Parenthood is valuable ultimately because God intends to use us as a tool in His hands to reveal Himself to our children.
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 Owen
Welcome back to another episode of “Gospel Shaped Home”. Again, really glad and honored that you would join us, and this week joined again by Pastor Phil to talk about the first chapter of Paul Tripp’s book “Parenting”, but we are also joined by one of … Micah, that’s my youngest son, one of his favorite people in the whole church and that is Linda Medlin.
Now, Phil, you also think highly of Linda. Correct?
Phil M
Absolutely.
Linda M
Ms. Linda.
Andy
Ms. Linda. That’s right, Ms. Linda. We walked in the door at Providence and Mike is asking, am I going to see Ms. Linda tonight? Where’s Ms. Linda? Yeah. So welcome guys. Glad to have you today.
Phil
Thanks, Andy.
Andy
Chapter one, “calling,” he starts with this principle. Right? “Nothing is more important in your life than being one of God’s tools to form a human soul.” So “calling,” what is Paul Tripp getting at when he’s talking about parenting is a “calling?”
Phil
Yeah, I think he mentions later in this chapter, Deuteronomy 6, and he talks about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and might, and he says, “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” He talks about teaching them diligently to our children. “Talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by day, when you lie down, when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand. They shall be as the frontlets between your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house, on your gates.”
Andy
They’re everywhere.
Phil
They’re everywhere, and it’s part from your relationship with the Lord, and your relationship to your spouse, if you have a spouse, it is the calling for which we are to do. God has given us these children to teach them to know Him, and that’s what it means to have a calling in parenting.
Andy
That’s good. Yeah. He says on page 30, it says, “God has designed that you would be a principle, consistent, and fateful tool in His hands for the purpose of creating God-consciousness and God-submission in your children. Our kids, more than anything else, need to see, recognize, know, and bow to, and trust in the God of grace, the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” God has designed that, that role falls primarily to parents. Right?
Phil
Absolutely.
Andy
We’re key players in that. So tell me a little bit about how you guys came to recognize that calling as parents.
Phil
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting perspective because we had Valerie before we were walking with the Lord and it was a year after she was born almost that I went on the mission trip, became a believer, Linda gave her life to Christ, and we joined a church, a Bible preaching church, and the first thing we did was go through a parenting class. So when we first had Valerie, we thought, okay, we have all these dreams. The world has given us all these dreams of what to do with this child and what to make of this child.
Andy
As if you owned her. Right?
Phil
Right, and then we get to this parenting class, the first time we’ve ever studied the Bible in-depth, and Deuteronomy 6 comes to life for us. And, we now have the task of being a great steward of this child that we have now. It changed our whole focus. It transformed the course of our lives.
Andy
What about, you know, Paul Tripp, in that same section, he talks about the role of the church, role of school, role of others. How do those other influencers in our children’s lives relate to our role as parents?
Phil
I think good things can get in the way of what God wants us to do with our kids in parenting and for our kids in parenting. For instance, for me, ministry can be a great way to make an excuse. Well, I’m doing good things for You, God, but it’s not the best things. I think as parents we have to ask ourselves, “What is God’s best for us and how God would want us to raise these children?”
Andy
Yeah. So he talks about several obstacles to this vision of parenting. It’s interesting the way he’s saying God values parenting and that we should value it. Right? It should be a really significant priority. It’s not the most important priority like you said earlier, but it is a really, really high and significant calling. Some of the things that get in the way of it are our desire for possessions, things, our desire for worldly success, and then he even mentions ministry success and that there are people who, in a sense, sacrifice their family for the sake of serving the Lord, supposedly, which is, in a sense, a contradiction because you’re disqualified from serving in the church the moment your household isn’t in order.
Phil
Right.
Andy
How have you guys seen these sorts of other values, other treasures compete with the value of parenting in your own life?
Linda
Well, I can answer that. I went to school to become a nurse anesthetist, and it was many years of training.
Andy
I’m glad you said that, because I don’t think I could have said …
Linda
It’s a very hard word to say. I had to learn that. But anyway, that was my destiny, I thought. I’m going to be a nurse anesthetist. I’m going to give anesthesia, and that’s my calling. Well, little did I know the moment that I held that baby girl in my arms, all of the sudden, and not even really being a true, committed follower of Christ, I all of a sudden realized I have something in my arms that is way more important to me than any of my career could ever be.
And so, I know the Lord was working, even though I hadn’t fully surrendered my life, even at that moment. As we did become believers and started parenting, my desire to have a better balance, work-life balance was increasing, and I know it was from God. I just continued to ask the Lord to show me and help me put less emphasis on my career and on my child. It was so amazing the way the Lord provided. So that would be my encouragement for any mom out there that has this desire to have a balance with their children, that the Lord can provide. I know he can provide that time.
