Parenting: A Privilege and a Battleground
Parenting is an extraordinary privilege, but it’s not without its challenges. It tests our hearts, stretches our faith, and is a huge arena spiritual warfare – the enemy wants you to take your eyes of Jesus and rob you of your joy. He’ll try and do that in your parenting as much as any other area of life, if not more, because of how invested our hearts are in the growth of our children.
Many people find parenting a challenge at times, we do – there is no one single ‘magic’ phrase, free app, discipline technique, or book that can be the answer to all your questions and make you’re a ‘perfect’ parent (they don’t exist). Every family is different, every age group brings its own challenges, every child and every background is different. In moments of uncertainty, pain, or isolation, it’s easy to feel alone, but God promises to walk with us through every high and low. Just as He stood with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace, He stands with us in the refining fire of parenting.
Our greatest desire for our children is that they would come to know Christ for themselves so that they would come to know life and have it in abundance. Our desire is that whatever they face and wherever they go, they would know the peace of God and the presence and power of the Spirit in this life and have the hope of everlasting life. This short blog aims to help you as a parent to outwork this desire in a faith-filled, gospel-centred, God-honouring way:
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Four Principles to Parenting our Children Toward Jesus:
1. Embrace Grace in the Challenges
Parenting isn’t easy, and no family is perfect— let that truth release you from unrealistic expectations… God’s grace is abundant even in our failures, reminding us that we don’t need to be perfect parents; we need to be grace-filled ones. When you fail, and you will, don’t wallow in shame, rather be thankful that you sin has been forgiven and that God delights in showing you mercy and there is no condemnation in Jesus.
God doesn’t Father us like a strict school teacher who is waiting for us to slip up so he can punish us. This is how God reveals himself to us:
Exodus 34:6-7:
6The Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, 7maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.
Knowing God’s grace and how God treats us, can enable us to ‘reset’ ourselves when tensions are rising in the home or when fears are growing, so that we can extend grace to our children and lead them to a knowledge of their error in a way that doesn’t cause them to doubt the faithfulness of our love towards them.
We grow as parents through our failures, the problems and challenges we face, can deepen our dependance of God and our trust in Him, as we bring them to God in prayer. There will be many hard times ahead, yet you won’t be alone through any of them. These trials will not be wasted if we submit ourselves to God and seek to grow closer to Him through the storms. And when we fail to do this, there’s still grace! God has got you and won’t let you go.
Lamentations 3:
22 Because of the LORD’s faithful love
we do not perish, for his mercies never end.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness!
24 I say, “The LORD is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.”
25 The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him.
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2. God’s Sovereignty and Your Role
We believe in the sovereignty of God, that nothing and no one can thwart His plans, nothing is beyond the reach of God’s power.
In Matthew 11:27, Jesus is recorded as saying, “All things have been entrusted to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal Him.“
God has chosen you to reveal Him to your children, but salvation is ultimately His work. Avoid extremes of passivity or anxious over-responsibility. Don’t outsource your children’s faith to a church service once a week. Instead, let your daily life show the fruit of your relationship with Jesus and reflect the gospel’s transformative power. Children absorb values by osmosis, so model love, humility, and dependence on God, and talk about your faith openly with them. Do they see you pray regularly, do they see you extend grace, do they see patience? If you are the only person that shows them Jesus, what would they say Jesus is like?
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3. Faith-Based Parenting Over Fear-Based
Parenting by faith means equipping your children to face life’s challenges rather than shielding them from all harm. Help them see the beauty and joy of the gospel, empowering them to navigate difficulties with God’s strength.
Good boundaries are imperative for the protection of children and wisdom is needed. Will your child grow up to see your faith and restrictive and controlling or will they see it as compelling and beautiful? It is better to make the gospel attractive and compelling through our lifestyles and through coaching our children through their challenges than to prevent them from encountering challenges. This way your children can see the gospel as ‘good news’ as they encounter their need for the goodness, grace and mercy of God.
CS Lewis famously said that ‘God finds our desires [for this world] not too strong, but too weak’, ‘we are far too easily pleased’ (The Weight of Glory, 26). We muck around with the things the world offers us when we could be enjoying all the fulness of satisfaction God offers – ‘like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.’ We can help our children be immunized from temptation of ‘weaker desires’, by helping them see the far surpassing joy and satisfaction that comes from God-himself. Rules and restrictions don’t change a child’s heart, an encounter with the good news of the gospel applied to their lives will, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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4. New Birth, Not Moral Perfection
It is possible for our children to confuse our desire for their good behaviour and the nature, and outworking of our faith. Recently, I asked a young person what it means to be a Christian, and they said ‘doing the right thing’. That’s not Christianity, (although hopefully it is an outworking of it) it is saving faith in Christ alone that comes from new birth that makes someone a Christian. Faith alone – that produces good fruit – this is a gift from God.
