Grace Blog
Parenting Children Through Hard Thoughts About God
C.J. Mahaney recently shared about some counsel he gave to a father who was concerned that his constant call to obey the Lord would produce in his child hard thoughts about God, knowing his children do not have the power to live up to God’s commands. Consider the wise counsel Mahaney provided:
* You have the privilege of introducing them to God the Father and describing the ways in which he is different from you, different from all sinful fathers, and how in any way you are like him it’s only because of grace that you reflect him. See Luke 11:11–13.
* Your honest confession of your sin to your children will protect them from having hard thoughts about you or God.
* Communicating your affection for them—and joy when you are with them—promotes both good and accurate thoughts about God.
* Initiate time with them at both planned and spontaneous times. Don’t leave them with the impression that they get most of your attention when they disobey. Let them know you are so grateful for them and love being with them as much as possible.
* Bless your children with many gifts in many forms! See Luke 11 again. Study your children in order to discern what gifts would genuinely bless them and then purpose to surprise them as often as possible.
* Requiring appropriate obedience does not promote hard thoughts about God. This only happens when we do so in self-righteousness or anger. See point 2 again.
* Frequently preach the gospel to them (and not at them). Reveal to your children just how far God has gone to show his love for sinners like us.
* My friend, if you follow the example of our gracious God, your children will not have hard thoughts about him. They will have accurate thoughts about him—and a deep love for you.
Labels: C.J. Mahaney, Cape Coral, God, Grace Baptist Church, Parenting | posted by TimBrister at 3:15 pm | Categories: Parenting/Family |
Parents who forget they are lawbreakers
This is an excellent parenting excerpt from Elyse Fitzpatrick’s latest book, Counsel from the Cross: Connecting Broken People to the Love of Christ.
“Parents who forget that they are law breakers expect their children to keep the law and to make them look good. They expect children who exhibit exemplary respect and self-discipline. Such parents are self-righteous and proud, and all too often they put confidence in themselves, their ability to obey God, and their methodology for extracting obedience from their children. They forget that the Lord didn’t save or bless them because they were law keepers but, rather, because they weren’t.
Although they may know they have failed to keep the law–loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength and their neighbor as themselves–they give their children the law (or house rules) and expect perfect compliance the first time and every time, with a happy heart. Such parents are harsh and impatient and tempted to anger when their children fail. Although they might know the law doesn’t change the heart (and is, in fact, a ministry of death [2 Cor. 3:7]), they expect the law to change the hearts of their children. They forget that they have been adopted and brought into the family, not only as those who misunderstood and slipped up from time to time, but as defiant rebels. Have parents consistently obeyed God the first time and every time, with a happy heart? Children need what parents need–the gospel. Certainly children need to learn God’s law and to have house rules to follow, but gospel-oriented parents give the law to show children their need for a Savior, not to make them obedient.”
- Elyse Fitzpatrick, Counsel from the Cross: Connecting Broken People to the love of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 159 (emphasis mine).
May God help those of us who are parents to give our children what they need, what we need–the gospel.
Labels: Counsel from the Cross, Elyse Fitzpatrick, Gospel, Gospel-Centered Parenting, Parenting | posted by TimBrister at 11:00 am | Categories: Gospel, Parenting/Family |
He’s Here - The Jesus Storybook Bible
The Jesus Storybook Bible has been a great gift to our family for our family worship. We are close to completing it for the second time, and our boys are increasingly loving their Bible with each time of learning about Jesus. Below is a video narration of the birth of Christ. I encourage you to share this with your children sometime during this advent season. You can pick up a copy at Westminster Bookstore for just $11 and change.
Labels: Advent, Jesus, Sally Lloyd-Jones, The Jesus Storybook Bible | posted by TimBrister at 12:17 pm | Categories: Advent, Jesus, Parenting/Family |
Spankings don’t save anybody - the Gospel does!
Let this little video expert be a sober reminder and daily challenge to shepherd our children’s hearts with the gospel, not just discipline them with the hand.
