Be a Parent, For it is God Who Will Change Their Hearts

Everyone is an expert parent...until they have kids. We all have ideas in mind on how we would do things in certain parenting situations, either based on how our own parents did or did not raise us. Some people, like me, spend a ton of time reading and asking questions from experienced parents in order to be as prepared as possible for the arrival of the little sanctifiers.

With six years of parenting down (and now three kids with more on the way) I am thankful that God gave me so many resources ahead of time. It has prepared us for inevitable challenges and been a grace to create some sense of order in our home. It doesn't guarantee that our kids will always be well-behaved and especially doesn't guarantee their salvation, but it gave us something to aim for, something to evaluate ourselves, not so much our kids.

Early on in our parenting as we were establishing our family's routines and traditions with our children's early obedience and ultimate salvation in view, we had so many people who felt like they wanted to throw cold water on our fire to be godly parents. I believe their motives were honestly good, but it was discouraging. So many people wanted to remind us that our kids salvation didn't depend upon us so they would say, "You can't guarantee they'll believe in Jesus. Your kids will have to give an account to God on their own. You could be the best parents in the world and they still might reject your faith."

Yes, that is true. But it always bothered me. Did God not intend the family structure to have influence on the children in the home? What is the point of God's wisdom for the home if we are just supposed to resign to the fact that 80% of our children will turn away from Christ? It seemed to me that the exception to godly parenting was losing your children, not the rule. But something so different is playing out in our churches.

Most people fall into one of two ditches; we either set up a bunch of rules and boundaries thinking we will create obedient children through our own effort (even though they are biblical rules) or we resign to the fact that we don't have control over our children's hearts anyway and don't apply any biblical principles. Both produce children who don't know true grace. But we don't have a category for walking the narrow path in between. We usually just say that we need to balance the two.

I've never been a fan of the balance argument. It sounds to me like compromise; sometimes we need to give a little on grace and emphasize the law and others we need to stand firm on our boundaries and forget grace. Isn't there a place where both justice and mercy express themselves?

Oh right. The cross! In redeeming us, God doesn't relax his justice to set us free from our sin. That would be corrupt (Prov 17:15). Our salvation is a mystery in which God creates Christ's righteousness in us so that we are no longer guilty sinners and Jesus takes our sin upon himself so God can justly punish our sin (2 Cor 5:21).

How, then, does this apply to parenting?

I think the process of progressive sanctification parallels our parenting. Salvation isn't complete the day we are converted. God continues to actually make us righteous through a process we call progressive sanctification.

Writing to the Philippians, Paul commands something strange for the sanctification of a believer: "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil 2:12-13). Sanctification is a process by which we pursue faithfulness and through that God shows that he is working in us. Paul is serious when he commands believers to remain diligent and faithful, but then he says also that God is working our sanctification in us. It is the mystery of God's sovereignty and our responsibility.

A parent's role should be getting clearer. We do not seek a balance between our role as parents and God's role as the shaper of a child's heart. It is both. Work out your parenting with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in your kids.

We work because God is working in us. We parent because God is parenting through us. It is not an either/or dichotomy. Godly parenting is 100% diligence on the parents' part and 100% trust that God is working in us to produce salvation in our children.

An example of this is the response of the Israelites who just returned from exile to rebuild the city of Jerusalem to their opponents who sought to disrupt their rebuilding project. In Nehemiah 4, Sanballat mocked the Israelites and threatened to prevent them from finishing their work. Israel's response was a perfect example of diligent work trusting in the sovereignty of God. "And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night" (Neh 4:9). They trusted God to protect them as they set people around the city to protect them. Faithfulness is neither praying to God to work and doing nothing nor is it doing the work without praying to God.

And so goes parenting. We work to teach our kids about God and his work in the world through the word. We work to discipline them when they are disobedient. We train them with wisdom in godly living. We have high expectations for the person they are to become and we aren't surprised when their sin (or our own) trips them up along the way. And we do all this with complete hope, not in the effectiveness of our parenting, but in the power of God to use it for the good of our children.

I Believe in the Holy Spirit

With small children in tow it is difficult for me to pay close enough attention to every Sunday sermon that I can recall significant themes from the message. Pastor Jason preached a couple months ago on something I don’t even remember, but one line stuck in my mind, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.”  He gave a couple of examples in which this statement applied, but I immediately went to circumstances in my own life in which I wasn’t acting as though the Holy Spirit had the ability to overcome the obstacles I feel are insurmountable.

