Well, if you heard the very special annoucement yesterday, you know by now that my wife and I are expecting our third little baby. We are over the moon excited to bring another child into our family Lord willing in September. Our other two children are excited too, especially our daughter who is hoping for a sister this time around. I feel like such a blessed man, and thank you all for your prayers. Well...our children are not our own, they belong to God. He formed and fashioned them, and they are entrusted to our care for a short period of time. The question is this: what will we do with that short time we are given?
#SetYourMindAbovePodcast
Well, if you heard the very special annoucement yesterday, you know by now that my wife and I are expecting our third little baby. We are over the moon excited to bring another child into our family Lord willing in September. Our other two children are excited too, especially our daughter who is hoping for a sister this time around. I feel like such a blessed man, and thank you all for your prayers. Well...our children are not our own, they belong to God. He formed and fashioned them, and they are entrusted to our care for a short period of time. The question is this: what will we do with that short time we are given?
#SetYourMindAbovePodcast
Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Set Your Mind Above Podcast! I’m your host BJ Sipe – I’m a Christian, a preacher, a husband, and a father. In this podcast we take everyday, ordinary events and explore how they can teach us extraordinary, eternal truths. I’m so glad that you joined me for this episode. Now, let’s open up our minds, our hearts, and our Bible’s together.
Well, we made the announcement last night, my wife and I are expecting our third little baby – and we could not be happier! We want to thank you all for the many kind wishes and prayers on our behalf that we have already received from so many of you. If you missed the special announcement I made on the podcast yesterday, I explained how Kylie has been so sick again with this pregnancy, and that is why the episodes have been a little sporadic as of late as I’m pulling double duty for a short while. Now that you have some context, I want to continue to thank you for your patience and understanding as I will do my best to keep consistency with our episodes. But, back to the good stuff. Kylie is due in late September, so we are still in the first trimester at this point – but with our two kids and how badly I keep a secret, we knew we just needed to go ahead and announce it sooner than later. We have the sweetest video of when we told our other two children a month back. Ava is 3 ½ so she has a perfectly good grasp on what’s going on, Dane isn’t quite there, he just knows there is a baby in Mommy’s belly and he’s not happy that mommy has been so sick. Anyways, when we told the kids Ava leapt into Kylie’s arms with excitement – I will forever cherish that moment. She has been going on and on about how she wants the baby to sleep in her room, how she’s going to feed it and rock it and take care of it. It’s so precious, one day she is going to make a great little mamma to kids of her own. The funniest part has been asking the kids if they want a baby brother or a baby sister. Ava is dead set on wanting a sister, and we keep asking her if she’ll still be happy if it’s another brother to which she replies, “No, I’ll just ask God for a sister.” He can’t verbalize it, but I’m sure Dane would love a brother to throw a ball and be rough with in the future. Of course, as for Kylie and me we really don’t have a preference. We have just continued to pray for a healthy pregnancy, a healthy child, and for God to give us wisdom as parents as we welcome another one into our family and into the world. Going from two to three is a big deal, that means we go from playing man-to-man defense to having to play zone defense. We will officially be outnumbered. Well, if we’re being honest, Kylie’s been outnumbered this whole time because I’m really just a big kid – now she’s really going to be outnumbered. The last month has been a blur because of all the craziness, but in the slow moments I just find myself sitting and thinking about what this beautiful little baby is going to be like. What will he or she look like the first time I lay my eyes on them? How will the kids respond the first time they see the baby? I keep thinking about how big my heart will swell just to sit and watch my wife rock it back and forth. That song that Desi Arnaz sings in the I Love Lucy Show keeps coming to mind, “We’re gonna have a baby, my baby & me.” Having children is one of the greatest joys that can ever be known in this life, and I feel like the most blessed man in the whole world to be married to the woman I am and to the have the children that we do. I’m not a perfect father by any means, in fact some days I really miss the mark. But I pray that God is patient with me and gives me wisdom, strength, and above all love in the coming days as I take on the role of being a father to yet another precious little baby.
As I have reflected on how much our lives are going to change once again in this year, the idea of becoming a father again has reminded me of an extraordinarily important truth that I wanted to share with you tonight: and that is that our children are not our own. Our children belong to God. You see, the two children that we already have and this third child that we are now expecting are very simply being placed in our temporary care. Yes they are my children, but they were God’s first. Consider Psalm 139:13-16, which reads, “For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well. My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.” How many times have you parents out there stepped back while looking at your children and said to your spouse with awe struck amazement, “We made that!” Well…sort of. It was not I or my wife that breathe the breath of life into our children, or combine body with spirit, that belongs to the Lord. God is the creator of all life, as he has been from the very beginning before any man or woman ever existed. It is God who designed the body to grow and develop as it does in his infinite wisdom. Just like I belong to God as his child, so also do my children. Just like I was given to my parents for a short while, so also my children have been entrusted to me from the Lord – but only for a short while. The question that we are left with this this: what kind of steward will I be with my children? What will I do with that short while that I have them in my care? Well, if my children truly belong to God, then my first and foremost priority is to teach my children about their true Father. Ephesians 6:4 resonates in my heart, for it says, “Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” I say a prayer every single day for my children, and there are a lot of things that I pray for. I pray that they might be healthy, I pray that they will obey their mother and develop critical skills, all that stuff. But the very first thing I always pray for is this: “Lord, help me to teach my children how to love you and love others.” The older my children get, and the more children we continue to have, the more I see that my greatest desire as a parent is that one day my faith will become their very own faith too. All else is secondary. It doesn’t matter if my children go on to make a ton of money as they become adults. It doesn’t matter if they are the most educated, or have tremendous talents, or are exceptionally attractive people. There is only one thing that matters: that they love God, and that the love people. That they grow to become true children of God themselves, and as such go on to their own places and in their own ways make an impact for the Kingdom. Oh God…help me to instill such a heart into these wonderful children that you have entrusted to me. And may I one day be able to echo the words of the apostle John in his third letter, “I have no greater joy than this: to hear that my children are walking in truth.”
Thank you for tuning in to today’s episode, and I would invite you back Tuesdays-Fridays for a brand-new episode each day. If you haven’t already, be sure to find us on Facebook for occasional announcements and special video sessions. If you have benefited from this podcast, please if you’re able be sure to share it with someone else that you think could benefit from it as well. Until next time, know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each & every day set our minds above.