HT: Jared Kennedy (Sojourn Kids)
Labels: Discipline, Gospel-Centered Parenting, Parenting | posted by TimBrister at 3:38 pm | Categories: Gospel, Parenting/Family |
Parents, Give Up Your Independence
Tim Keller, in his excellent book The Reason for God, speaks of the significance of sacrificing parental independence that children who are dependent might know the freedom you enjoy. He writes:
“Children come into the world in a condition of complete dependence. They cannot operate as self-sufficient, independent agents unless their parents give up much of their own independence and freedom for years. If you don’t allow your children to hinder your freedom in work and play at all, and if you only get to your children when it doesn’t inconvenience you, your children will group up physically only. In all sorts of other ways they will remain emotionally needy, troubled, and overdependent. The choice is clear. You can either sacrifice your freedom or theirs. It’s them or you. To love your children well, you must decrease that they may increase. You must be willing to enter into the dependency they have so eventually they can experience the freedom and independence you have (194).”
Labels: Parenting, The Reason for God, Tim Keller | posted by TimBrister at 5:38 am | Categories: Parenting/Family |
Taking Charge of the Television
Randy Alcorn tackles the question of how parents should handle the television when kids are out of school. Parents in many ways are gate-keepers to their children and exercise wisdom in skillfully navigating the treacherous waters of a toxic culture whose principle medium is that of the television. Alcorn offers the following 14 suggestions for “taking charge of the t.v.”:
Labels: Parenting, Shepherding Your Children's Hearts, Television | posted by TimBrister at 9:46 am | Categories: Parenting/Family, Resources |
Prayers We Parents Rarely Pray
Here is an important little blogpost from Doug Wolter from the blog Life2gether about the importance of humble submission and self-control in parenting.
Wolter writes:
We’ve all been there before as parents. Your child has been told what to do and doesn’t do it. You’re tired and irritated. You have no patience left in your parenting tank. And so, you yell at your child (and perhaps even discipline your child) in anger and frustration. But what good does it do? Even though you took charge of the situation, your heart feels empty and frustrated and so does your child’s.
Let’s rewind the tape. Your child has been told what to do and doesn’t do it. Instead of reacting in anger, you acknowledge the fact that you are tired and lacking in patience. So before speaking to your child, you speak first to God. Just a simple prayer asking Him something like,
“Father, I need your help right now. I need your Spirit to give me patience and wisdom to talk with my child. I can’t do it on my own. I need you and my child needs you. Without you, Jesus, I can do nothing. So be with me now as I go. Open up my heart and my child’s heart to you.”
With a simple prayer such as this one, we take our parenting out of our hands and put it into God’s hands. We admit we cannot parent on our own. And so we pray a simple prayer of dependence … a simple prayer of reliance … a simple prayer of surrender.
This is the prayer we parents rarely pray. But I wonder how it would change us, and I wonder how it would change our families.
Labels: Parenting | posted by TimBrister at 6:42 am | Categories: Parenting/Family |
The Greatest Hindrance to Cultivating Community
Over at the Desiring God blog, Paul Tripp was asked the question: What is the greatest hindrance to cultivating community in the American church? Here’s a portion of his answer . . . (emphasis mine)
The first thing that comes to mind is frenetic western-culture busyness.
I read a book on stress a few years back, and the author made a side comment that I thought was so insightful. He said that the highest value of materialistic western culture is not possessing. It’s actually acquiring.
If you’re a go-getter you never stop. And so the guy who is lavishly successful doesn’t quit, because there are greater levels of success. “My house could be bigger, I could drive better cars, I could have more power, I could have more money.”
And so we’ve bought an unbiblical definition of the good life of success. Our kids have to be skilled at three sports and play four musical instruments, and our house has to be lavish by whatever standard. And all of that stuff is eating time, eating energy, eating money. And it doesn’t promote community.
I think often that even the programs of a local church are too sectored and too busy. As if we’re trying to program godliness. And so the family is actually never together because they’re all in demographic groupings. Where do we have time where we are pursuing relationships with one another, living with one another, praying with one another, talking with one another?
