32nd Day of Lent: Seeing God's Heart of Order in Parenting: Co-Parenting with the Trinity

I​f​ you google "parenting,"  there are​ a mere​ 81,300​,000 sites to check out!

Martin Luther once wrote that "human nature is like a drunk peasant.  Lift him into the saddle on one side, and over he topples on the other side."   

This seems to be a pretty apt description when it comes to parenting, as styles of parenting have swung from one end of the pendulum to the other over the ages- from  an austere "children should be seen but not heard" authoritarian style to a "my child's every whim will be satisfied" permissive style.

It begs the question, does parenting have a divine order?

"How have we come to parent as though our child's greatest needs are to be prepared for sports, school, and succeeding in this life rather than being prepared to face eternity?

 

Oftentimes we as parents want to ensure that our children get all the good things the world offers, throw in a dash of Christian camps, a cup of youth programs (when it doesn't conflict with something else), some bedtime prayer, and  end up with good, happy, successful adults who love the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We trust in our children and ourselves way too much. 

And we trust and depend on God way too little. 

Until things blow up.

The divine order of parenting is that God always delights parents back into the infinite loop of love and grace so that when we receive "wake up" calls into our lives; daily hardships, difficult children, sickness, financial burdens...

that we will go running to Him. And not to ourselves.

We have no power to change or incline sinful hearts toward God; this is the ordered relationship of love within the Trinity, yet we are graciously allowed to participate in His saving work with our children:

The divine order of parenting is that we co-parent with the Trinity:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  

It may require rethinking our assumptions and our calling as parents.

We are responsible to teach our children the fear of the Lord, to impress his laws on them when we "sit at home and when [we] walk along the road, when [we] lie down and when [we] get up"—meaning all the time (Deut. 6:7). 

And we are commanded to not exasperate our children, but to "bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord" (Eph. 6:4).

But we must be clear about our own limits. 

We are not capable of producing perfect followers of Christ, as if we were perfect ourselves. 

Our work cannot purchase anyone else's salvation or sanctification. 

Parents with unbelieving children, friends with children in jail, the discoveries of the geneticists, and the faith heroes in Hebrews 11 are all powerful reminders of this truth: 

We will parent imperfectly, our children will make their own choices, and God will mysteriously and wondrously use it all to advance his kingdom.

Scripture has taught us this all along. Even when we do everything right, it's time to acknowledge our own limits.

We are not sovereign over our children—only God is. 

Children are not tomatoes to stake out or mules to train, nor are they numbers to plug into an equation. 

They are full human beings wondrously and fearfully made. 

Parenting, like all tasks under the sun, is intended as an endeavor of love, risk, perseverance, and, above all, faith.

It is faith rather than formula, grace rather than guarantees, steadfastness rather than success that bridges the gap between our own parenting efforts, and what, by God's grace, our children grow up to become.

The good news is it's never too late, even if our children are grown and have walked away from the Lord. While there may be painful consequences as a result of past choices we or our children have made, we have a God who delights in displaying His ordered love and grace and bringing all of us THROUGH our brokenness, and back to Him.  

So let us pray for one another and for our children, never giving up with what God has entrusted to us- whether it is a difficult child, marriage, singleness, or challenges that seem beyond our abilities.  Excerpted from "Don't Try This at Home- Parenting without God, by Linda Green

That is where the Trinity shines,  in the places that we see as impossibilities!

Lyn Woodruff, in The River Prayer Reflections text group.