Hey guys,

Check out the post “Hard Thoughts About God In Parenting” where C.J. Mahaney gives practical advice for how we can reflect the love of God to our children.

Here’s Tony Reinke’s introduction:

In his recent sermons on Jude, C.J. spoke about the tendency of Christians to have an inaccurate view of God the Father and to have “hard thoughts about God.”

In the first message C.J. said, “I have interacted with many Christians over the years who are not certain of God’s love for them. They can be reluctant to admit it, but they aren’t convinced in their heart and mind that God loves them. In light of their sin and the holiness of God they wonder whether God does indeed love them.”

After the message C.J. received an email from a father who fears that he is unintentionally introducing to his children these hard thoughts about God. He wants to know what to do to model the grace and love of God to his children. Here is the email exchange between C.J. and John (not his real name).

Click here to read the email exchange.

My four boys have been enjoying these videos tremendously! They’re a great compliment to the song CD “To Be Like Jesus,” which is often playing in our house.   I am so grateful for Gospel-centered songs that help us teach our children the Gospel and its implications. For us, songs like these have become wonderful reference points for biblical instruction, encouragement and correction.  Enjoy!

Instructing a Child’s Heart, a resource for parenting, is filled with biblical wisdom and insight that applies not only to children, but to adults as well. In his chapter, “Giving Children a Vision for the Glory of God” Tedd Tripp writes:

There is a transcendent satisfaction in God which trials and difficulties cannot diminish and which success and pleasure cannot enhance. – Tedd Tripp (p.103, Instructing a Child’s Heart)

By faith, may we see the glory of Christ as revealed in the Gospel and be satisfied – and may we help our children to do the same.

This Sunday, December 6th, we have the joy of welcoming Dave Harvey to preach.  Dave Harvey is responsible for church care, church planting, and international expansion for Sovereign Grace Ministries. He has served as a member of the Sovereign Grace Ministries leadership team since 1995.  Dave has been in pastoral ministry at Covenant Fellowship Church (Glen Mills, PA) since 1986, was ordained in 1988, and served as senior pastor from 1990 to 2008. Dave will be bringing a message he’s entitled “Parenting In Weakness,” a message designed to help parents encounter God’s grace in the midst of parenting challenges.

I am looking forward to my friend Marty Machowski addressing us tomorrow from God’s Word on the topic of parenting.  For those who don’t know, Marty is one of the Family Life pastors at Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, PA.  Over the years I’ve benefited immeasurably from both Marty’s teaching and his example; his example as a disciple, a husband, a father and as a faithful pastor.  And this is one of the reasons I am excited for you to hear from him once again tomorrow.

Well, to whet your appetite, let me pass along to you a quote from a memorable sermon Marty gave here last year out of Deuteronomy 6:

Deut 6:5 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.”

This is both the most sobering and comforting of any parent teaching you will ever get. If you get this one point right, you can fail in the rest of your parenting and your children will have all that they need. That is how critical this is. The reason why is because if your relationship with the Lord is vibrant and strong, you’ve got the Spirit of God to convict you in all the other areas. None of us are perfect. And it’s actually those imperfections, if directed under the gaze of the Gospel and repentance that are our best tudors for our children. So often we can find ourselves thinking things like: “I just want to do really good at raising my children, but I haven’t always done a great job spending a lot of time with them. Or I want to read to my children, but I haven’t always done that well either. Or I just was a lousy teacher when I homeschooled my kids—or I never went over their homework.” We can think things like, “I’ve broken a lot of promises.”

Our mistakes are opportunities. If we love the Lord, our successes in life and in parenting will tell our children “God’s grace is sufficient.” If we love the Lord in front of them, all of our successes will be translated into “Do you understand? I have this because God has given it to me. My success is not of my own strength. It is the grace of God. And that communicates to our children, “Christianity works!” But if I love the Lord and I fail, well then I confess my sin and I receive forgiveness. And so for example, if I sin against my wife and out of my love for the Lord I restore quickly my relationship with her, I am a failure as a husband in that moment when I sinned, but my children don’t see failure, they see hope. We must remember, if we love the Lord, our successes communicate the grace of God; and our failures communicate the grace of God. And so if you get this point right–if this is the only point you get right in your parenting, get this right.

Our indifference to God is the only killer. If we fail to be stirred up toward godliness and to pursuing God, what testimony do we have to pass along? If we are indifferent to sin and we fail to repent and confess, we have no credibility in the eyes of our children. They see us as hypocrites. Hypocrites are not ones who say one thing and do another if when they do the other, they realize that they are wrong and confess that they strayed. That’s not a hypocrite. A hypocrite is to say one thing, do another and be indifferent to care.

I was inspired by this post by Tony Reinke (CJ Mahaney’s personal assistant) and thought it would encourage the parents in our church.

Christian parents have many reasons to thank to God for all the practical resources now available on parenting. We easily forget that biblically informed and cross-centered books, articles, and conferences have not been around forever.

But as I know from personal experience, this wealth of material at our fingertips can also subtly lead us to believe successful parenting is merely the accumulation of sound bite suggestions, reading the right material, and accurately putting all this into practice. Discernment and practice are critical, but even more essential to successful parenting is the active grace and power of our sovereign God. Like few other responsibilities, parenting reveals our human weaknesses and provides us with many opportunities for prayer.

Read the whole thing.