I’ve talked to a lot of families who literally think it’s a victory to have 3 or 4 meals all together with one another in a week, because they’re so busy. Well, if in that family unit they’re not experiencing community, there’s no hope of them experiencing it outside of that family unit.
We have families that will show up at our church on Sunday morning with the boys dressed in their little league outfits, and I know what’s going to happen. They’re going to leave the service early. Now what a value message to that little boy! Do I think little league is bad? I don’t think it’s bad at all. I think it’s great. But they’re telling him what’s important as they do that.
You can’t fit God’s dream (if I can use that language) for his church inside of the American dream and have it work. It’s a radically different lifestyle. It just won’t squeeze into the available spaces of the time and energy that’s left over.
Labels: Busyness, Community, Simple Life | posted by TimBrister at 11:46 am | Categories: Community, Parenting/Family |
Personal and Family Devotions for Little Children
With a 15 month-old boy and another one due in five weeks, I appreciate the words of John Piper as he explains how the Piper household developed personal and family devotions for little children. With a full stomach and a good night’s rest, Piper explains what happens at their breakfast table with young infants:
And at that moment Daddy gets out a big book. And he reads from it, a paragraph maybe. This little child doesn’t understand anything I’m saying. He’s six months old, or nine months, or a year.
He doesn’t understand anything I’m saying, but he’s learning big time what is going on here: he’s watching daddy take leadership; he’s noticing a book; he’s hearing reading; he’s watching them pray afterwards; and he’s learning massively important things before he understands a word that is going on here.
So he is included in family devotions. He is being trained in devoting himself to God through his word.
Go here to read or listen to the entire piece by Piper. Good, practical advice on cultivating godly habits in little children.
Labels: Family Devotion, Family Worship, John Piper, Parenting | posted by TimBrister at 8:31 am | Categories: Parenting/Family, Resources |
Get Outta My Face - Book About Teens and the Gospel
One of the goals we seek to continue to provide on our blog is an ongoing list of resources to help you in your various roles and relationships in life as a follower of Christ, father, mother, minister, missionary, etc. In all these various aspects of life, it is our desire for Christ to be honored and glorified in all we say and do.
Perhaps one of the most difficult times for parents is the teenage years of their children. Having said that, there is a new book release that I would like to make you aware of. It is entitled Get Outta My Face: How to Reach Angry, Unmotivated Teens with Biblical Counsel by Rick Horne. Horne has years of experience turning around the lives of troubled teens with the gospel. You can get this book for a limited time for the introductory price of just $4.88 (65% off the list price). Be sure to check it out.
For a preview, download the table of contents or chapter one of the book (PDFs).
Here are a some blurbs by a few authors you may be familiar with:
“Rick Horne has invested in teens his whole life. He has learned that he is more like them than unlike them. From years of first hand experience, he knows how to talk with them and his is not afraid of the tough ones. What you will read here is the wisdom of a man who has experienced the courage and hope that transforming grace can give to you and that hard teenager God has chosen for you to be near. This book is a call to action with biblical perspectives and practical steps that God can use to change the teenager and you as well.” - Paul David Tripp
says: “Rick Horne knows teens the kind that won’t talk and those that won’t stop talking. If you have a teenager, you need this book. In fact, don’t wait for the teen years! Arm yourself now with the timeless truths from this book that counsels moms and dads with gospel-hope for teenage trials.” - Dave Harvey, author of When Sinners Say “I Do”
Labels: Get Outta My Face, Parenting, Teenagers | posted by TimBrister at 8:56 am | Categories: Books, Parenting/Family |
Getty Worship for the Kids
SojournKids, the children’s ministry of Sojourn Church in Louisville, KY recently plugged the worship CD by Keith and Kristyn Getty geared specifically for kids. The album is entitled “Songs that Jesus Said” and you can listen go the songs online as well as view accompaniment and song sheets. According to SojournKids, “The Gettys plan a series of albums, which will incorporate key bible passages and stories into infectious new songs–that give children the big picture of the Bible.” If you are a parent looking for some worship music for your children that is solid in truth tailored for their ages, be sure to check out the Getty’s series of children albums.
