Elsewhere in your letter, you admit that one reason this hasn’t bothered you before is because neither of you has taken your faith very seriously. Is God perhaps using your new daughter to remind you of your need for Him—not just for her sake, but for yours as well? I suspect so.

In other words, our faith shouldn’t be something we just keep on the shelf (so to speak) until we face a crisis, when we take it down and dust it off and hope it might do us some good. If that’s all God means to us, then something is missing, and we ought to face up to it and remedy the situation. After all, if God means very little to you, can you honestly expect Him to mean very much to your daughter as she grows older?

This is why I challenge you first of all to open your own hearts to Christ and make Him the foundation of your lives and your family. God loves you; He loves you so much that His Son was willing to give His life for you. Respond to His love today by confessing your sins to God (including your sin of ignoring Him), and then asking Christ to come into your lives.

Then ask God to lead you to a church where His Word is taught and lived. This may be a church you came from, or it may not; don’t be bound by the past. The most important thing is your spiritual unity as a family, so you may “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).