Resource Spotlight: Growing Up Christian

Growing Up Christian by Karl Graustein is a great book for parents to use in teaching their children. This is an extremely God-centered, Bible-saturated, and practical book. Graustein lays out the blessings and dangers of growing up in a Christian home. “Church kids” tend to be overly familiar with the grace of God and need to be freshly reminded of the privilege of hearing the gospel at a young age. Parents, this is a resource you will want to utilize in raising kids who trust in the Savior.

For more on this book, see my summary post here.

Growing Up Christian

Two years ago, I led a group of students through Karl Graustein's excellent book, Growing Up Christian. I prepared a summary of each chapter for the students as we went through the book. Those summaries have been one of the most asked about features of my blog.
And, the students wrote thank you notes to Karl for this book. He posted some of them on his blog.

I think this would be a great book for parents to work through with their teenagers. I can't wait to use this book when Karis is a teenager.

Here are links to each of the summaries I wrote:
1. Introduction
2. Chapter 1
3. Chapter 2
4. Chapter 3
5. Chapter 4
6. Chapter 5
7. Chapter 6
8. Chapter 7
9. Chapter 8
10. Chapter 9
11. Chapter 10
12. Chapter 11
13. Chapter 12
14. Concluding Observations

Growing Up Christian: Some Concluding Observations

Here it is: the last post on Growing Up Christian. This is an excellent book that deserves to be in every library of a parent, teenager, or pastor. One of the great things about this book is that it is so unique. I know of no other like it written from a Reformed/Biblical perspective.

After a tough week of studying the entire book, my students are raving about this book. They are saying how much they have been challenged and are thankful for a book written just for them.

If you forced me to outline the entire book, here is how I would do it:

The dangers of growing up Christian:
1. False assurance
2. Lack of appreciation for the saving and forgiving grace of God
3. Loving the world
4. Pride or self-righteousness
5. Mimicking our parent's convictions
6. Forgetting the familiar (taking blessings for granted)
7. Being too shallow
8. Trusting in ourselves and others instead of trusting God
9. Not taking sin seriously
10. Lack of discipline (laziness)
11. Lack of faithfulness (not using our gifts and talents)

The only qualification to my outline is that it seems much more negative than the book itself. While Graustein does share these dangers, he does a great job explaining the blessings of growing up Christian. Church kids have been blessed with so much.

I am thankful for these things about this book:
1. It is God-centered.
2. It is Bible-saturated.
3. It is extremely practical.
4. It is chalked full of powerful quotes and illustrations.
5. It maginfies our weakness and God's sufficiency.
6. It is Gospel-driven.

Growing Up Christian #12: Making the Most of It

Chapter 12 of Growing Up Christian:

God has blessed us abundantly with talents and opportunities, but the mere presence of those things doesn’t guarantee success. We are stewards entrusted with specific skills and abilities to be used for the glory of God.

This chapter is about being faithful with the gifts and opportunities God has given us.

“Faithfulness leads to greater opportunities, and lack of faithfulness leads to fewer opportunities.”

Five Pitfalls of Faithful Stewardship:
1. Laziness—failing to invest our talents
2. Lack of faithfulness in what we consider small responsibilities
3. Thinking that we ourselves are the source of our gifts and abilities
4. Sowing to the flesh—doing things that serve and please ourselves
5. Striving for earthly treasures—focusing on the present instead of eternity in heaven

5 Stewardship Tips:
1. Enlist the help of others to identify your gifts.
2. Remember the source.
3. Use them.
4. Learn from others.
5. Seek to be humble.

One day, we will stand before God. He will ask us how we used the gifts, resources, and talents He has entrusted to us.

Growing Up Christian #11: Spiritual Push-Ups

Chapter 11 of Growing Up Christian:

This is a fantastic chapter about the importance of the spiritual disciplines.

We need to make daily decisions to place ourselves in a position where we can encounter God. We need to position ourselves to know and enjoy God through the spiritual disciplines. The spiritual disciplines serve as spiritual push-ups that build the muscles of our faith.

Why do some Christians continue to grow in their faith month after month and year after year but others seem to remain the same? Graustein believes the difference lies primarily in their personal practice of the spiritual disciplines. I totally agree with him.

