13 Jan Parenting – Chapter 6
Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family by Paul Tripp
Chapter 6 – Steve Oeverman
Americans are on a quest to perfect the art of immediate gratification. In the 1920s “fast food” became a reality. Dale Carnegie applied the ideas to relationships. Parents began to think the same of children. Fast Food. Fast Friends. Fast Families…. Do you sense a problem here?
In chapter six of Parenting, Paul Tripp writes: “We all want it and none of us ever get it. It can be so frustrating at times….We all think we have the power to produce it, but we don’t…. Our words and actions simply don’t have the power we think they do…. We want parenting to be a series of events, rather than a lifelong process.”
Tripp is right. We all want the good life, and we want it fast. But life doesn’t work that way. You don’t work that way. “Parenting would be infinitely easier if all you were dealing with was wrong behavior. But what you’re dealing with is something deeper and more deadly. The Bible states very clearly that one of the most dangerous aspects of sin, which all parents deal with personally and which all parents deal with in their children, is the fact that sin blinds…. I have no problem seeing the sin of my family members, neighbors, and friends, but I can be quite surprised when somehow my sin is exposed.” If parents are slow to change, how much more our children?
Good and satisfying families take a long time. “You must be committed as a parent to long-view parenting because [true and lasting] change is a process and not an event.” Chapter 6 explains what this looks like along with the hope we need to do it well.