Parenting: Day 5

Identity

In this video, Paul David Tripp explains our need as parents to rest in the identity we've been given in Christ, rather than trying to find identity in our children.

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

Here's something we don't think about much but has a huge impact on the way you parent your children. If you're not resting in your identity in Christ, you will look for identity in your children. There's really only two places you can look for identity. You can look for identity vertically, or you can look for identity horizontally.

Looking for identity in your children is a miserable way to live as a parent. Think about this, your children don't get up in the morning and say, "What are the twelve ways today I can give my mom and dad a sense of value and worth?" That's just not in the mind of a child. You're actually parenting a broken human being who needs rescue, who will have a bad day, who will say bad things, and who will make bad choices.

If you're too focused on identity, it means you're to focused on success, on reputation, on control. And that introduces incredible tension in your relationship with your children. It is a heavy burden for a child to try to bear the identity of their parent.

You see, you've been given a glorious identity as a child of God. You're accepted. Even on your worst day, you're loved. Even in bad choices, you're graced. God will never turn his back on you. Rest in your vertical identity. This will give you the ability not to look for identity in the lives of your children.