Parenting: Day 13

Rest

In this video, Paul David Trip teaches that parents can rest in the truth that God is in them, with them, and for them—they are never alone in their task.

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 only ever rest in God's presence and grace that will make you a joyful and patient parent. Lets be honest for a moment: parenting is hard.

I remember a couple moments in our parenting, one where my wife Luella said, "I think I'm forgetting how to talk adult." She felt like she had so many infantile conversations she was losing her vocabulary. Or there was one evening when, at eleven o'clock at night, I'm at the grocery store buying lunches for the next day and I'm driving home and I'm thinking, "This is too hard. It's too burdensome. I can't do this."

It's so important to rest in the fact that God is in you, and for you, and with you—that you are never alone in your parenting task. That passage we call the Great Commission at the end of Matthew is one of the most wonderful reminders for all parents. Two things that God says, "All power is given to me in heaven and earth." There's never a situation, there's never a location, there's never a relationship in parenting that isn't ruled by King Christ. And then Jesus says, "Lo, I am with you always." God's with you. He's with you in every one of those moments. He promises that he'll never leave you and never forsake you.

I like to think of it this way: Jesus on the cross took every ounce of our rejection so even in our worse parenting day, we will never see the back of God's head. We will never experience God turning and walking away. You see, if you load all that your children need on your shoulders, you'll be overburdened, and overwhelmed, and discouraged, and maybe even hopeless as a parents. You need again and again and again to remind yourself that "God is for me and he is with me. He rules what I can't rule. He gives me what I don't have by myself. In that I can rest with the daily, moment-by-moment knowledge that as a parent, I'm never alone."