Tag Archives: gospel

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6 Ways to Bring the Gospel into Your Parenting

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parent

In parenting, as in all of life, the goal of what you are trying to accomplish matters. It will dictate the decisions you make, how you spend your money and time, what you emphasize and ultimately, if you succeed or fail.

Too many parents, especially those in the church, have the wrong goal. Their parenting is not unique. What does that mean? It means, if you are a follower of Jesus, you should have a different goal and parent differently from those who don’t follow Jesus. Ask this, can you accomplish the goals for parenting or your kids without Jesus? Your kids can be successful, healthy, moral, marry well, have good values, and do all of that without Jesus.

Elyse Fitzpatrick said,

“Most parents who attend church want what most of parents want for our children. Jesus or no Jesus, we just want them to obey, be polite, not curse or look at pornography, get good jobs, marry a nice person, and not get caught up in the really bad stuff. It may come as a surprise to you, but God wants much more for your children, and you should too. God wants them to get the gospel. And this means that parents are responsible to teach them about the drastic, uncontrollable nature of amazing grace.”

Paul tells parents they need to expect their kids to obey, to honor them and to respect them. Many parents do not have this expectation. Whenever I hear a parent count to their child, they communicate, I don’t expect you to listen to me the first time. When I get to 3 will suffice. As kids get older and become teenagers, many parents let their guard down and don’t expect them to speak respectfully. It is easier to let them get away with it than put up the fight. I understand the weariness of parenting, but if God gave you children, it is time to step up to the plate.

Paul ends this section by letting us in on how to raise kids that are respectful and obedient. By discipline and instruction in the Lord. Whenever he uses the phrasing he uses in vs. 4, he is speaking about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He is calling parents to bring the gospel into their parenting, on all occasions  whenever possible.

The word for discipline, means to “nurture, educate, or train,” and the word for instruction, means “calling attention to” or “mild rebuke,” “correction,” or “warning.”

In other words, Paul is saying that the way Christian parents are to bring children up is by nurturing, correcting, and training them in the truth of or about Jesus Christ. Paul is telling parents to daily proclaim the message about Jesus to their children and to warn or rebuke them when they forget to live in the light of what Jesus had already done. He was telling them to tether every aspect of their parenting to the gospel message.

Here are 6 ways to bring the gospel into your parenting:

6 ways to bring the gospel into your parenting.

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  1. To bring the gospel to your kids, you must be changed by the gospel. If you aren’t changed by the gospel, you won’t be able to communicate the gospel to your kids. You won’t see your need for it, their need for it. You won’t see how great and mighty and all encompassing the gospel is.
  2. A culture of the gospel. Every house, family and business has a culture. A culture is how things happen without discussion. Does the gospel influence everything that you do as a family, as a parent? Does it dictate your finances, your time, rules, entertainment?
  3. Plan to bring the gospel into your home. What is your plan to teach your kids Scripture? When will you personally open the Bible? When will you do it with your kids? What will you study? For our family, we use a mixture of The New City Catechism and the Train Up questions from Revolution. Our MC uses the Train Up questions each week with the kids. We write the question and answer of the week in our kitchen and refer to it throughout the week and discuss at dinner as a family. For more on this, read Family driven faith. 
  4. Make time. The quality time argument is a myth. Your kids don’t need or want quality time, they want quantity. A big difference. Make time for daddy dates, family meal time. You may have to give up some hobbies as a parent. I haven’t golfed in 7 years. I’ll retire one day and golf then and I’ll be terrible at it. Studies show, kids who have regular meals with their parents are less likely to do drugs, smoke, have sex, run with the wrong crowd, and they get better grades.
  5. Don’t sacrifice the mission field in front of you. This argument often comes up in the discussion of a mom working. I’ve had mom’s tell me, “At work, there are so many people who don’t know Jesus, God has placed me there.” Each one who told me that then sent their kids off to have someone else raise them in daycare. What they did, while sounding noble, “living on mission at work”, they sacrificed the first mission field God gave them: their kids.
  6. Bring the gospel into conversations when your children sin. When your child sins, talk to them about it. Ask why they did that? What is controlling them? Ask your teenager why they wear that? What does that communicate about their self-image, how they believe God made them? Ask until you get an answer. Then, seek ways to bring the gospel into that. Talk about how because of Jesus we are approved, we don’t need to control things, we don’t need to be the most important. When you punish them, don’t walk away. Remind them of your love, of God’s grace and how Jesus took our punishment but there are still consequences. For more on this, read Give them grace. 
6 ways to bring the gospel into your parenting.

