Parenting: Day 4

Inability

In this video, Paul David Tripp shares that recognizing what we are unable to do is essential to good parenting. We can rest in the fact that it is God who ultimately changes the heart of a child.

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

As a parent, recognizing what you’re unable to do is essential to good parenting. God hasn’t called us to be parents because we have the power to change our children. Here’s the thing that every parent needs to reconcile in their heart: We have no ability whatsoever to change our children. None.

If we had that ability, the person and work of Jesus wouldn’t have been necessary. We don’t have that ability and if you tell yourself that you have the ability to change your children—if you don’t surrender to the reality of your inability—you will end up doing things that you shouldn’t do.

You will try by the force of your personality, by the volume of your voice, by the strength of your vocabulary, by fear, by reward, or by shame, to create what you are not able to create. And as you do that, you will put tension and distance and discouragement in the context of your relationship with your children.

I would encourage you to enter into the welcome of knowing that you do not have the power to change your children. You don’t have to load that on your shoulders! That’s God’s job. He just asks you to be a tool in his capable hands.