Gospel-Centered Parenting

Parenting is hard! This is not new to many of you. There are books and books out there dedicated to parenting children in all stages of life and sometimes it's hard to discern what is good teaching and what is not. Aaron and I have made meager attempts to have a Gospel-centered approach to all things in our household, especially parenting. Most Christians would say this, but, unfortunately, because we are all sinners, much of what we read and much of what we practice becomes self-centered or child-centered (which basically teaches our kids to be self-centered). One book that has been very helpful to us is called "Shepherding a Child's Heart" by Tedd Tripp. As with any book, we don't agree with every aspect of it, but the basic principles are great. Basically, Mr. Tripp teaches that we are all sinners (including our children) in need of a savior and we should seek to point our children to the Gospel in all that we teach them. One complaint I have about the book is that it doesn't spend as much time addressing how to do this with really young children. Jack is just now starting to get old enough to "get it," but the girls aren't quite to that point yet. When they were all younger, like 1 and 2 year-olds, it was really hard. I was reading C.J. Mahaney's blog this morning and there was an except from a Q&A session with he and his wife, Carolyn, about this very subject. They have raised 3 daughters, who have all grown into Godly women and they have a 15 year-old son, who is a Christian. So, they have a lot of wisdom to share with the rest of us! Here is a link to that clip and I encourage you to take the 6.5 minutes to listen to it this afternoon.

http://sovereigngraceministries.com/Blog/post/Gospel-Centered-Parenting-2b-Young-Children.aspx