Encourage your children to seek new birth in Christ rather than aiming for moral perfection. Show them through your example and conversations that their identity is not rooted in performance but in God’s transforming grace. Introduce them to the richness of surrendering their lives to Him.
The need for God-given new birth is a reason we do not baptize infants at Christ Central Church. We administer believers’ baptism, based on the profession of faith of the believer and their decision to repent, to turn from old ways of self, and walk in new ways of Christ. How do you know if your child has experienced new birth? It’s not as simple as saying, ‘I believe’, it must be a decision from faith, made possible by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that produces the fruits of new life. Here are some examples of fruit, perhaps your child exhibit a new found passion for the things of God, for worship and prayer, or for reading and studying God’s word? Do they have a new sense of peace, and/or confidence? Have they recently had a breakthrough in negative patterns of thought and behaviour as a result of their decision? Are they gentler, kinder, more self-controlled? This is not an exhaustive list, and before baptism they’ll meet with a leader to talk through their experience and their desire for baptism and you’ll be consulted before your child is able to be baptized.
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Good News and Practical Tools for Parents
God loves your children even more than you do. Live a Christ-centred life visibly, and watch them learn about faith in ways that extend beyond Sunday mornings. Explore these great tools to nurture their faith through the week:
Christian Books: There are so many great quality Bible-based books available from the youngest of ages. Every family receives a gift copy of the Jesus Storybook Bible when their child is dedicated at Christ Central, and there are so many more books designed for your children’s age as they grow up. We loved ‘You Are Special’, and ‘You are Mine’ and the ‘Oak Inside the Acorn’ by Max Lucado. For children aged 3-6 The Good Book Company have an incredible series of books called ‘Tales that Tell the Truth’: https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/series/tales-that-tell-the-truth/
Louie Giglio does a series of daily devotionals based on space, science and nature, Indescribable, How Great is Our God, and The Wonder of Creation.
Don’t forget we have a Christian Bookshop at our church offices (The Acorn, 109 Palmerston Road, Southsea, PO5 3PS.) Our office can order children’s books for you, or you can come in and browse when we’re open. https://www.acornvine.co.uk
We read all our children the Narnia series when they were 6 or 7. And now as they read chapter books by themselves there are lots of Christian novels available, like the Celery Brown series by Karen Rosario Ingerslev or the Dream Keeper Saga by Kathryn Butler.
TV: We use Yippee TV (https://www.yippee.tv) as part of the streaming services we have at home, with Superbook, and VeggieTales, Daily Devos, Danny Go and much much more – this is a wholesome alternative you YouTube you kids can freely browse without any ads or age-inappropriate content.
Apps:
There is a game by Scripture Union, called ‘Guardians of Ancora’, for 8-11 year olds, https://guardiansofancora.com.
UCB Spark is a great device-based video devotional tool made in the UK for ages 10-12, https://www.ucb.co.uk/spark.
Radio:
Sometimes we listen to UCB Radio in the car, if we’re not listening to audiobooks. There is also Premier Praise if you want more worship and less chat. We have recently had UCB Radio on in the house to save arguments about who gets to play what music, and we’ve found our children listening to and commenting on the passages read and the faith-based stories told.
Church Camps:
Bears Camp, is a Father’s Day weekend away run by St Judes’ Church, where dad’s or male guardians bring kids ages 5 and up to the New Forest for faith-based fun.
Contagious, the FIEC run excellent residential camps for children aged 8 – 19 across the country, https://contagious.org.uk.
Hide Tide, when children get to youth age, there is a citywide church unity initiative called Hide Tide which runs monthly Youth Events and an annual residential weekend away.
New Day, this is large nationwide youth conference run by New Frontiers in August, https://www.newdaygeneration.org.
Parenting Resources:
Care for the Family, https://www.careforthefamily.org.uk
Axis, Biblical Resources to help parents disciple their teens, https://axis.org
The Parenting Course, we host a video series on our Online Hub, join here for access: https://hub.christcentral.church
Want more support? If you need particular prayer, or support for a situation you’re navigating we’d love to walk beside you as a church community, speak to another church member you trust, talk to your Life Group Leader or get in touch with an Elder. If you don’t know who to speak to you can get in touch here: https://christcentral.church/careneed