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Time Management Through a Strategic Lens

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time management

I was talking with another leader today about how to use your time as a leader. As a pastor, there is a lot to get done. People to meet with, sermons to write and preach, growing as a leader, developing leaders, counseling, walking with others. Throw in being married, a parent and the list continues to grow.

The same can be said about any job. There typically is more to do than time to do it in.

The question then becomes, “What do you do? How do you decide what you do?”

The answer to this question determines a lot about your effectiveness as a leader, spouse, parent, friend.

Typically, we do what is urgent or is a need. For many pastors, they meet with the people who are the loudest, the ones who are clamoring for attention. They might also meet with the ones who ask the most or people they want to keep happy.

As a leader, you need to continually ask yourself a series of questions about how you spend your time:

  1. What do I do that adds the most value to my church or organization?
  2. What uses my gifts and talents to their fullest extent?
  3. What do I love to do that energizes me?
  4. What can’t I give away?
  5. When am I most alert, creative, awake to do those things?
5 questions to use your time wisely

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For me, the elders have determined that I add the most value to Revolution through preaching and then developing leaders (through the staff and missional communities), and connecting with new people. There are others leaders at Revolution who fill in gaps in other areas.

This means, I need to block out time for my sermon prep. I need to make sure it gets prime time for when my mind is alert, I’m creative and can get some quiet. For me, that is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. I’m most awake in the morning. I can clear my calendar in the mornings, etc. This means I don’t check my email until lunch on those days. I stay away from breakfast meetings on those days (unless I need to schedule one).

Think in terms of percentage, not hours. This is a helpful idea for me. If you think about something you do, you might think, “I only spent 5 hours on it this week.” That might be true, but if you worked a 45-50 hour work week, that means you spent 9% of your week on that one thing. Was that strategic? The best use of your time? Was that a good way to use almost 10% of your week? I don’t know the answer to that. But thinking in terms of percentage of time instead of hours has been a helpful change for me.

Needs are real and will always be there. Some needs can wait, most needs are not as pressing as they first seem. Someone else may be able to meet the need in your place, and may do a better job than you at meeting that need.

I keep coming back to how can I be more strategic, how can I use my time to get the most value for the kingdom out of it, how can I steward my time well.

How to be more strategic in how you spend your time

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What I Doubt about God

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doubt

I had a conversation recently with some friends and they asked how you discern the idols of your heart. We talk about this quite a bit at Revolution and what the gospel truth is. While there are some questions that others have developed that are very helpful, they pointed out that for them it seems to be a moving target.

One thing I pointed out that has helped me is discerning idols of the heart is what you doubt about God first or most.

For me, with a Reformed lens, I love the sovereignty of God. I rest in it, trust in it, believe in it wholeheartedly. It makes sense, I see it all over Scripture. It answers the deepest questions I ask. It is one of the easiest things for me to believe about God. When life does not go as I planned, seems out of my control, the sovereignty of God is the first thing I doubt.

Think about the approval idol. Someone who wrestles with this has a hard time believing they are loved by God. When they sin, the have doubts about God’s grace, forgiveness, that he will accept them in spite of their sin. They need to grow in God’s grace.

When it comes to comfort, in the moments of doubt and sin, those who struggle with this don’t believe God is good. They believe there is something else that is better than God in that moment.

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The Details of God

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exodus

Katie and I are reading through the Bible right now and I just got done with Exodus and I’m moving into Leviticus.

One of the things that blew me away in Exodus are the details of God. While Exodus is a great story of how big and powerful God is, a great reminder about how God rescues us and redeems us.

