pc12 My Baby Died

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pc12 My Baby Died is a consoling tract when a parent’s child dies, and how the parent must handle this reality.

“My Baby Died”
Handling the Death of your Child
By David Cox

[pc12] v1.1 ©2008 www.coxtracts.com
This tract can be freely copied and reproduced
for non-profit purposes.

It is always difficult when somebody loses a child, especial a small child. It is necessary to remember some truths when this happens. Above all, we have to remember that life and death are in the hands of God alone, and nobody takes life, nor defends against death unless God allows it. In the matter of death, nobody dies “as a surprise to God.” God has planned each person’s entrance and exit in this world (which is His job), and nothing can change that except intercession with God on a case by case basis.

The man that lost all his kids

Job 1:18 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: 19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. 22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

First of all, Job had a correct perspective, and his attitude was something that pleased God greatly. In seeking how to accept or react to the loss of a child, Job is a great example. Job teaches us that we are God’s creatures, and we had nothing when we entered this world. Even this very life we enjoy is on loan to us from God. Most of the people undervalue what they have until they lose it. In the case of a parent that loses their child, they must accept facts. The pain, the anguish, and the confusion seen more than what one can bear. But really, Job guides us to what pleases God. Job recognized God as the owner of his life, and that of his family. God gives, and God can take away, and He does take away all the time. All this is well within the power, right, and authority (and duty) of God to do.

We must accept what God does in our lives. Job never knew the “why” of all the evil that befell him, but he always trusted God, and never lost that confidence in his God, that God knows what He is doing, and whatever God decides to do in his life, God’s judgment is greater and better than our own handling of our lives. His confidence was in God’s impeccability (not being able to do moral wrong). Moreover, we see in all the greatly cherished things that Job lost, Job insisted on thanking God for everything, including the loss of his children. Victory comes in having so much faith in God, in truly believing that God knows what is best for my life and what is best in the plan and purposes of God, that anything that happens, one accepts as a great blessing and work of God, even if it hurts at the moment. Most people deny the power, authority, control, and wisdom of God over their lives. They think that they themselves are in control of their own life. When something happens, especially the death of a child by sickness, God shows them how incapable and powerless they are to stop death. The correct response should be reverence and fear of the Lord in their hearts, but instead of truly trusting God with all their heart, they attack, and curse God as Job’s wife offered him, and Job refused.

Job 1:22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

The phrase “charge God foolishly” means attribute or charge God with something empty, vain, or frivolous (purposeless). The idea is that all that passes in our lives is staged and planned, detail by detail to fulfill the purposes of God. Nothing passes without God being in it. Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. The biblical trust in God is that when you put your faith and confidence in Jesus Christ, that God will take care of and protect you, and even when supposedly “bad” things enter your life, you well know and trust that these are part of the plan of God. This will of God that guides us into and walking through His will is greater than one himself and has a breadth from eternity past to eternity future. Realizing this, we are small, and tiny before such a God, we are really of little consequence in all this, but through faith and trust in the Savior, we enter into and become part of these divine plans. We often are left like Job, we do not know the particulars of why something “bad” has happened in our life (like damaging and hurtful events, sickness, and even death), but as a child of our loving heavenly Father, we trust where we cannot see nor understand. The will of God overwhelms us, and we have to accept what God does as right and just, no matter what it is.

The Judgment of God on Sin

In the case of Job, we see Job was just and fair, perfect before God, and because of his personal justice and godly life, God desired that these events happen to him. They were not because of Job’s sins. But in the case of King David and his loss, and this WAS a direct result of sin in his own life. We have to insist that nobody, outside of that particular person (and many times even the suffering person doesn’t know), that nobody knows whether the loss of a child is a judgment of personal sin or not, or a trial like Job’s. We see Job’s friends trying hopelessly to convict him of some hidden, unresolved sin in his own life, and God shows us their error.

2 Samuel 11:27 And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD. 12:14 Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.

If we study what happened to David, we see that David prayed, fasted, and set aside his normal life to attend to his son’s situation (sickness), while he pleaded with God for his life. The strange part of this is that when the child died, David stopped all this intercession and ate. David understood Hebrews 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:  God had put an end to the possibility of changing the destiny of a person in the event of death. After death, nobody can change his destiny, and it is eternally “set” or is made permanent. We must accept what has happened.

From passages like Matthew 22:24-30; Luke 20:34-36, (Mark 12:25 For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.) we understand that our earthly relationships of family are dissolved in eternity. In life, we are responsible as parents, as children, as brothers and sisters, and as husbands or wives, but passing the door of death, these relationships dissolve, and we all become “children of God.” Earthly family relationships are changed and absorbed into our relationship with God. Surely, we will recognize our relatives on the other side, but the obligations are not there anymore.

In Romans 7:2 (For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.) that God dissolves our family relationships in death. David did what he could for his child as a responsible parent, but in the end, his actions and sin without repentance was what caused the actual death of his son. Every parent that losses a child questions if this happened to him or her because of the parent’s unrepentant sin. Only the parent and God will know if this is the case. But if so, they will always end up like David, because of his own unrepentant heart, these things happened to him. But God calls us to accounting through these brutal events. If this is why the child died, it is better to repent and make things right with God, and seek God with all your heart, especially while the child is sick, and before death.

The man from whom God desired his son

We know from Psalm 127:3 that children are “a heritage of the Lord.” “The fruit of the womb is his reward.” A reward and a heritage are things of value that a person receives freely. The idea is totally biblical that God “visits” a couple to give them the gift of a child. Children are an investment that God makes with a couple, because they have invested their lives in their children, and God’s plan is that the parents guide and direct them into adulthood.

Genesis 22:2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

In Abraham’s case, God promised them a son by Sarah. When they received Isaac, it was a gift of God. But God always requires that parents understand their children as “on loan” to them from God, and not a sole possession of their own. So, God asked Abraham to return his son as a sacrifice back to God, who is the owner and giver (“loaner”). God is not pleased with human sacrifices, but the issue here is Abraham’s recognition of “who owns his son”. God cursed the abomination of child sacrifice (Moloch) in the Old Testament, so this was not God’s thinking here. God wanted ownership to be recognized as an issue. Also, the parent’s pain of the loss of his son is what God wanted Abraham to understand, and God returns to this in the death of his Son on the cross. Equally today, God calls upon some parents to come to this same quandary, who “owns” their child, God or the parents? Is your devotion to God such that you can accept anything that God brings into your life?

Where is my child now?

This question always comes up, especially when a small child dies. First, the Bible does not clearly say. Nobody enters heaven without having faith in Jesus Christ. This is the only way a person can enter heaven. But on the other side, God is a God full of mercy and grace, and we do not know if God does special things when a person is so far from understanding or being able to understand the gospel. Every parent should try to win their children to the Lord and protect their life at all costs until they are old enough to understand and accept Christ. They do their part as parents, and trust in God for the rest.

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