My Best Parenting Tip

PRAY fervently and continually. That’s it.

We tend to examine/evaluate our parenting in terms of success and failure. A much better scale is obedience/disobedience. Raising our kids is a stewardship and the goal is to be found trustworthy. 1 Cor. 4:1-5

So have as your Parent Focus:  Be the best I can be in living the life of a Jesus follower, loving like Jesus, using the best tools/resources available, but primarily in prayer/looking to Jesus to bring about the greatest joy, ‘to hear that my children are walking in the truth‘. Heb. 12:1,2; James 1:5

Note: comparison to others or an imagined ideal is ‘irrelevant’ in the sense that even the best of parenting falls far short of the needs to be met. They can only be fully met in Christ…hence it’s All Grace.

Even our best intentioned efforts require the grace of God to be acceptable to God and effective. (Isaiah 64:6) Parenting is like salvation in that it has to be engaged in by ‘grace through faith’, grace to use us redemptively and faith because we’re doomed to fail unless God intervenes. My hope/trust is that in the midst of giving my all in full surrender, God uses/redeems my efforts, even my failure and sin, for their good – Rom. 8:28.

“It didn’t take me long to realize that I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing.”  Paul Miller – A Praying Life p.60

I pray with you that our children have a vibrant, personal faith in Jesus and live their lives walking in the truth.