Because our children are lost, gospel parenting doesn’t stop with addressing behaviors, but seeks to deal with the spiritual sickness of sin (and the gospel is the only remedy!).
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. It 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 to another episode of “Gospel Shaped Home.” As usual, I’m Andy Owens, and once again I am joined by John Erwin, our executive pastor here at Providence. John, welcome.
John Erwin
Thanks, Andy.
Andy
Yeah. We’re honored that you, our listeners, would join us for these conversations. We really do hope that this podcast helps you trust God in the trenches of daily life, especially family life. We’re in chapter seven of Paul Tripp’s book “Parenting.” It’s titled “Lost,” and he uses a medical illustration. He says, “if you’re diagnosed with stomach cancer, you don’t just focus on alleviating the symptoms, but you focused on the treatment for the condition.” John, how does that illustration kind of make the point of this chapter?
John
Yeah, Andy. I think it was a great illustration and one to consider. Gospel parenting isn’t just addressing wrong behaviors, although it includes that, but it’s really seeking to deal with the condition of our children’s heart, the spiritual sickness of sin. He uses the biblical word “lost” here. Understanding the condition that underlies the behavior will help us parent with the right attitude, an attitude of love and compassion, as well as the right treatment in view, and that treatment is the grace of God and the gospel.
Like we’ve said in other chapters, having right expectations is key for us as parents. We’ll often hear in a sermon or read in a Bible passage that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. When we read it, we believe it. We affirm it. We say yay and amen. But for some reason, we still seem to be shocked when our children act in sinful ways and need redemptive parenting.
Andy
Why did you do that? Yeah.
John
Exactly. What in the world is going on? Yeah, so if we don’t hold in focus the reality that our kids are lost and will behave like lost people, we’re going to constantly be discouraged.
Andy
Yeah, yeah. Just, we need to have good expectations, realistic expectations. In this chapter, what Paul Tripp does is he looks at Luke 15, which has three parables, very famous parables, but he kind of walks through each of them quickly to ask the question, what does this word lost really mean? Like what are all the implications of the fact that our kids are lost?
The first one is the parable of the lost sheep, right? A shepherd, he’s got 100 sheep, one of them is lost, so he goes out and searches for it until he finds it. He comes back rejoicing that he’s found it. He pulls out several implications from this first parable. He says like sheep need shepherding, children need parenting. By design, they’re dependent. They need care, so we shouldn’t get frustrated, irritated when they need us and when we have to correct them.
John
Yeah, absolutely. Great. Again, another great illustration for us as parents to think of our children as sheep wandering.
Andy
Yeah. When they wander, they do what lost people do, right? Sheep wander and lost people wander. Again, it’s not a personal attack on us. It’s not an attempt to hurt us. It’s because they’re lost. They’re separated from God. Then he says like a lost sheep, our kids need to be rescued by someone else. They can’t deliver themselves. The shepherd went and found the sheep.
Then he goes to the next parable of the lost coin. Well, sorry. This one’s about a woman who has 10 coins. She loses one and then she basically turns the house upside down until she finds it. Tripp, on this one, he pulls out implications more about the heart of the father to find lost people, right? Really all of these parables were about repentance and the joy in heaven when one sinner repents, but kind of the key application is that, hey, we’re ambassadors of God to our kids, and so our attitude should be like the father who’s joyful when he finds what’s lost, right? We shouldn’t get mad at our kids because they’re lost because they need our help.
John
Yeah. We can also look there at our heavenly Father and see there’s compassion, there’s patience.
Andy
That’s right.
John
There’s graciousness towards us as we continue to wander in some of the ways that we wander.
Andy
Yeah, that’s good. Then the last parable is the one that takes up most of the chapter, and it’s the parable of the prodigal son. It’s one of the most well known of all Jesus’s parables. He really highlights two things. We could talk for a long time about this parable, but he highlights our temptation towards independence and our tendency to self-deception. Let’s talk about those a little more. What’s he getting at?
John
Well, I think he talks about the two lies, dangerous, destructive lies that every child believes. The first one there is the lie of autonomy, that no one should be able to tell me what to do. Whether you have a toddler who’s refusing the food that you’re trying to get them to eat or a teenager that is having trouble with what you do or do not want them to wear, it’s really about a desire for autonomy and independence.
Then the second one is somewhat similar, the lie of self-sufficiency. Every kid wants to know that they have what it takes. I don’t need help. I don’t need to be instructed, corrected, coached, and ultimately I don’t need to be rescued. Every child falls into that lie as they seek independence from their parents.
