14 Gospel Principles for Parents
This may seem hypocritical, because I just told you not to rely on BuzzFeed’s list of 14 ways to make date night more romantic, and now I’m going to list 14 gospel principles for parents.
But this list isn’t comprised of strategies or techniques: These are 14 big-picture themes in Scripture that, when properly understood, can change the way you understand God’s call on you as a parent.
(For full disclosure, this list is the chapter-by-chapter index of my new book, Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family. I ended up writing another parenting book after all!)
1. Calling
Nothing is more important in your life than being one of God’s tools to form a human soul. In a couple brief but profound paragraphs, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 20-23 summarize the value that God places on parenting.
2. Grace
God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do it. He never sends you without going with you. Ephesians 3:20-21 provides us with the single redemptive reality that makes parenting possible.
3. Law
Your children need God’s law, but you cannot ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish. Romans 7:7 tells us that we need the grace of wisdom that God’s law alone can give, but the rest of the chapter reveals how only the Spirit can produce change.
4. Inability
Recognizing what you are unable to do is essential to good parenting. God has tasked parents with many things, but nowhere in his Word has he tasked you with the responsibility to create heart change.
5. Identity
If you are not resting as a parent in your identity in Christ, you will look for identity in your children. 2 Peter 1:3-9 warns about identity amnesia, and when applied to parenting, it means that if you’re not getting your identity from God and the work of his Son, you will probably try to get it from your children.
6. Process
You must be committed as a parent to long-view parenting, because change is a process and not an event. Even the world’s best teacher—Jesus—had a process mentality, and because he did, he was willing to leave his work to unfinished people (see John 16:12–15).
7. Lost
Luke 15 is a tremendous help to parents, because, in vivid word pictures, it sheds light on the condition that is the reason for all you have to deal with in the thoughts, desires, choices, words and actions of your children.
8. Authority
One of the foundational heart issues in the life of every child is authority. Teaching and modeling the protective beauty of authority is one of the foundations of good parenting. The famous Ephesians 6:1-4 parenting passage is very helpful for this principle.
9. Foolishness
The foolishness inside your children is more dangerous to them than the temptation outside of them. Only God’s grace has the power to rescue fools. Psalm 53:1–3 reveals that your child has the heart of a fool and because he does, he is a danger to himself and desperately needs God’s arms of rescue that come through your parenting care.
