Because transformation happens progressively, and often slowly, we have to be committed to long-view parenting.
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, that aims to equip you and your family to be on mission with God, to the end of the street and the ends of the earth.
Andy Owens
Welcome back. I’m Andy Owens, pastor of family discipleship here at Providence. And today I’m joined by John Erwin, our executive pastor. John, welcome.
John Erwin
Thanks, Andy.
Andy
Glad to have you here today. Today, we’re talking about chapter six of Paul Tripp’s book “Parenting,” and the title is “Processed,” but before we dive in, John, I wanted to just ask you, how did you become the person you are today?
John
Okay. Well, it’s really just an amazing story. A miracle almost if you will. So for over half of my life, I was just a childish mess. Really far from God. And then about 20 years ago, I woke up one morning, I felt different, I looked different, and I quickly realized that overnight God had just transformed me into the well-mannered, handsome, God-fearing, fully sanctified person I am today. It was just an amazing miracle.
Andy
You are 100% serious right now. And there’s no verbal irony in anything you’ve said.
John
Yeah. I mean, everybody can see that that’s a joke.
Andy
People don’t change that way.
John
Yeah. And yet, as parents, we’ll see today that that’s often what we expect from our children.
Andy
That’s right.
John
So in reality, I’m here today by process. Not one event, not a series of events, but just countless moments in the home growing up that I was in and even outside the home, experiences, failures, all of that comes together. God uses all of that by his grace to sanctify us.
Andy
Yeah, that’s good. That’s really Paul Tripp’s main point here, right? He says, we’ve got to be committed to long view parenting. You’ve got to take the long view. You’ve got to recognize people don’t change in a moment. People don’t change in a connected series of moments or a few significant moments. They change in literally countless moments and experiences and opportunities for training and failure and repentance.
John
And we know that’s true. I just don’t know why we can’t remember it in parenting.
Andy
Why it doesn’t affect our parenting. That’s right. So wrong expectations in this area, Paul Tripp, he always talks about expectations a lot, but wrong expectations here can be, it can really set us up for failure, right? We can quickly get frustrated, discouraged if we expect, for some reason that our kids should change really quickly. Or we should say things once or twice, and then they get it. We should never have to say the same thing again. Then it’s going to lead to a sense of frustration. So let’s start by talking about this question. How does the gospel, the good news of Jesus, provide the model of what change looks like?
John
Yeah, that’s good. I think when we repent and trust Christ, he really, I mean, he justifies us. He makes us righteous immediately. We’re fully accepted at that point. We’re unconditionally loved at that point. And yet we’re far from perfect. We didn’t merit it. We didn’t earn it. It was a gift from him. We’ve been adopted into his family, but now like a potter and clay, by his grace and the power of his spirit, he starts to shape us. And the Bible calls that sanctification.
Andy
That’s right.
John
I love Philippians 1:6, where Paul says to the church of Philippi. He says, “I’m sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion,” not tomorrow, but “at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Andy
That’s right. He’s going to be working on us from this day until that day.
John
Yes.
Andy
Yeah. So, I mean, you’ve said it, justification is an act, the moment in time where God, he forgives our sin, he declares us righteous in Christ, but sanctification is an ongoing work of God’s grace that happens throughout our lives. And so that’s really a picture of what parenting is like, right. We need to recognize that our kids change over time. So why does it matter? Why is it important that we have this sort of expectation when it comes to our children’s need for change, the fact that they are sinful, and the reality that it happens slowly?
John
Well, I think as parents, we often desperately want to see progress and we desperately want to know that we’re doing at least something right. But I think as Paul Tripp does here so well, he reminds us over and over again of how sin blinds, not only our children, but us and so our children can’t always see their sin. They think they’re okay. They don’t think they need us. They don’t think…
Andy
It’s an overbearing voice that’s demanding things that are unnecessary.
John
That’s right. But when we forget that, then we get irritated and we want to say, “Man, can you not just see how selfish you are?” But in reality they really can’t. So that’s a problem. And as Tripp says, spiritually blind people are blind to their own blindness. And so when we come in and we have one conversation and we expect an immediate turnaround, we’re just going to leave discouraged.
Andy
We’re just setting ourselves up for failure in that moment.
John
Yeah. And then the last thing is it’s like the blind leading the blind. We have sin that we’re blind to, our children have sin that they’re blind to, and it doesn’t make for a great mix sometimes. And so I love what Tripp said, he said, “We’re oftentimes more like our kids than unlike them.” And so I struggle with the same sin over and over again. And yet I expect my boys to have one conversation, be done with it, never to see that act again.
Andy
That’s right.
John
And that’s just not realistic.
Andy
Yeah. So he says like our kids, we also are in need of a father who will patiently work over a long period of time to help us to see. Right? And he confronts us, not just with rebuke, but with his grace. So yeah, I think there’s a call for humility. We’ve got to recognize, hey, I don’t come to parenting with … I’m not fully sanctified myself. I may make mistakes. I may get frustrated at times towards my kids or misinterpret situations. So it’s just a call to humility and to recognize, hey, God is still working on me. And it puts us in a posture of neediness kind of beside our kids rather than lording it over them and being overbearing.
Okay. Positively, what should we expect if we shouldn’t expect immediate change, how can we be these instruments in God’s hands in our kids’ lives rather than getting in the way of what he’s doing?
