5 Questions to Help You Disciple Your Children Out of Their Spiritual Blindness

Helping Your Child See What They Don’t

Active rebellion. Passive resistance. Foolish choices. What’s the common denominator that links how your child rejects their knowledge of God and his ways?

It seems like a good idea to them at the time.

When your children sin, they truly believe that what they do will give them a better world than the one you’ve tried to hold out as good and desirable. They’re spiritually blind—and they don’t know it.

Your calling as a parent is to speak into their darkness with words to try to help them see what they don’t. You may first need to restore peace and order to any chaos they’ve brought. But afterward, your goal is to help them see that God’s ways of living really are better than anything else that they could want.

What’s that look like? Think in terms of five different areas of blindness that you’re trying to bring light to.

Parenting with Words of Grace

William P. Smith

Offering practical guidance for grace-filled communication in the midst of the craziness of everyday life, Parenting with Words of Grace will help you speak in ways that reflect the grace God has shown to you in the gospel.

1. Can they see what their heart is doing?

First, you and your child need to see the effect on his or her heart. Jesus—and the rest of Scripture—talks about an invisible part of a person that drives and controls all the rest. So, the behavior you can see from your child comes from a deeper worshiping core that you can’t see (Luke 6:43–45). Words that only address his or her behavior fail to disciple your child in the faith—or worse, those words disciple them into an alternative faith.

For instance, what happens if you tell your child something like, “You wouldn’t like it if someone did that to you, would you? Of course not. So, you shouldn’t do that to anyone else.” Do that and you will disciple them into being driven by their own self-interest—to what feels good for them. You won’t disciple them into loving God or others. Instead, your words will turn them inward, not outward, as the first and second greatest commandments do (Matt. 22:36–40).

Instead, you want to use words that make their heart visible. Ask something like, “What was more important to you just now rather than ______ [listening to me, telling the truth, brushing your teeth, cleaning up your room, sharing with your sister, coming home on time, etc.]? What did you want, value, long for, desire? How come you did what you did?”

Use your words to help make visible their invisible heart.

2. Can they see the ugliness of what their heart has produced?

Second, since your child was deceived by their heart into thinking that sin looked good in the moment (Heb. 3:13), help them see how ugly it really is.

Here it can be helpful to compare the kind of world that God’s laws produce with the kind that their lawlessness does.

Ask them, “You didn’t do what you know is good and right, so, what’s come out of that? What are the consequences to others? What are they feeling or having to go through? What’s now broken that wasn’t before? How are you feeling about this?”

If your child is old enough, you can then ask them to imagine what life would be like right now if they had lived like God has said to live.

Sin always looks pleasurable in the moment (Heb. 11:25)—otherwise there’d be no point in pursuing it! Part of discipling your child means helping them see that it ends up making a world that no one wants to live in (Prov. 14:12).

Use your words to help them understand the difference between real beauty and its ugly counterfeit.

Words that only address his or her behavior fail to disciple your child in the faith—or worse, those words disciple them into an alternative faith.

3. Can they see the gospel?

Third, you need to help them see Jesus. If all they learn to see are the first two things above, then you’ve led them to where all secular and religious systems have to go: “Here’s what you did wrong, here’s why you did it, you’re better than that, so I expect you to do better.” End there, and you’ve simply discipled your child into one more version of moralism.

Here’s the alternative: help them see that what Jesus has done connects with what they have done. It starts with him forgiving their failings by what he did in his sufferings and death.

Now, you have to be careful of your own heart here. It would be so easy to want your child to make your life easier and to manipulate them by saying something like, “Jesus had to die because you’re so mean to your brother.”

There’s a world of difference between using gospel-sounding words to jerk your child around emotionally versus holding out God’s love and mercy to them when they are cut to the heart by a sense of their sin (Acts 2:37). One approach comes directly from hell while the other comes from heaven itself. Before you speak, make sure your desire is for your child’s best and not for some agenda of your own.

When your heart is ready, you want to tie Christ’s work to your child’s work by helping them see that if they trust him to save them, then there’s a promise for them that sounds like:

“Jesus doesn’t take from you to make you pay for stealing. He forgives you by giving his life for you.”
“Jesus doesn’t lie to you about lying. He tells you the truth that lying is so bad, someone has to die because of it, and that he was willing to do so because he loves you.”
“Jesus doesn’t hit you for hitting. He forgives you by letting the people who arrested and tried him hit him instead.”
“Jesus doesn’t yell at you for yelling. He forgives you by letting a crowd yell for him to be crucified.”
“Jesus doesn’t hate you for hating. He loves you by putting your hatred to death in his body on the cross.”

You may not always see quickly how the gospel connects to them in their situation. You may need to pray and think and ask others to help you. That’s important work to make time for, so that you can help your children understand how much Jesus loves them and how much he’s done for them.

Use your words to help them see Jesus’s love for them in what he’s provided for them. But don’t stop there, because the gospel is about much more than forgiveness. It’s also about living a new life.

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4. Can they see what is possible in Christ?

The glory of having Jesus live in us by his Spirit is that we now have his track record. On the cross he became responsible for our sin, and in return, he now shares his righteousness with us—his good standing before God (2 Cor. 5:21). That’s something we have both right now and also that we grow into.

That means you can tell your child, “When Jesus lives in you, you now have a kind of life that wants the same things that he wants. One day you’ll only want what he wants, but here on earth we can already start to love the things that he loves. You need to grow in that (Phil. 2:12), and you’re able to because he puts those desires in you (Phil. 2:13). So, what do you think Jesus would want right now in his heart, after everything that’s happened?”

This would be a great time to pray with and for your child—asking forgiveness, thanking Jesus for loving them so much, and asking for his Spirit to make his desires something that they desire and want to grow in.

Use your words to show what it means that Christ in you is at work in your child’s daily life.

5. Can they see what would be good to do now?

Finally, the gospel means that there is always a way to live faithfully after you’ve been unfaithful. True repentance is not simply being sad and turning from sin but actively living out the new life that we’ve been given (2 Cor. 7:9–11). But your child will probably need some help to see what that might look like.

So, ask them, “What do you think God would want you to do now in this situation based on the desires that Jesus has given you?” Talk that over with them and then urge them to do that with all the strength that God gives them (1 Pet. 4:11).

Use your words to help them see what godly living looks like.

There’s no guarantee that your child will take you up on being discipled by you. And so you may try going down this road only to see them reject your attempts. But your calling as a parent isn’t based on producing results or the apparent lack of them. Your calling is to partner with the Lord by presenting his gospel to your child as clearly as you can while you trust him to open blind eyes now, like he did while he lived on earth.

William P. Smith is the author of Parenting with Words of Grace: Building Relationships with Your Children One Conversation at a Time.

William P. Smith (PhD, Rutgers University; MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a pastor, author, and retreat speaker who has served several churches, been a faculty member of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation, and taught practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is the author of Loving Well (Even If You Haven't Been) and numerous other books and booklets.

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