16 Jan Big Picture Parenting

My offering to you today is a short, simple reminder of the task we’ve been given. Why do we do what we do?

I struggle mightily as a parent. We have four under the age of nine and we are in the thick of it. Diapers and temper tantrums, sweaty hugs and stubborn toddlers, and fierce sibling rivalry combined with all the emotions.

I heard a statistic today that 50% of evangelical youth leave the church in college. Fifty percent. And I look at my small ones and wonder desperately if I am good enough. Am I doing enough? Are my days of small beginnings enough to keep these babes safe on the narrow way?

WRONG QUESTION

Here’s the thing. In my pride, in my arrogance, I keep making it about me. About how MY children behave in the grocery store. How MY children punch each other. How MY children leave their clothes wadded up in the bathroom floor for the eighty billionth time, and move at the speed of sloth.

Paul Tripp writes the following in his book Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family: 

Ownership parenting is motivated and shaped by what parents want for their children and from their children. It is driven by a vision of what we want our children to be and what we want our children to give us in return. It seems right, it feels right, and it does many good things, but it is foundationally misguided and misdirected and will not produce what God intends in the lives that he has entrusted to our care. Good parenting begins with this radical and humbling recognition that our children don’t belong to us. Rather, every child in every home belongs to the One who created him or her. Children are God’s possession for His purpose. That means that his plan for parents is that we would be his agents in the lives of these ones that have been formed into His image and entrusted to His care. 

PRAY OVER YOUR CHILDREN

I am not suggesting that we cease in training up our children in how to behave in the grocery store, or how not to punch their brothers. However, when I cease to worry about appearances and measurable results, I begin to shepherd my children more in the care and keeping of the gospel.

My children are for His glory, not mine.

And so when I ask my husband to write our family mission statement (almost a bridge too far for him), it begins and ends with knowing Jesus more. And in the dark of the evening when we slip into their rooms to feast our eyes on the gift of our children, we murmur again and again our prayers to the Namer and Counter of Stars, who knit them, who knows them.

“… That you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”  (From Ephesians 3).

That is big picture parenting for this tired momma of four, shepherding, not owning. And praying, always praying. (I have purposed to memorize this prayer and place the names of children in it, praying it with them, not just for them.)

How will you big picture parent this year?? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

~Molly