Why do church kids not practice the disciplines?
1. We can forget why we should practice the spiritual disciplines.
2. We can overlook the role of the Holy Spirit in our spiritual growth.
3. We can think that our discipline depends primarily on others.
4. We can lack discipline over time.
5. We can become too busy with other things.

Donald Whitney: “So many professing Christians are so spiritually undisciplined that they seem to have little fruit and power in their lives…Spiritually they are a mile wide and an inch deep. There are not deep, time-worn channels of communing discipline between them and God. They have dabbled in everything but disciplined themselves in nothing.”

Principles to help us practice the disciplines:
1. Our relationship with God is of first importance.
2. Regular practice of the spiritual disciplines is essential from growth in godliness.
3. We must depend on the Holy Spirit as we faithfully do our part.

5 specific disciplines we need to practice with the right motive:
1. Reading and studying the Bible.
2. Prayer.
3. Worship.
4. Reading theological books.
5. Solitude and personal retreats.

Growing Up Christian #10: The Fight of Your Life

*This is the best chapter of Growing Up Christian because it deals clearly with the heart of sin and not just the sinful actions themselves.

Chapter 10 begins with the story of Aron Ralston, who had to cut off his own arm with a pocket knife to save his life.
Christians face a similar decision when it comes to fighting sin. We must do whatever it takes to battle the sin in our hearts. Life is war.

J.C. Ryle: “The true Christian is called to be a solider, and must behave as such from the day of his conversion to the day of his death. He is not meant to live a life of religious ease, laziness, and security. He must never imagine for a moment that he can sleep and doze along the way to heaven.”

Church kids make five critical mistakes:
1. We do not take our sin as seriously as we should.
2. We wrongly categorize sin as “major or minor.”
3. We lack perseverance in battling our sin.
4. We battle our sinful actions, but we fail to deal with our sinful hearts.
5. We confuse godly and worldly sorrow.

Why we should battle sin:
1. We must understand what sin is.
2. We need to understand that we are sinful by nature.
3. We must understand God’s view of sin.
4. It is essential that we understand the effects of our sin.
5. We must understand the consequences of not battling sin.

How we battle sin:
1. Pray to God for conviction of sin.
2. Pray for help from the Holy Spirit.
3. If we feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit but cannot identify the source of sin, we need to seek help.
4. Once we have clearly identified the sin of our hearts, we need to repent and ask God to forgive us and enable us to change.
5. We must battle our sin with the truths found in the Word of God.

John Owen, “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.”

Growing Up Christian #9: Banking on God

Chapter 9 of Growing Up Christian could be danger #8 that church kids face: the danger of trusting in ourselves and others instead of trusting in God.

Jerry Bridges: “Another pitfall we need to watch for is the tendency to trust in God’s instruments of provision rather than God Himself. In the usual course of events in our lives, God provides for our needs though human means rather than directly…But these human instruments are ultimately under the controlling hand of God. They succeed or prosper only to the extent God prospers them. We must be careful to look beyond the means and human instrumentalities to the God who uses them.”

This chapter is a passionate call to trust God in the midst of life’s ups and downs. God is trustworthy and He should be trusted.

A God we can trust:
1. He is perfectly wise and all-powerful.
2. His love never fails.
3. He is completely in control of everything.
4. He never changes.

Our Response:
1. We need to trust God instead of ourselves.
2. We need to trust God and do our part.
3. We need to trust God in trials.
4. We need to trust God for the future.

This chapter contains very helpful evaluation questions to help us think about how we can trust God on a daily basis.

5 Tips for Trusting God:
1. Pray for faith and greater trust.
2. Study Scripture to learn how trustworthy God is.
3. Study Scripture to learn how weak you are.
4. Talk with Christians who have endured significant trials.5. Read books about trusting God.

Growing Up Christian #8: Building A Firm Foundation

Chapter 8 of Growing Up Christian begins with a story about the most dangerous road in the world called “La Cumbre to Coroico.” It is dangerous because it does not have guardrails and many travelers slip off the road and fall down the mountain to their death.

The Word of God gives us the guardrails we need to live the Christian life.

Randy Alcorn: “But properly understood, biblical truths are guardrails that protect us from plunging off the cliff. A smart traveler doesn’t curse the guardrails. He doesn’t wine, ‘That guardrail dented my fender!’ He looks over the cliff, sees the demolished autos below, and is grateful for the guardrails.”

