Even with the disappointments, raising children is the greatest thing you will ever do. The first thing to remember when parenting with grace is to give grace you have to receive grace. Grace based parenting is a forever endeavor. Grace based parenting is based on this reality – no matter how hard you try, forever only comes from God…
II Samuel 7:7-11 MSG
11-16 “Furthermore, GOD has this message for you: GOD himself will build you a house! When your life is complete and you’re buried with your ancestors, then I’ll raise up your child, your own flesh and blood, to succeed you, and I’ll firmly establish his rule. He will build a house to honor me, and I will guarantee his kingdom’s rule permanently. I’ll be a father to him, and he’ll be a son to me. When he does wrong, I’ll discipline him in the usual ways, the pitfalls and obstacles of this mortal life. But I’ll never remove my gracious love from him, as I removed it from Saul, who preceded you and whom I most certainly did remove. Your family and your kingdom are permanently secured. I’m keeping my eye on them! And your royal throne will always be there, rock solid.”
We’re the beneficiaries of prayers we know nothing about. God was working long before we arrived on the scene, and He’s using us to set up the next generation…
I. We tend to think right here, right now.
II Kings 8:16-19 NKJV
16 Now in the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat having been king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat began to reign as king of Judah. 17 He was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. 18 And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife; and he did evil in the sight of the LORD. 19 Yet the LORD would not destroy Judah, for the sake of His servant David, as He promised him to give a lamp to him and his sons forever.
II. To fulfill this promise to David, God sent a messenger to empower this
promise in the Earth…
John 1:1 NIV
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:14 NIV
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
A. Notice that there isn’t a comma between
B. John isn’t handing us a
C. He is saying that Christ is filled with
Grace and truth are two parts that make up a single whole.
D. So, it is with parenting with grace…
1. You can’t have grace when you have
2. In fact, that is the ideal
3. You cannot assume that you are even in the area code of grace if your way of raising kids is confined to making sure they
4. If any of your children balk at all the
Ephesians 6:1 NIV
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
5. Many times, parents impose their personal taste into arguments over rules
and regulations and are
6. God never intended Ephesians 6:1 to be used to pistol-whip our kids.
Ephesians 6:2-3 NKJV
2 “Honor your father and mother,”which is the first commandment with promise: 3 “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”
III. One of the standard ploys of grace-less Christian parents is to abuse scripture to get their own way.
A. Now watch how scripture can be used like a
wife.
Ephesians 5:22 NKJV
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
1. The spiritual principle is between a
Ephesians 5:25 NKJV
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.
2. Likewise, husbands loving their
3. These verses aren’t
God’s
Ephesians 5:22-33 TPT
22 For wives, this means being devoted to your husbands like you are tenderly devoted to our Lord, 23 for the husband provides leadership for the wife, just as Christ provides leadership for his church, as the Savior and Reviver of the body. 24 In the same way the church is devoted to Christ, let the wives be devoted to their husbands in everything. 25 And to the husbands, you are to demonstrate love for your wives with the same tender devotion that Christ demonstrated to us, his bride. For he died for us, sacrificing himself 26 to make us holy and pure, cleansing us through the showering of the pure water of the Word of God. 27 All that he does in us is designed to make us a mature church for his pleasure, until we become a source of praise to him—glorious and radiant, beautiful and holy, without fault or flaw. 28 Husbands have the obligation of loving and caring for their wives the same way they love and care for their own bodies, for to love your wife is to love your own self. 29 No one
abuses his own body, but pampers it—serving and satisfying its needs. That’s exactly what Christ does for his church! 30 He serves and satisfies us as members of his body. 31 For this reason a man is to leave his father and his mother and lovingly hold to his wife, since the two have become joined as one flesh. 32 Marriage is the beautiful design of the Almighty, a great mystery of Christ and his church. 33 So every married man should be gracious to his wife just as he is gracious to himself. And every wife should be tenderly devoted to her husband.
IV. You can’t turn your personal issues as a parent into spiritual issues.
A. Here is more wisdom and balance for Ephesians 6:1…
Ephesians 6:4 NIV
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
Word Nugget: “Exasperate” in the Greek text translates as to “irritate beyond measure.” The idea is guarding against turning personal issues into spiritual issues.
B. Training and instruction require large sacrificial
Colossians 3:21 NIV
21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
Word Nugget: Embitter” translates in the Greek text asn “to rouse them to strife.” Think about it…what has Christ done to provoke you or irritate you beyond measure?
C. In the end our