What the Gospel Demands of Parents

1. Walk in Humility

- Say you're sorry – Kids have a sense of justice at an early age. They know when you have wronged them. They know when you have overstepped and overreached.

Phillipians 2:5-8 – Christ modeled humility for us. He was God but did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage, but humbled Himself. If God can do that for us, we can lead our families in humility.

“The key to the family functioning as a redemptive community, where the Gospel is the glue that holds the family together, is parents who so trust in Christ, that they are ready and willing to confess their faults to their children.” -Paul David Tripp

If you want your kids to understand the gospel, model humility.

2. Live in Transparency

- Be the same person at home and at church. One of the greatest things we can do as parents is not be a perfect parent but point to a perfect savior. The greatest example you can give your kids is a genuine faith filled relationship with Christ, in which you not only teach them the truth of the gospel, but they see you walk out the very things the gospel demands of us.

3. Suffer Publicly

- What do you do when you lose that which is most precious to you? How you suffer will preach a more powerful message to your kids about what it is you value most than any message you could preach to them.

“I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.” Philippians 1:12

We have bought into the lie that God is interested in our happiness and our success. He isn’t. He’s interested in our obedience. We can fake our faith to those outside our homes, but it's our kids who see us suffer in private and it’s the things that we lose that cause pain and the things we turn to in our pain that teach our kids. Those are the things we find more valuable than anything.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” -C.S. Lewis

4. Trust Jesus Completely

- Don’t try and engineer your child’s future. As a parent, your children and your family can become an idol. Idols are not just bad things; Tim Keller explains this clearly by saying that “idols can be good things (which) we make ultimate things.” We try to live out our dreams through our kids. We try to engineer our children’s future. We do everything to ensure that they are on the travel team, starring in the school play, etc. We try to create a perfect well-rounded kid that will be accepted by a “good college”  and give little thought to what we should be doing so that they are accepted by God. It’s a partnership of the church and the family. Our success as a parent is based on our connectedness to Christ, “apart from which we can do nothing.”

John 15:4-8
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”