John
Yeah. The three things that Tripp mentions here are just vitally important. The first one is we need to parent with a process mentality step by step, day by day, taking advantage of the small moment. And I’ve seen this with my own boys having to correct them over and over again in a certain area, and then that slows down, and then a couple of months later, I go back and I think, wait a second, they don’t do that anymore. That’s amazing. But it’s weighing through that process over and over again, that gets towards the end.
Andy
I’ve used an illustration before, both in thinking about our own devotional life and our own growth in godliness, but also with parenting is it’s a little bit like, you think about hundreds of years ago, if you’re in the low countries in Europe, Northern Europe, you’re trying to build levies, right? You have to take bags of sand, bags of sand or rock after rock after rock, brick after brick, whatever your material is. You don’t do it all in a moment when you see the waters rising, right? You do it in advance. And each one of those bags of sand is like an investment, a deposit against the day of the storm when the flood comes. And just recognizing when you have a process mentality, you’re saying, “Okay, I had another opportunity today to speak the wisdom and truth of God into my kids’ life. And God willing, these seeds are going to bear fruit over time.” And that’s one of the most hope giving things to me about this chapter is that it frees us from feeling this burden of we’ve got to get it all fixed right, right now. And it also kind of, it slows us down when we start to feel that this isn’t working, I’m trying to do these things and I don’t see the change I want to see. Paul Tripp says, “Wait, wait, wait, how do you know it’s not working? That seed may still be lying dormant, but it may be about to sprout. And bear all kinds of glorious fruit.”
John
That’s good. Then the second thing he says here is, as we’ve mentioned before, is just seeing parenting as one unending conversation. It’s not a one and out, right. But here’s the thing I think is important. You got to show up for the conversation, right?
Andy
That’s good.
John
It’s not going to happen without the conversation. And then third thing is parenting with a project mentality. Not that we see our kids as projects.
Andy
That’s only a bad, negative connotation.
John
Exactly. But yeah. Exactly. But what he’s saying here, and Sarah and I have tried this, we’ve done this some in spurts as parents, but to identify with great intentionality, “What are one or two things that a child is struggling with in this season?” And then be very intentional over a quarter or so to really focus on that. And maybe it’s, you have a child that’s really struggling with gentleness. And so how are we going to address that over the quarter? What verses would be good for them to memorize? How do we need to address this and correct this? And then that one, and then you move on to another one.
Andy
Yeah, that’s really good. I mean, that’s the essence of a project is you plan step after step and we’ve done that in seasons as well. Whether it’s quarterly or once a year, try to do an assessment of where is this child at? What are obvious weaknesses, areas that we can encourage them and resources, we can try to give them, train them. I have a brother who I’ve learned so much about parenting from, and I’ve mentioned him on here before, but he said, “If you find yourself doing more corrective discipline than proactive training, then that’s a sign, ‘Hey, this is an area that you should proactively plan for.’ You should, you see it keep popping up, then come up with a plan.”
John
You need to play more offense than defense.
Andy
You say that all the time and that’s really helpful. Yes. So, so yeah, parent with a project mentality. Now parents, if you are especially sensitive, probably want to turn this off right now. Paul said skip ahead. But on page 94, Tripp says, what gets in the way of good parenting is one thing, the character of the parent. Not your kid, not your situation, it’s you, you’re the problem. So what does he mean, John?
John
Yeah, this is … it’s humbling, but it’s accurate. I think Sarah and I realized this early on. For us, that parenting was a lot like a roller coaster. When we were walking closely with the Lord, when we were seeking to be yielded to his spirit, we were focused on our priorities, such as discipline and instruction of the boys, those would be some great, great seasons. But when we allowed the busyness of life to take over and the stresses and pressures creeped in, we distanced ourselves from each other and from the Lord at times. We were not intentional because we had too much other stuff going on. All of a sudden we’d look up and say, “What is going on with the boys? They’re driving me nutso.” You know what I mean? And then we realized it’s us. Right. And so we’d have to regroup and we’d have to repent some times and start again to go again. And so I think really that’s the gospel coming back to applying it to the parenting side as well.
Andy
Yeah. I mean, he kind of ends the chapter with talking about the fruit of the spirit and he says, “It’s not a moral checklist to attain to, it’s what God produces in us when we trust him.” And he says, “You ultimately have to have the father’s character to parent according to his plan.” And you know, we see it in our lives too. And just, like you said, when we’re not walking in the spirit, walking closely to the Lord, we’re more likely to be impatient, to be frustrated, to be bitter. But when we’re prayerful and we’re seeking him, we remember these realities more that, God is still at work in me and his patience flows through me to my kids. And I can see them stand in the same way and not get frustrated or impatient, but I can say, “Hey, here’s an opportunity. Let me point them to the God of grace again.” Ultimately, this is where we get to glory in the cross of Jesus. Not only does he forgive us for all our failures, not only does he meet the standard perfectly in our place, cover us with his righteousness, he promises us grace upon grace for every moment for the rest of our lives to change us, he’s going to transform us so that we can be the parents he’s calling us to be. So John, any last thoughts?
John
No, I think, I mean, I think his grace is much bigger, much stronger than we imagine as parents. He can use us, but he doesn’t need us. His grace is sufficient without us.
Andy
What a gift. Thanks for joining brother. Thank you for joining, our listeners. And we do hope that this episode encourages you to tap into God’s rich unending reservoir of grace in Jesus for life and godliness in every area, including parenting. So, thankful for you. See you next episode.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast produced by Providence Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information and resources from Providence, visit us online at pray.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.