Parenting: Day 9
Foolishness
In this video, Paul David Tripp explains why the foolishness inside your children is much more dangerous to them than the temptations outside of them.
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
The foolishness in the heart of your child is in fact much more dangerous to him or her than the temptations outside of them. It's only ever the foolishness inside your child that hooks them to the foolishness in the world outside of them. I don't rescue the child just by protecting him from the outside world. I have to help this child to see the foolishness that's inside his heart.
How does the Bible talk about foolishness? The Psalms ultimately say that the most important aspect of foolishness is a denial of God. When the Psalms talk about that it's not talking about philosophical atheism, it's talking about people who live as if they don't need God, don't need his wisdom, his power, his presence, or his grace.
When I tell myself that I don't need God, when God is not in the center of my worldview, guess who I put there? I insert myself in the center. I make it all about me—my wants, my feelings, my plans. That's never a pathway to a life of peace, joy, satisfaction, and hope.
What do fools need? They need rescue. And only God's grace has the power of rescuing fools, because fools need to be rescued from themselves. I can run from a situation, I can run from a location, I can run from a circumstance, but I can't run from me. That's true of your children, as well.
Look at your children. Understand that they're fools, and commit yourself to being a tool of God's rescue.