It isn’t enough to know the facts of the Christian faith. We need to think seriously about them, know why they are important, and take them to heart. The depth of our knowledge today will affect the strength of our walk in the future.

This chapter combats what could be called danger #7 that church kids face: the danger of being too shallow.

How do we grow deeper in our knowledge of God and His Word:
1. Start with the right motive.
2. Seek to have knowledge with passion.
3. Focus on the doctrines of God, man, and salvation.
4. Use helpful tools as you study.

Growing Up Christian #7: Familiar Yet Thankful

Chapter 7 of Growing Up Christian:

Danger #6 could be: the danger of forgetting the familiar. Church kids tend to take their blessings for granted.

A rule of life: “The more common something is, the more we tend to take it for granted.”

Graustein tells the story of Joni Erickson Tada and her diving accident that has left her paralyzed. Joni is one of the most grateful people today because she believes God is working her situation for her good and she takes nothing for granted.

Seven tips for growing in gratitude:
1. Ask God for help.
2. Build a strong relationship with Christ.
3. Recount the undeserved blessings from God.
4. Study specific passages of Scripture (related to God, The Bible, our parents, and our church).
5. Regularly communicate thanks.
6. Seek to develop stronger relationships with Mom and Dad.
7. Get more involved at church.

Growing Up Christian #6: More than Mimicking Mom and Dad

Chapter 6 of Growing Up Christian is about the tendency of church kids to just assume what they have been taught without developing personal Biblical convictions of their own.

The statistics are staggering:
-41 percent of church kids wrongly believe that the devil is not a living being but is a symbol of evil.
-45 percent wrongly believe that all religious faiths teach equally valid truths.
-52 percent wrongly believe that Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and all other people pray to the same god, even though they use different names for that god.
-52 percent wrongly believe that if a person is generally good they will earn a place in heaven.
-58 percent wrongly believe that Jesus committed sins while he was on earth.

Graustein’s main point is that if our convictions are based solely on our parent’s experiences, they will not hold up in times of temptation. We will live life for the glory of God when we have and hold our own Biblical convictions.

The application of this point is obvious:
1. Love and study the Word of God.
2. Pray that your love for God will increase.
3. Put yourself in positions in which God can work in your heart and mind.

Then,
1. Study the lives of godly adults around you.
2. Go to the Word of God.
3. Apply the truth of the Word.
4. Pray.

Once again, this chapter could have been danger #5: the danger of mimicking our parent’s convictions.

Growing Up Christian #5: Biblical Greatness

Chapter 5 of Growing Up Christian begins the second section of this book, which deals with thinking biblically. However, this chapter could just as well be the 4th danger church kids face: the danger of pride or self-righteousness.

God’s Promises to the Humble:
1. God promises to respect and highly regard the humble (Isa. 66:2).
2. God promises to be with and revive the humble (Isa. 57:15).
3. God promises to exalt and give grace to the humble (1 Pt. 5:5-6).
4. God promises to guide the humble in what is right (Ps. 25:9).

“The Bible’s standards for greatness are sharply different from the world’s. The world exalts athletes, movie stars, musicians, corporate CEOs, political leaders, and the wealthy. But the promises of God in Scripture and the direct words of Jesus place value on a humble heart.”

Graustein gives 15 characteristics of the proud and 18 characteristics of the humble.

How can we grow in humility?
1. Pray for more humility.
2. Understand the immense difference between God and us.
3. Be aware of your weaknesses and limitations.
4. Study God’s promises to the humble.
5. Study creation.
6. Spend time with people who are more gifted than you are.
7. Learn a new skill.
8. Spend time with humble people.
9. Spend time with people who are honest with you about yourself.
10. Serve others.

Which one of these 10 do you need to implement today? Comment on it.

Growing Up Christian #4: The Cost of Compromise

Chapter 4 of Growing Up Christian begins with a story about a guy named Curt who went from being a dynamic leader in his youth group to being a drug addict in just a few years. He didn’t just change over night. He changed one choice at a time.

We have all known people who once seemed to be on fire for God and then grew cold under the influence of the world. In fact, most “church kids” drop out of church during their college years.

The third danger for church kids to avoid is loving the world (1 John 2:15-17).

John Piper: “The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night…For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.”

