What if God Wants You to Have 10 Children?

“What?” you reply? “What difference does it make to God how many children we have? Isn’t that totally up to us to decide?”

Well, let’s consider that question for a minute.

If we are a true “followers” of the Lord Jesus Christ, He is to be the Lord over every area of our lives. He is to lead us where to live, what schools to attend, and what church fellowship to be part of. He is to lead us whom to marry and what to do for a career.

But how about leading us as to the number of children we should have? Is that unimportant? “Of course, it’s important,” you reply. “But He gives us wisdom to make decisions like that based on our income, the size of our home, our career plans, etc.”

Hmm. Then why does God command Adam and Eve and Noah and his wife and sons to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”? Why does He tell us this in Psalm 127:

“Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him.  Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.” (Psalm 127:3-5) (Note: a typical quiver holds 25-30 arrows!)

But we’ve been told the earth is already overpopulated with people, and we need to quit having so many babies. Shooting straight, that is a crock. Reality is that we are now hearing how the world is facing a huge crisis of insufficient numbers of babies born to provide care for the growing elderly population. It takes 2.1 babies per female just to break even and provide “Zero Population Growth.” We have been below that number in America since 1975! America’s population has only grown slightly since then due to immigration. China had a “one child per family” policy until they woke up to their growing crisis and now are trying to convince families to have 3 children each. It isn’t working! Let’s face it, bearing and raising children is expensive and a lot of hard work! “Let someone else do the heavy lifting!”

But of all people, we Christians should be open to having lots of children because we know that each child is uniquely fashioned by God (see Psalm 139:13-15), is created in the very image of God Himself and, therefore, has the potential of impacting this world in a huge way and then to live forever in God’s eternal Kingdom! Children are not mere biological creations: they are eternal spiritual creations and are infinitely valuable! So the more the merrier!

So much more can be said. Check out our ​​book “Sweeter by the Dozen: Making Jesus the Lord of Our Family Size.” Or our little booklet “Missing Our Children” that summarizes this area that you can read for free here.