BOOK REVIEW | Parenting

Paul David Tripp is well known for the way that he is able to help people study God’s word in a way that impacts everything in life. He writes about discipleship of self, discipling others, raising kids, marriage, suffering, prayer, money, and just about anything you can imagine. I’m even working through a Lenten devotional right now that he wrote. His book simply called Parenting is a gift that I’ve passed along to several people and decided it was time to re-read for myself!

I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…

  • Parenting is being willing to expend your time, gifts, energies and resources in a daily battle of worship as God’s tool in the lies of your children. It’s never just about food, friends, Facebook, home work, sleep-time, clothes, household rules, or sibling squabbles. Those things are struggles because there is a deeper war going on inside the hearts of your children. Every struggle in these areas is an opportunity that is given to you by a God of amazing grace to get at those deeper issues for the sake of the redemption, rescue, and transformation of your children. And God will give you everything you need to engage yourself in that deeper war. p.162
  • As a parent you have been called to something more foundational than the control of the behavior of the children that God has entrusted to your care. p.165
  • It is vital to remember that God will never ever ask you to be anything more than a tool in his powerful and capable hands. You are freed from the burden of changing your children. You have been liberated from the responsibility to make them believe. You have not been asked to cause them to think or desire what is right. You are simply called to expose what is bad, point to what is good, and talk about the Redeemer who can lead them from the one to the other. Resist loading onto your shoulders what your shoulders can’t carry, and celebrate the fact that Jesus is with you, in you, and for you, doing through you what you couldn’t do. p. 203
  • This book has been an elaborate discussion of one thing: God’s call to you to be an essential part of his mission of rescue of the children he has given you. But it has not been just about the mission that he has sent you on, but also about the fact that he has gone with you. He doesn’t ask you to do what you can’t do, and he is eternally willing to do what only he can do. So he blesses you with his presence, power, wisdom, and grace. He faithfully parents you, so that by his faithful grace you can faithfully parent your children.

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