Screwtape: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

How do we daily resist the subtle influence of the world:
1. Recognizing our situation. We are susceptible to the world’s influence.
2. Watching. Don’t put your guard down.
3. Analyzing. Graustein has a great chart that shows the difference between what the world says and what God says.
4. Repenting. Turn from our sin and embrace Christ.

Growing Up Christian #3: Un-Amazing Grace

Chapter 3 of Growing Up Christian begins with the story of Randy Fogle, one of the nine miners trapped in 2002. Can you imagine the celebration and thankfulness they felt as they were raised from the mine? Our gratitude for our salvation from the wrath of God should exceed the miner’s gratitude.

The second danger church kids face is a lack of appreciation for the saving and forgiving grace of God.
Church kids tend to think of themselves as basically good and not needing to be forgiven. We must see our sin in light of God’s holiness to realize our utter depravity before Him.

“Church kids should be some of the most appreciative people on the earth.”

Randy Alcorn: “If only we could see our situation clearly—even for a moment. We deserve expulsion; He gives us a diploma. We deserve the electric chair; He gives us a parade. Anything less than overwhelming gratitude should be unthinkable. He owes us nothing. We owe Him everything.”

7 tips for growth in gratitude:
1. Pray.
2. Study the holiness of God.
3. See your sinfulness in light of God’s holiness.
4. Learn more about God’s wrath—his just response to sin.
5. Think deeply and often about Jesus’ death on the cross.
6. Study the doctrine of justification—forgiven and declared righteous.
7. Sing great songs that focus on the grace of God.

Chapter 3 ends with the words to the song, “I Will Glory in My Redeemer.”

Growing Up Christian #2: In or Out?

Chapter 2 of Growing Up Christian is a powerful meditation on the danger of false assurance.

*The most significant danger church kids face is false assurance of salvation – assuming that we are saved even when we are not.

1. Salvation is a matter of the heart.
2. You can know if you are a true Christian.
3. Your eternal destination is at stake.

Randy Alcorn: “If we get it wrong about Jesus, it doesn’t matter what else we get right.”

A Review of the Gospel:
1. The Character of God. He is holy.
2. The character and nature of man. Man is unholy.
3. God’s love for man. He sent Christ to pay for our sins.
4. Man’s response to God. Man must repent and believe in Christ.

Charles Spurgeon: “It is not my aim to introduce doubts and fears into your mind; no, but I do hope self-examination may help to drive them away. It is not security, but false security, which we would kill; not confidence, but false confidence, which we would overthrow; not peace, but false peace, which we would destroy.”

Growing Up Christian #1: "Church Kids"

Pray for my students this week. I am teaching through all 12 chapters of Growing Up Christian by Karl Graustein. My intention is to post a short summary of each chapter so that you can benefit from the message of this book without even having to read it.

The first chapter serves as a great introduction to the entire book. Graustein describes "church kids" and their tendencies and temptations.

The Blessings and Dangers of Growing Up in a Christian Home:

Blessings:
We have been given:
-godly parents
-training in the Word of God
-Christian friends
-support from the Church
-an opportunity to know God at an early age
-familiarity with the gospel

We have been protected from:
-the influences of the world

Dangers:
-False Assurance
-Hypocrisy
-Motivated by a desire to please people instead of God (it is expected of me)
-Taking the grace of God for granted


J.C. Ryle:
"But, oh, take heed that you do not remain barren and unfruitful in the sunshine of all these privileges: beware lest your heart remains hard, impenitent, and worldly, notwithstanding the many advantages you enjoy. You cannot enter the kingdom of God on the credit of your parents' religion. You must eat the bread of life for yourself, and have the witness of the Spirit in your own heart. You must have repentace of your own, faith of your own, and sanctification of your own."

Growing Up Christian

Really liked this book. I bought it because I minister to students who are growing up "Christian." In fact because of the nature of our church, I have very few students who have not grown up in the church. This book is a much needed meditation on the unique dangers and blessings of being raised around such precious truth.
Think about it: The blessings of being raised in church are obvious. But the dangers are serious. It is a human tendency to grow disconnected from things that are familiar. Church kids have the huge temptation to neglect these precious truths that they have heard a thousand times.

Karl Graustein serves these church kids well by helping them understand their situation and giving them wise counsel in their fight of faith. I am thinking about using this book as a discussion starter for our Wednesday night Bible study. If you have read it, tell me what you think.