Parenting: Day 11

False Gods

In this video, Paul David Tripp answers three important questions—questions that parents often ask—through the lens of the reality that parents are only ever parenting worshipers.

About the Book

What is your calling as a parent?

In the midst of folding laundry, coordinating carpool schedules, and breaking up fights, many parents get lost. Feeling pressure to do everything “right” and raise up “good” children, it’s easy to lose sight of our ultimate purpose as parents in the quest for practical tips and guaranteed formulas.

In Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family, Paul David Tripp offers parents much more than a to-do list. Instead, he presents us with a big-picture view of God’s plan for us as parents. Outlining fourteen foundational principles centered on the gospel, he shows that we need more than the latest parenting strategy or list of techniques. Rather, we need the rescuing grace of God—grace that has the power to shape how we view everything we do as parents.

Freed from the burden of trying to manufacture life-change in our children’s hearts, we can embrace a grand perspective of parenting overflowing with vision, purpose, and joy.

Video Transcript

It's important to remember that you're parenting worshipers. If you're parenting worshipers, this means that what controls the heart of your child will then control his behavior.

There are three questions that every parent asks—maybe you ask these multiple times a day. Why does my child do the things he does? Why is the dinner table such a war? Why does my child resist me when I ask him to clean his room? Why does my teenager seem to not want to do anything that I ask him to do with happiness and joy? Why do children do the things they do? If you ask that question, then you want to ask the second question, how does change take place in a child's life? If you see a child doing things that are dangerous or wrong or sinful or inappropriate, you want to be an instrument of change. And then the third question is, how can I be a tool of change in the life of my child?

It is stunning to me that the Bible answers those three questions with a single word—the word worship. Here's what happens: there's idolatry in the hearts of our children. That means that physical, created things—people, pleasure, possessions—become more important to them than they should. They begin to control their behavior more than what God says is good, true, and right. Now here's the ticket: your children don't know that! You say to your child, "Why'd you do that?" They're not going to say, "I'm an idolator, of course—you should expect worse." No child is going to say that.

Our job is to help our children understand that the greatest war in their lives is not with us or any other authority. The greatest war is fought inside of them. It's fought for control of their heart. It's fought for the rulership of their soul. And they need a Savior who will fight for them, who will deliver them from the most significant bondage of all—their bondage to themselves, their bondage to creation. How wonderful is it to be chosen of God to fight that battle on behalf of my children?