I recently came across a new blog that I am really enjoying: Unashamed Workman. One of the posts was on “‘leading’ in the context of the home as husband and father.” In it the author lists several resources which I have begun to slowly digest. One was a sermon by John Piper titled: Raising Children Who Are Confident in God. Here is a quote:
All Christian parenting and Christian education begins with God. There is One ultimate, unchanging Reality, namely, God. All else in parenting and education comes from him. All else is for him. He is the first and the last and the center of parenting and education. He is the main thing in how you rear children and teach children and discipline children. It all begins with God and it all is built on God and it all is to be shaped by God. If there is one memory that our children should have of our families and our church it is this; they should remember God. God was first. God was central. There was a passion for the supremacy of God in all things.
As I was reading the sermon it occurred to me that it’s easy for me to get fixated on new methods and ideas on parenting and lose sight of what is really important. I don’t want to imply that methodology is unimportant, but what my kids need most is not methods. What they need most is to understand that God is central and that we are called to know him deeply. God in his goodness has revealed himself to us in his word and so that means that the Bible needs to have a central role in my parenting. Not simply as a guide on “how to” parent (although it does have a few things to say about that!); but as a reminder that my sons and I are sinners and that we are in need of God’s grace every second of every day. My responsibility is to teach them the truths of God’s word and to pray that God will cause those truths to grow in their hearts. But ultimately I cannot get my kids to know God. Again Piper,
We can make ourselves teach. But we cannot make them know. Knowing is a precious thing. The kind of knowing God has in mind here is more than mere memory or raw mental awareness. Knowing is seeing into the real beauty of truth and embracing it for the treasure that it is. Parents and church cannot make that happen. We can do our best in putting God in the center and loving and praying and teaching. But in the end there is a chasm between teaching and knowing that only God can carry our children across.
I thank God that he has brought me across that chasm. I pray that he will do the same with my children.
amen to that. what a great reminder of the basis for all the “methodology”… I think watching your kids make the leap of knowing God has got to be one of the most joyful experiences of a believing parent’s life. And to know that it is an act of the Holy Spirit, and ultimately not something we can accomplish for them– which both refocuses our parenting and takes the pressure off at the same time.
I have found that it helps me to continually point Elisha to Christ and at the same time continually pray for His (and Asher) salvation. It’s fun to think of how this process will change as both of them get older (and other kids get added to the mix). It will also be fun to see how you guys do this with Cora.