Guests: Nick Bellamy and Johnny Farr

Introduction

Good parenting, which does what God intends it to do, begins with this radical and humbling recognition that our children don’t actually belong to us.

Good parents don’t always produce good kids, and parents should constantly be asking themselves where they get the set of values that tell them whether they have “good” kids or not.

Chapter 1 Calling

Principle: Nothing is more important in your life than being one of God’s tools to form a human soul.

How has the value of career success impacted your commitment to the work that God has called you to as parents?

• Your Life…Well Spent: The Eternal Rewards of Investing Yourself and Your Money in Your Family by Russ Crosson

Your work as a parent is a thing of extreme value because God has designed that you would be a principal, consistent, and faithful tool in his hands for the purpose of creating God-consciousness and God-submission in your children.

Your kids will never be what they’re supposed to be or do if they lack God-consciousness.

Chapter 2 Grace

Principle: God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do it. He never sends you without going with you.

No child really wants to be parents by parents who think that they’re able. “Able” parents tend to be proud and self-assured parents.

And “able” parents tend to want their children to be trophies, a public demonstration of their ability.

God’s greatest and most wonderful gift to you as a parent is himself! He knows how hard your task is. 

Here’s the humbling conclusion that God, in grace, led me to: I am more like my children than unlike them - and so are you!

Chapter 3 Law

Principle: Your children need God’s law, but you cannot ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish.

If rules and regulations had the power to change the heart and life of your child, rescuing your child from himself and giving him a heart of submission and faith, Jesus would have never needed to come!

A child who does not see himself clearly will resist his parents’ wisdom, guidance, discipline, and correction. Why? Because he doesn’t think he needs it.

It’s not our children’s sin that is in the way of good parenting; it’s our tendency to make parenting about our little kingdom of wants, needs, and desires, and our tendency to want our children to serve the purposes of our kingdom rather than submit to the purposes of God’s kingdom.

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