Those of you perhaps unfamiliar to the Getty’s might be familiar with other songs they have written and composed, including “In Christ Alone” and “O Church Arise.”
Labels: Children Ministry, Keith and Kristyn Getty, Worship | posted by TimBrister at 4:01 pm | Categories: Parenting/Family, Resources, Worship |
Three Main Steps to Starting Family Worship
My friend and fellow blogger, James Grant, has written a helpful article wherein he provides three simple steps to starting family worship. His three steps are:
1. Plan to have family worship after an evening meal
2. Read through a good book
3. Say the Lord’s prayer after reading the book
James breaks down each of these points in further detail, so I encourage you to read the whole thing as he also points you to some helpful resources as well.
Labels: Family Worship, Resources | posted by TimBrister at 6:31 am | Categories: Parenting/Family, Resources |
Barnabas Piper on His Parent’s 40th Anniversary
On the 40th anniversary of his parents, John and Noel Piper, Barnabas Piper shares 22 things he admires about his parents. I encourage you to read his list, some of which includes:
2. The open door policy. Anyone can visit any time.
4. Their availability at any time, particularly times of need or crisis.
6. That they were excited to expand our family by adopting when they were 50 or close to it.
15. That they taught me to enjoy going to church.
17. Including visitors in family devotions.
22. That I learned to pray from listening to countless prayers from both of them.
Labels: Barnabas Piper, John Piper, Noel Piper, Parenting | posted by TimBrister at 12:54 pm | Categories: Parenting/Family |
Theology for Kids: Recommended Resources
In the December 2008 edition of Themelios e-journal, Andy and Jennifer Naselli provide 10 helpful annotated theology resources for children. Before they offer their brief reviews, they provide these helpful words:
Many people have an opportunity to teach children about God, including parents, grandparents, older siblings, babysitters, and Sunday school teachers. Teaching theology to children is a joyful yet sober responsibility that many seem to take lightly. It is not as easy as one may suspect. It is challenging to communicate truth about God and his creation to children in an accurate and easily understandable way.
1. Communicating accurately requires a grasp of the Bible’s storyline and how all the little stories contribute to the one big story. It requires a sound biblical hermeneutic that does not promote the trivial, extrapolate illegitimately, read between the lines, miss important nuances, or focus on people rather than God.
2. Communicating in an easily understandable way requires clarity, conciseness, imagination, creativity, excitement, and appropriateness (e.g., in word choices, length of teaching, level of detail, and means of conveying spiritual truth).
This is hard work. Thankfully, some fine theology books for children are available. (And they are edifying for adults, too!) Without pretending to be experts on theological children’s literature, we have sorted through recent theology books for younger children and compiled a short list of outstanding books. Other books are undoubtedly worthy of mention, but these are our favorites. What follows organizes them in three categories and ranks the books in order, beginning with our top recommendations.
You can read all their reviews here.
Labels: Books, Children, Resources, Themelios, Theology | posted by TimBrister at 3:49 pm | Categories: Parenting/Family, Resources |
Parenting and End Times
Russell Moore has written a helpful article called “The Eschatology of Parenting” wherein he explains the correlation of disciplining your children with the judgment of God and reality of hell. Here’s an excerpt:
When we think of Christian eschatology, we tend to think first of prophecy charts or apocalyptic novels, but nothing is more eschatological than parenting.
A parent disciplining a child, for instance, communicates to the child the discipline and judgment of God in ways deeper and more resonant than any Sunday school lesson (Heb 12:5-11). A parent who will not discipline a child for disobedience, or who is inconsistent in doing so, is teaching that child not to expect consequences for behavior.
In short, a parent who will not discipline is denying the doctrine of hell.
You can read the entire article by going here.
Labels: Family, Parenting | posted by TimBrister at 7:29 am | Categories: Parenting/Family |