Phil
And you know, Andy, in that I was a police officer and police officers don’t make a lot of money, just like pastors. It was a necessity for us, once we started having multiple kids, that Linda still work some to help with just basic finances. But what we did as parents is we made our parenting a priority. We started to work our schedules and had the flexibility to do so, so that we could spend maximum time with our kids. I had to step up and help around the house on some other things. The grocery store was my thing, and I loved to do it. I would take the kids with me at times and watch…
Andy
That’s a tremendous training opportunity.
Linda
Thank you. That’s a gift.
Phil
Yeah, and we shared in washing the clothes and the cooking. Because parenting was a priority and our kids were a priority for us, we had to make some adjustments in what we thought was the normal roles in the home.
Andy
Sure. So it really pulled you in more. The fact that Linda needed to work outside the home some pulled you into normal rhythms of home life and engaging with not just spiritual instruction, but chores and yeah.
Phil
Yeah.
Linda
And even when the children were younger it allowed me to have less hours, but when Phil transitioned into full-time ministry, I then began to work more. At first I was just, “How am I going to do this? I’m going to miss my kids.” Well, looking back, God is, again, so faithful because it was a season of life that our daughters were right at that middle school transitioning to high school. They needed their dad. I mean, they need me, they always need mom, but it was such an awesome time for Phil to have in the mornings, and it was a release for me because I didn’t have to put up with a lot of the teenage girl drama. He could handle it a lot better.
Phil
I wouldn’t say that I handled it a lot better. Just maybe, I don’t know, maybe there was more grace there.
Andy
Well, praise God for his grace.
Linda
They would listen to him better than they would listen to me about wardrobes or boys.
Andy
Brother, you have an imposing presence.
Phil
Yeah. Yeah.
Andy
You know, the interesting thing to me is, he highlights this, is that all of these obstacles to biblical vision of parenting in and of themselves can be good things.
Linda
Yes.
Andy
They’re not necessarily bad things. Right?
Phil
Right.
Andy
I mean, possessions and the created world, God made the world or people made things from God’s created world, and the things in themselves aren’t necessarily bad. It’s our affection for them, when we all of a sudden start preferring getting, maintaining, protecting things, to investing in our kids, that it’s gone haywire. With success and working, we’re creating the image of God to exercise dominion over the world, both male and female in His image. So doing work, being creative, these aren’t bad things.
I think there are circumstances there are good, necessary reasons why kids may need to go to daycare, why both parents may be working, but what he’s saying is that a disproportionate value on career success that would sacrifice family and investment into children on this altar of career and success is a problem. That’s when things are upside down and same with ministry. Obviously we’d say ministry is a good thing, it’s that when we start to ignore our closest neighbors for the sake of doing ministry to others, that we’ve gotten things upside down.
Phil
Yeah, and I think when we get into those times where life is busy, mom and dad are worn out, and the kids need our time. It’s an opportunity for us to, you know he talks about in the book where he says that when your child questions the rules, don’t puff up your chest and tell him or her they better obey or else. That’s the easy way.
Andy
Right.
Phil
But to…
Andy
Because I said so.
Phil
Because I said so, but he’s saying talk to them about a loving redeemer who not only created him or her, but shed his blood for them so that they could know and do what is right. Doing that requires intentionality. It requires great effort. It requires you to be in the right frame of mind.
Andy
That’s right.
Phil
And so, but that’s what God desires for us as parents.
Andy
Yeah, he says that really what he means is we need to connect everything we do as parents to the story of redemption, to God’s story of redemption, and we have to be living in that story ourselves if we’re going to help our kids connect to that story. So he says at the bottom of page 31, “Talk again and again about how God willingly exercises His power for our help, benefit and rescue.” Right?
He says, “You’ve been a recipient of God’s grace, so that you could be a means of God getting that same grace to your kids.” It’s a great chapter. You know, it’s not just about authority, rules. It’s about the rescue of God through faith in Christ, through his death on the cross and where ultimately everything we do is trying to help our kids come to know God through faith in Christ.
Phil
Amen.
Andy
Anything else you guys would add to encourage our parents as we wrap this one up?
Linda
Well, I love how he ends it and he says, “No one gives grace better than a parent who humbly admits that he desperately needs it himself.”
Phil
Amen. Amen.
Andy
Well, thank you guys for joining and thank you for listening to this episode and we hope to see you next time. God bless.
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.