As I think through some circumstances in my life that simply seem impossible to resolve I have begun to preach to myself, "I believe in the Holy Spirit." It has become my anthem this year and I pray that it becomes part of my life. I should never say to myself, "That cannot happen. It is too difficult." Or I cannot see a single person as beyond the hope of the gospel thinking, "He will never be able to see it," or "She could never comprehend such difficult things." God made us all to revel in his glory. He made us all for relationships with him and with each other. Who am I to say any person or situation is beyond the power of God. It is by his Holy Spirit that he transforms lives and works incredible faith into his people.

I am a type A personality. I organize everything in my mind before putting it onto paper or into action. I plan everything out before making decisions. I need to see a clear path to success before taking any action. This does not lend itself well to trusting God because I tend to lean on my own ability to understand. But God is using seminary to break down this trust in myself and give me opportunities to test my conviction that "I believe in the Holy Spirit."

God has blessed me with a gift to understand things and make comprehensive connections quickly. So far this has been a great blessing to my family during seminary because it helps me accomplish more in the limited amount of time we have available for studying. However, my Hebrew class has been somewhat frustrating to me; not because I haven't been able to understand Hebrew, but because it is not organized in the way my mind finds useful. It has been a struggle to do the heavy lifting for the class without seeing the value in the way it is presented. But two people challenged my prideful assumptions. Andy Naselli made a comment to me at a picnic that learning Hebrew is a "worship of dependence." While we may not see the value of it in the midst of it, we do the hard work trusting that the Holy Spirit will help us endure and at some future date it will begin to transform into more of a worship of praise experience. It was a reminder that I can't fit everything into my mind's compartments, but I need to "believe in the Holy Spirit" to honor God through it.

Similarly, during class with John Piper, as I was marveling at what a privilege it was to learn from such a great mind he confessed that it is such a struggle for him to write. He slows down so much and puts so much thought into every word because he wants every word to be fruitful. If John Piper struggles that much to produce something of value for the church, what hope do I have? Why should I continue? My ability to quickly comprehend complex truths is nothing to boast in when I don't use it in a way that depends on God to help me do the heavy lifting and produce something of value. I need to remind myself that "I believe in the Holy Spirit" to dig deep into his word to come away changed and prepared for ministry, not simply adding more knowledge to my mental library.

So where has this conviction led our family today? As our youngest daughter continues through our second year of life we have decided that we are ready to add another child to our family. We chose to once again pursue a child through adoption, but wondered what the best option for our family is. Adoptions take a lot of time and cost a lot of money, neither of which we have much of. How are we going to pay for it when our checking account has been shrinking to pay for school? How are we going to find time to travel to pick up a child when we have very small windows of time in between school and work? As we considered our options we realized that we started to go down the path that seemed to make more sense to our concrete-sequential minds; the cheapest and most time controlled options were our preference. But God was having none of that. He wanted to remind us that "We believe in the Holy Spirit."

Through circumstances that I will share more of over the coming months God has given us a passion for children at an orphanage in Uganda. We know people in Uganda and have met others who have adopted from there. We are convinced that this is where God would have us, even though it is going to cost money that God will have to provide and it needs to be timed in only a way one who is in control of all time can arrange. But we are done trying to force God to work according to our own plan. We are ready to see the God do what seems impossible. We are convinced of this: "We believe in the Holy Spirit."

In a Pressure Chamber

I just turned in a big paper due this semester for Dr. Piper and I feel like I landed safely on the other side of a huge hurdle (not necessarily confident in my grade, but just glad the work is complete). Going through my heart was excitement that the end of the semester is near. I am feeling a kind of "senioritits" in only my first semester of my second year (I still have five semesters to go). Thoughts of winter vacation already fill my mind and my vision for after seminary work is narrowing in focus.

But then I also feel a little guilt for wanting the semester to be done. Isn't this what I wanted to do? Hadn't I left my job to go to school again? Aren't my affections moved by what we are studying?

Of course they are! I am so thankful for my time here. It is an incredible privilege to have this opportunity to learn from such godly men. Yet this hasn't been a season of life that has come with ease. We've given up a lot to be here. We have experienced some of the biggest challenges of our lives. Every minute of the week is scheduled with church, school, work, and parenting. Sometimes the pressure feels too much to handle and I look forward to the release.

A helpful image came to mind as I considered the opposing feelings of wanting to be here and wanting to be finished. I am in the barrel of gun that God is pointing in the direction that I will be of most use to his purposes. At the moment the heat and pressure around me is propelling me forward. As I travel forward I bang up against the side of the barrel which keeps me focused in the right direction. If it were a shorter barrel the shot wouldn't be as accurate. It is precisely the boundaries of the barrel that I keep bumping against that focus my direction better for more effective ministry. I don't enjoy bumping up against the sides and feeling the intense pressure inside, but it will make me more useful in the end.

So, I continue in my training thankful for the season of intense focus looking forward to the launch into ministry at the end.