother can also be a prophetess, so that she can foresee the potentials and the disciplines that will bring the child to a position where he can attain those wonderful potentials that she or the father sees.
A parent is more than a human being. A parent is a shadow of God in the earth, for a parent seems to take on certain qualities and characteristics of God. A parent labors, knowing that there may be no thanks in return—only curses, only a growing individual who wants to shake off any restraints, whether real or imaginary.
A parent is one who looks to his own beginnings and origins and says, “My life began as a small stream, but may it expand—not only in me but also in the life of those whom I bring forth in the earth. May I be faithful to bring forth the desire of God in my child and not just my own desire. May this child not be an extension of my ego, but may I somehow by the grace of God create a child who will come forth more in the image of the Heavenly Father than he comes forth in my own image.” The parent looks up to God—with the hands that reach up by faith, extended to God with the prayer of importunity, with the desperate cry of one who has revelation of a task bigger than he has the capacities to perform. God in His grace takes the parent’s hand and says, “Believe Me. And though you may feel inadequate, I will make you adequate. If you put your hand in Mine, then the hand that you reach out to your child will have My strength, My blessing upon it.”
The parent looks up and never fails to cry an anguished cry, like Hagar of old in the wilderness, when she was unable to bear the death cries of her son who was perishing. But the Heavenly Father looked down and made a provision for Ishmael, one who was born out of the will of God; yet even so, God blessed him (Genesis 21:13–21). How many a parent looks up and cries, “O God, my child perishes in the wilderness!” only to find that God says, “Whether he deserves it or not, whether there is any great momentous plan in the universe for him or not, I will still make a way in the wilderness for him. And I will establish that child because of your faith.”
A parent, often like the Syrophoenician woman, desperate and without dignity, keeps on begging for the crumbs that fall from the table and belong to the dogs (Mark 7:26–30).
The mother weeps at the foot of a cross when she sees her Son as a man of God, sent from God. She weeps for Him, but she transcends into that higher realm of not being just a natural human parent. And the voice still rings from the days past, “Who is My mother, My brother, and My sister but those who hear the Word of God and do it” (Mark 3:33–35). A parent is like that mother of old, a young girl, a virgin, who said in response to the call of God, “Be it done unto me according to Thy Word” (Luke 1:31–38). And the promise to that parent was, “That which is born of thee shall be called Immanuel, God with us” (Matthew 1:22–23).
The parent can create the environment in which the child can say, “The presence of God is here, and the Lord hath touched me.”
The parent is one who comes like Hannah of old and says, “For this child I cried to the Lord, and I interceded like a drunken woman. Now I lend him to the Lord, as long as I live. As long as he lives, he belongs to God” (I Samuel 1:9–28). The parent makes the commitment to God of that which he has brought forth and says, “With this child I will not fulfill my selfish dreams, but by this child the Lord shall be glorified.”
The act of begetting is not greater than the act of committing to God what you have begotten. The act of dedicating a little child is greater than the act of conceiving him in the first place.
A child may be born of love or hate, or he may be an unintentional outcome of his parents’ relationship. But God looks down upon that forming child in the womb; and often by the time he comes, God works in the parents’ hearts, in both the father and the mother, a growing realization that they are the begetters and the stewards of a new life.
A parent may bring forth a child in the earth; a spiritual father may bring forth sons and Timothys strong (I Corinthians 4:14–17); but always there is the sense deep within that he is a steward, put in trust of a life upon whom God has placed no limits of potential.
A child can be a miracle! The child is the visible, tangible evidence of a promise from God that has no limitation to it. God’s guarantees and protections surround him. The child has an angel who looks upon him and who also has free access to the Heavenly Father (Matthew 18:10). Somewhere, sometime, may God bring us to the level of family life where every parent shall look up and feel the beckoning motion of the angel who says, “Look higher; the Heavenly Father sees that child. And his potentials, his future, could be determined by your faith” (Matthew 9:29).
What is a parent? A parent can be nothing—or the parent can almost be every guarantee of the will of God in his child’s life. A parent is not one who just provides the food, the shelter, the clothes, and a few opportunities and the sharing of the meager wisdom that was attained in his lifetime. A parent should be one who has vision to look in the eyes of an immature, and as yet incomplete, life, and to see it with the faith for its potential. He should be one who looks up and sees the heart of the Heavenly Father and senses His promise which says to the heart of each parent, though He voiced it in a thousand promises in His Holy Book: “This one will be as great as you and I can make him. Be co-creator with Me. O Father, O mother, join Me. Let’s create a new thing in the earth—giants who will walk the land and take the Kingdom.”