Parenting: Day 2

Grace

In this video, Paul David Tripp explains the reality that God never calls us to our role as parents without giving us everything we need to accomplish the task. Our needs meet his all-sufficient grace in every parenting responsibility we face.

About the Book

What is your calling as a parent?

In the midst of folding laundry, coordinating carpool schedules, and breaking up fights, many parents get lost. Feeling pressure to do everything “right” and raise up “good” children, it’s easy to lose sight of our ultimate purpose as parents in the quest for practical tips and guaranteed formulas.

In Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family, Paul David Tripp offers parents much more than a to-do list. Instead, he presents us with a big-picture view of God’s plan for us as parents. Outlining fourteen foundational principles centered on the gospel, he shows that we need more than the latest parenting strategy or list of techniques. Rather, we need the rescuing grace of God—grace that has the power to shape how we view everything we do as parents.

Freed from the burden of trying to manufacture life-change in our children’s hearts, we can embrace a grand perspective of parenting overflowing with vision, purpose, and joy.

Video Transcript

God never calls you to your task as a parent without giving you what is necessary to do it. God never sends you as a parent without going with you. What is really important to understand as a parent is that God doesn’t call people to be parents because they’re able, but because he is. He doesn’t call you because you’re wise, but because he is. He doesn’t call you because you’re faithful, but because he is. He doesn't call you because you're strong, but because he is.

You see, he meets you by his grace. How important is that? You’re going to fail, but there is forgiveness for your failing. You are going to be weak, but there is strength for those moments of weakness. You are going to have times where you don’t know what to do, but there’s wisdom for those moments. As a parent, you are never left to your little package of resources. Your Savior has invaded your parenting with his grace.

His grace is your hope. It allows you to own your weaknesses. It allows you to confess your failures. It allows you to admit moments when you’ve been foolish, and not panic, because God meets you in every moment of parenting by glorious, sufficient, tender, forgiving, transforming grace.

As a parent myself, that gets me up in the morning.