Exodus shows the details to which God goes to redeem us. The details of the plagues, the provision of Israel in the wilderness. The details of the sacrifices and worship. Everything has been thought through.

It is a great reminder to me of how important all the things, big and small, in my life are to God. There is no detail too small, no detail that’s unimportant.

It also shows what God redeems us from. This past week, I preached on how the gospel frees us from our past, old ways of thinking and feeling. In Exodus, God goes to great length to show Israel that they are a new people, a redeemed people, his people. The passover is a great picture of this, the details that God gives them on how to eat, when, how quickly, etc. Showing them, you have a new identity, a new way.

Exodus also shows us how quickly the Israelites forget who God is, who they are, what God has rescued them from, what he has done for them and in them, and how quickly they fall back into old ways of thinking, feeling and believing. They complain more than almost anyone else in the Bible it seems. On and on they go, whining about how slavery is better than freedom.

I wonder if when we sin and fall into old ways of thinking, we are like the nation of Israelites. My old body image, my old goals and dreams, my old way of looking and thinking about money, marriage, sex, career, kids are better than a new way that’s formed in the gospel.

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20 Ways to Tell What Your Idols Are

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Before we can eliminate the idols in our life, we must first realize what (who) they are.

We all have idols. We are all idolaters to one degree or another. We all are in need of repentance and restoration. We all are in desperate need to undergo serious spiritual alignment so that our passions are proportionally directed at God and not at a god or gods.

So, how then do we discern what are our idols? How can we become increasingly clear-sighted rather than remaining in their power?

Here are twenty questions that we need to transparently answer in order for our idols to be revealed to us:

1.What do we fear the most?

2.What, if we lost it, would make life not worth living?

3.What controls our mood?

4.What do I respond to with explosive anger or deep despair?

5.What dominates our relationships?

6.What do we dream about when our mind is on idle-mode?

7.To what do our thoughts effortlessly drift towards?

8.What do we enjoy day-dreaming about?

9.What am I preoccupied with?

10. What is the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing on my mind at night?

11. Where or in whom do I put my trust?

12. What occupies my mind when we have nothing else to think about?

13. Do we day-dream about purchasing material goods that you (we) don’t need, with money you (we) don’t have to impress the people you (we) do not like?

14. What do you habitually, systematically and undoubtedly drift towards in order to obtain peace, joy and happiness in the privacy of your heart?

15. How do we spend our (God’s) money?

  • Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also” (Matt. 6:21).
  • Your money flows most effortlessly toward your heart’s greatest love. In fact, the mark of an idol is that you spend too much money on it, and you must try to exercise self-control constantly. Our patterns of spending reveal our idols.

16. What is my real, daily functional savior?

17. What is my real – not my [professed] – god?

18. How do I respond to unanswered prayers?

19. When a certain desire is not met, do I feel frustration, anxiety, resentment, bitterness, anger, or depression?

20. Is there something I desire so much that I am willing to disappoint or hurt others in order to have it?

When we ask ourselves these penetrating questions, there yields a continuity of our idolatry. The answers to these questions uncover the following:

  • Whether we serve God or idols
  • Whether we look for salvation from Christ or from false saviors
  • Whether we rely on our Deliverer or other pseudo-messiahs.
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Discerning Your Idols

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We often talk about idols of the heart and the gospel at Revolution. I will get questions about how you determine what your idols are, what is it that your heart longs for, how do you discern them and learn how the gospel transforms them.

Recently, I came across some great diagnostic questions in the Porterbrook curriculum that we will be using for our Surge School to discern what the idols of your heart are:

  • If you are angry, ask, ― Is there something too important to me? Something I am telling myself I have to have? Is that why I am angry — because I am being blocked from having something I think is a necessity when it is not?
  • If you are fearful or badly worried, ask, ―Is there something too important to me? Something I am telling myself I have to have? Is that why I am so scared — because something is being threatened which I think is a necessity when it is not?
  • If you are despondent or hating yourself, ask, Is there something too important to me? Something I have to have? Is that why I am so down — because I have lost or failed at something which I think is a necessity, but which is not