If we ask any Christian parent what they most desire for their children, the answer will likely be: “That they be saved.” However, the reality for most today, across all denominations, is that a large number of children have drifted away from God. What's going wrong? Is this a generation simply not predestined for salvation? Or is there something wrong with us, and with our efforts to save them?

A few years ago, a little bird taught me a great lesson about this. Since we live in the countryside, rats occasionally appear around our property. We were at war with a rat on our porch. We had tried several types of mousetraps without success, so we decided to use a glue trap. We put bait in the middle of the trap and went to sleep, hoping to catch the rat overnight. The next morning, however, what we found was a little bird stuck to the trap. It couldn't move, but we could see the desperation in its tiny eyes.

I was very frustrated by what I had caused and decided to save it. The damage to its tiny body was extensive, as the glue was strong, and its entire chest and wings were stuck together from its many attempts to escape.

With great effort, I managed to separate it from the paper, and now I needed to remove the glue from its body. I started cutting the downy feathers from its chest and several feathers from its wings that were very stuck. Then, thinking about what to do, I remembered that sometimes we used cooking oil to remove jackfruit sap from knives and other utensils. I applied oil to the bird's wings, but I was only able to remove very little.

So I decided to look on Google and discovered that others who had gone through the same experience had rubbed wheat flour on the wings until the glue came off. The problem was that I had already applied the oil, so when I added the flour, the poor bird became completely “breaded” and it didn't work out very well.

I was growing increasingly frustrated with my attempts, but I finally managed to clean it enough and set up a cage where we usually kept injured birds that appeared in the yard. I put in food and water and thought about leaving it there until its feathers grew back and I could release it.

When I picked it up to take it to the cage, it escaped from my hands and started hopping on the floor. I ran after it to catch it, and without thinking, I pulled the poor little thing by its tail, but the only thing I got were the tail feathers, and the bird kept hopping, now without a tail. My frustration grew with each new attempt to save it. Now I had a bird without a tail, still somewhat smeared with glue, oil, and flour.

I finally managed to catch it and put it in the cage, imagining that I would now have to keep it there for a long time until all its tail feathers grew back. I felt more at ease and went to do my housework, as I had already lost almost two hours on that ordeal.

A few hours passed, and my daughter kept going to the cage to check on the bird. One of those times, she came running, screaming and calling for me. I rushed over, and what I saw horrified me. The poor bird had tried to drink water from the dish, and because it had no tail, it lost its balance, fell into the water, and drowned.

I was extremely frustrated and upset, and I even cried for having caused so much suffering to the little creature. A completely healthy bird died an absurd death, simply because of my clumsy attempts to save it. Why didn't I go straight to the method that would have saved it?

You must be laughing at this story, just as most people do when they hear me tell it. However, it is very sad, as it reveals that our best efforts to try and save someone can actually be leading them to their death.

As parents, we often decide that we will do our best to save our children, so we enroll them in the best schools, attend churches that offer the most activities: Pathfinders, choir, orchestra, etc. We adopt criteria for choosing the movies they watch, the music they listen to, and the activities they participate in, based on what our most Christian friends are doing. We join various WhatsApp groups to see how others are raising their children and even participate in family seminars. But as time passes, we see our children growing up and increasingly distancing themselves from us and from God. Why?

Perhaps there are different reasons for this, but I fear that we often fail to seek “Thus says the Lord” and to believe that the God who created humanity also gave us the manual that teaches us the path to salvation. We have failed to maintain the communion that would allow His Spirit to guide us personally. We prefer to rely on what others say or have done, instead of listening to His personalized teachings for us and our children.

As a postmodern generation, we feel there's no need to return to the fundamentals of child-rearing found in the Bible and in God-inspired counsel. We consider YouTube psychologists to be much more up-to-date and to speak our language better, and sometimes we even feel that they must have already read God's counsel, because they give such wonderful advice! However, we ourselves don't want to study directly from the source.

My heart sinks every time I speak to parents at churches or Family Camps and see very few hands go up when I ask how many have read books like Education and Child Guidance. It worries me to see parents so eager to follow the best educational methodologies the world offers, but not so eager to study God's educational plan. It worries me to see parents so busy participating in countless WhatsApp groups about child-rearing, yet without time to even pay attention to their own children.

Often, we identify with families who seem to be achieving success, and this feeds us. We feel we are better than others simply because we follow their lifestyle, read the same books, and participate in the same groups. But when we face difficulties, we feel miserable because we lack our own foundation to know what to do.

All these activities can be positive, but they only add to our experience when we first seek God and are grounded in His Word. Without first learning from God, these tools will be as flawed as my attempts to save the little bird.

God desires that we seek Him individually. That daily, we may be so close to Him that we can feel Him by our side, strengthening us and showing us what to do, because in this process of seeking Him to save our children, we will be working out our own salvation (Phil 2:12).

And how can we do this? First, by seeking knowledge in His Word on how to raise our children. Then, by crying out to Him to help us put His teachings into practice. This will not guarantee complete success, because the enemy is constantly around us like a lion, seeking ways to attack our children. So, when difficulties arise, we need to ask God for help, and let Him be our 'very present help in trouble' Ps 46:1. And when things seem beyond our control, we need to intercede for our children, and do everything in our power to save them, even if they are already adults and no longer under our roof. I have had the joy of seeing elderly parents doing this for their adult children who are already parents themselves, and having the pleasure of beginning to reap the results, not only with their children but also with their grandchildren through their influence and persistent work.

God's plans for raising our children are not outdated; they are the best and the only ones that can lead them to salvation. We need to know and study them personally. We need to live them out in our lives, and by doing so, we will be a living testimony that will speak louder to our children than all the sermons we could preach to them.

This has been the calling of Project Restore – to lead families to seek God's counsel for themselves, to know it deeply so that when trials come, they can remain firm in His word.

Rute Bazan

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