Andy
I’ve got this, I can do it.
John
I got it. I want to do it my way.
Andy
That’s right, yeah. There’s a lot more that we could draw out from Luke 15 and all these parables. But these are, they’re helpful reminders that when the Bible describes our kids as lost, it means they’re going to reject our help. They’re going to reject our loving attempts to shepherd them the right way. They’re going to wander. They’re going to need a lot of pulling back in, a lot of coaching, a lot of rescuing in a sense, and they’re not going to welcome it often. Again, that idea of expectations, right? As a parent, parenting is really a thankless task in some ways, you know?
John
Sure.
Andy
I think we can all … I mean, I say all. I’m sure this doesn’t apply to everyone, but I think a lot of us when we grow up and become adults, and especially when we become parents ourselves, we realized, “Oh man, my parents understood more than I thought they did, and I understood less than I thought I did.”
John
Absolutely. With these two, the lie of autonomy and the lie of self sufficiency, it gets challenging because one of our tasks as parents from age zero to 18 is to grow them up to be independent of us.
Andy
Right.
John
Right? We do want them to be sufficient in some things. We do want them to grow in…
Andy
Take responsibility.
John
Yeah, absolutely. But the trick there is they should also be growing in greater and greater dependence, just like us…
Andy
On God.
John
In God.
Andy
Yeah.
John
Yeah, on God.
Andy
That’s right. He closes this chapter with five kind of statements about what children need since they’re lost, right? They need, first off, he says insight. What he means is insight into their hearts, right, the fact that they are lost. That’s where the whole self-deception thing comes in is our lost kids don’t know that they’re lost and then they need to be lovingly, patiently guided to evaluate their own hearts and what’s driving some of their decisions.
John
Yeah. Like we talked about last time, sin blinds.
Andy
That’s right.
John
You know what I mean?
Andy
Yeah.
John
We have to work against that as well.
Andy
Secondly, they need compassion, not condemnation, not irritation. They need loving, compassionate care and shepherding like sheep. Hope. What does he mean by that? John, what’s he getting at that they need hope?
John
Well one, that we’re their allies, I think, not their enemy or their adversaries. But even more than that, they need gospel hope. They need to hear over and over and over again that God sent Christ into the world to seek and to save the lost, which flows into the fourth thing they need.
Andy
Yeah, which is rescue.
John
Rescue.
Andy
Yeah, rescue. That’s I think when we parent with the big picture in view, we recognize, okay, I shouldn’t just focus on the externals, on the behavior, and therefore I don’t settle for rules and punishments when the rules are broken, but I’m constantly on the lookout for opportunities to address the heart behind the behavior, in the hope that they will recognize their need for the savior that God has sent.
John
Absolutely.
Andy
Yeah. Then the last one is wisdom.
John
Yeah, and especially the wisdom that leads them to learn to say no to themselves. The hardest person they’ll ever try to lead is themselves.
Andy
Yeah.
John
So we have to help them.
Andy
I still remember, I guess it was a year or two ago, we went through Titus, a sermon series on Titus. In chapter two, Paul writes to Titus all these things to say to different categories of people in the church. He says, “And to young men, tell them to be self-controlled,” right?
John
That’s right.
Andy
Everybody else, he gives a longer list. He says, “Young man, if you can be self-controlled, just focus on that.”
John
That’s right. You got it.
Andy
Yeah. Okay. Anything else you want to say, brother, to wrap this discussion up?
John
Yeah. I would just encourage us as parents to be careful where we live. What I mean by that is if you think about concentric circles where the core circle is sort of the heart and the soul of a child, and then maybe the next circle out is the mind, and then the next one is the belief, and then the outer circle is the actions. If you think about that, and if you’re always camping out in that outer circle of actions and addressing action after action after action, it’s really a behavior modification. What we tend to do is to implement rule after rule after rule. If we do that, then we’re often missing out on gospel parenting.
You know, Paul tells those in Colossae in chapter two that rules give the appearance of wisdom, but then he adds that there are no value against fleshly indulgence. We have to consistently focus on the heart. We have to go very all the way into that inner circle there of the heart, behind the behavior and just focus on their need for a savior. This will lead us to parent through prayer and in dependence on God, because we just can’t change the heart ourselves.
Andy
That’s right. Well, that’s a good word to wrap it up on. Thanks, John.
John
Yeah, man. Anytime.
Andy
I appreciate it. Thank you guys for joining us, for listening. Again, we hope that the Lord will use this to encourage you to trust him for his grace. See you next time.
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.