For My Karis: Jesus is the One You Need

Dazzling Your Kids with the Gospel

Everything Elyse Fitzpatrick writes is gospel-drenched gold. So, I'm looking forward to her new book on parenting, Give them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus.

What Would Paul Tripp Do?

Finally, a parenting post that I can relate to. Kevin DeYoung helps me.

The Gospel and Parenting

William Farley gives 7 ways the gospel affects parents in chapter 2 of Gospel-Powered Parenting:

The gospel makes parents effective in seven ways:

1. The gospel teaches Christian parents to fear God.

2. The gospel motivates parents to lead by example.

3. The gospel centers families in their male servant leaders.

4. The gospel teaches and motivates parents to discipline their children.

5. The gospel motivates parents to teach their children.

6. The gospel motivates parents to lavish their children with love and affection.

7. The gospel is the solution for inadequate parents.

Parenting Assumptions

In chapter 1 of Gospel-Powered Parenting, William Farley lays out 5 fundamental parenting assumptions. Powerful stuff!

1. You cannot be a perfect parent. Parenting reminds us of our need for the gospel.
2. God is sovereign but He uses means. You cannot save your kids but God often uses godly parents to lead children to Himself.
3. A good offense is better than defense. Protecting our children from worldly influence is not our fundamental goal. We are to do everything possible to make the gospel attractive. He says, "We change their hearts by teaching the gospel, modeling the gospel, and centering our homes on the gospel."
4. Don't assume the new birth. The new birth is a miracle that creates new affections not slight changes in behavior.
5. Effective parents are not child-centered. In this section, Farley gives a powerful example of a child-centered family as opposed to a God-centered family. We don't worship our kids; we worship God.

Gospel-Powered Parenting Now Available

William Farley's new book on parenting is now available: Gospel-Powered Parenting: How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parenting.

Farley wrote one of my all-time favorite books: Outrageous Mercy. So, I have been eagerly waiting for another book by him. This one looks real good and real helpful.

Challies has a short review of it here.

Gospel-Powered Parenting

From the author who wrote one of my favorite books (Outrageous Mercy), comes a new book on parenting: Gospel-Powered Parenting. This looks good.

Sitting the Bench and Sinking Your Roots into God

"Emily loves field hockey, which is like ice hokey except it's gentler and rquires eleven players on a grass field. Her school had a superb, well-coached program. Their team usually won its division and was frequently in the running for the state championship. The coach was excellent, although Emily thought the coach played favorites. That year she and her friend were not the favorites, and occasionally Emily sat out the entire game.

Another parent heard about the bench warming and, while chatting with me at the local gym, said, "Isn't that unbelieveable what the coach is doing? Doesn't that make you mad?" I replied, "Actually, no. We are thankful Emily has this low-level suffering while she is still on our watch. It is a wonderful opportunity for her to grow in faith. She'll learn far more about God on the bench than out on the playing field."

The other parent expected Jill and me to be angry about what was happening to Emily. Her goal for her child was tied to the child's accomplishments. Our goal was tied to Emily's faith. Because of that, we saw sports as just another venue where she could learn to sink her roots into God. I saw the bench warming as an answer to my daily prayer that Emily would not love the world of the things in the world...Life is more about bench sitting than about being a star."

-Paul Miller, A Praying Life, p. 170-171.

Raising Great Kids Parenting Conference

The Raising Great Kids Parenting Conference last weekend was fantastic. Here is the audio from the weekend.

Main Session 1 - Children are a Blessing...No Really, They Are! (Justin Nale)
Main Session 2 - Scolding, Spanking, Time Out: What the Bible Says about Disciplining our Children (Dan Rolfe)
Main Session 3 - It Takes a Church: The Local Church's Role in a Child's Life (Jonathan Brooks)

Breakout 1 - Public School vs. Home School vs. Private School: Sorting Through the Options (Dan Rolfe)
Breakout 2 - The Adoption Option (Jim Upchurch)
Breakout 3 - The Why and How of Family Worship (Eddie Burroughs)

Raising Great Kids

Justin Nale has the details of our upcoming parenting conference (March 27-28). If you are in the area, plan to join us. I'm looking forward to learning from these men.

Instructing a Child's Heart

Sometimes a particular chapter is worth the price of the book. Such is the case with chapter 8 of Instructing a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp.

Chapter 8 is called, "Giving Children a Vision for the Glory of God." It is about helping our kids develop a passion for God.

Get Outta My Face!

WTS Books has a special for a few days on a new book for parents and teachers of teens called Get Outta My Face! This is a hightly anticipated book and looks to be a must read for all parents of teens. Until Saturday, you can get this book for 65% off ($4.88).

You can see the endorsements for the book along with the Table of Contents here.

Update: WTS sold out of the 1,000 they had and got 500 more. Wow.

"Mommy, I have a wonderful plan for your life!"

Moms, here is a great article about original sin that will help you in parenting.

This is also chapter 24 of Whiter than Snow by Paul David Tripp.

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

Drinking Beer and Reading Romans

Great article by Abraham Piper about his rebellion and God's grace to bring him home. Also, fantastic advice for believing parents of unbelieving children.

No Santa, RE-revisited

In 2005, I wrote a post called No Santa for us. It was an initial attempt to think through why my wife and I were not going to "do Santa" with our kids. It is, to my knowledge, the most commented on post here at CROSS-eyed.

Now that Karis is about to turn 3, this is very real for us. So, I thought I would re-post (as I did last year), that post.

A few things have changed since I first wrote that post: (1) I have grown since then, by the grace of God, (2) I now know several families who have the same convictions, (3) I now have a second child that I want to be in awe of God as well, (4) I now know how to use spell check, and (5) it has been confirmed that leaving cookies and milk out all night will attract roaches.

The original post:

Over the past two years, my wife and I have done some thinking about Santa. We decided that we are not going to participate in the American tradition of telling our children that a fat man in a red and white suit comes down the chimney and leaves presents. Everyone we know does Santa (in varying degrees and forms). We grew up doing Santa. But now, no Santa for us.

Several factors have contributed in our decision:

1. Santa has the tendency to obscure the true meaning of Christmas. Santa is not evil, just the tendency to idolize him at Christmas time. Alcohol is not evil, just the tendency to overuse it. If you ask most American children to draw a Christmas picture, they will most likely include Santa or reindeer (an obvious sign that these children have been taught that Christmas = Santa).

2. Santa is a lie. No matter how you slice it, you must admit this one fact about Santa: He does not exist. Now, I know that there was once a man from whom Santa originated. But the historical story of a generous man has nothing to do with the jolly good fellow who knows when you are sleeping and knows when you've been bad or good. For all parents who do Santa, there comes a point when you have to admit to your children that you lied about Santa (and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy). I do not want to have to admit that to my daughter.

3. Santa obscures the character of God. The modern day child must admit that God is not unique in many of His attributes. Who cares that God is omniscient (all-knowing) when Santa is also? Who cares that God is timeless when Santa is also (can be everywhere at the same time)? I'll be honest: I want Karis to be in awe of God. I want her to stand in wonder of His majesty. And I want this to happen as early as possible.

Other Random Factors:

4. It is bad parenting to motivate obedience using anything but God. "You better be good or Santa might not bring you that red truck you want."

5. Our chimney is too small and I hear that reindeer hoofs shorten the life of your shingles.