Editor’s Note: This essay is adapted from a video from Lighthouse Community Church that was published on April 2, 2020. It has been updated and published with permission from the author. You can watch the video here.
COVID-19 has affected our families in so many different ways. Many of us have to now homeschool our kids and others have to care for our parents and those in higher-risk categories. With school, sports, and extracurricular activities all being canceled or repurposed to online gatherings, we as parents are all figuring out new and creative ways to spend time with our kids.
My wife Mel and I have been blessed with three kids, ages 9, 7, and 4. And the way that we’ve described this season is that all 5 of our kingdoms are now closer in proximity than ever before — we literally are all sharing the same space the entire day, many times even in the same room — and so the potential of our agendas and desires clashing and colliding and bumping up against each other is also greater than ever before.
Even today — a quick snapshot of what goes on in our home — our oldest is trying to work on his homework, Mel is preparing lunch, our youngest needs help working the iPad, our middle is doing something on her own, and I’m holed up in the bedroom with my headphones on trying to have a Zoom meeting. All of a sudden someone might start yelling or crying, someone needs help with something, and we all become frustrated and angry and start to look for someone to blame.
Instead of considering how we can love and serve and encourage like Christ, we hurt and harm and push each other away out of selfish and sinful desires. Specifically, in our speech and in our words, instead of building up our kids, we can easily tear them down and lash out at them in frustration and anger.
Here are 3 perspectives that have really helped Mel and I cultivate a Christlike attitude in our own parenting struggles in hopes that it would help you to build bridges towards your kids, to come alongside them, to deepen and strengthen your relationship with them, and ultimately to point yourself and your kids to Christ. And my hope is that you would be able to see what it is that God has planned for you and your family in this special season and how you can embrace all that God desires for you in your parenting.
1. Consider yourself as a veteran sinner discipling rookie sinners
This is an application of 1 Timothy 1:15, where the Apostle Paul calls himself the greatest of all sinners.
It’s easy for us as parents to have this “us versus them” mentality with our kids. If you’re like me, you might do the whole, “When I was young, we didn’t have all these things that you guys have now” spiel. I know I do that often with my kids, sometimes for fun, and, sadly, other times to prove to them and myself how we as parents are so much tougher, so much more hardworking and sacrificial compared to our entitled and privileged kids.
But this perspective of viewing myself as a veteran sinner discipling rookie sinners has transformed my parenting. Instead of pridefully creating a divide between my kids and me, this mentality builds a bridge. It reminds my children and me that we are all in the same boat — we all struggle with the same things, and, ultimately, it unites our family in realizing that just as much as our kids need Jesus, we as parents also need Jesus.
When I am able to remind myself that I am the veteran sinner in the room — that I am the greatest sinner that I know — it humbles me. But it also creates in my heart compassion and a desire to minister to my kids and to help them through their 9-, 7- and 4-year-old struggles.
Author and speaker Paul Tripp puts it this way, “I am more like my children than unlike them — and so are you. The reality is that there are few struggles in the lives of my children that aren’t in my life as well (materialism, relationships, wanting my own way, attraction to the world, subtle idolatries, etc.). This admission transformed my parenting. Instead of approaching them with self-righteous outrage, I moved toward them as a sinner in need of grace needing to confront a sinner in need of grace.”
2. Consider your kids as saints, sinners, and sufferers
In our church’s small groups, counseling, and accountability groups, we ask: “What is the good, the bad, and the hard in your life right now?” In other words, what are the blessings, the sinful struggles, and the suffering that you are facing? As we ask these three questions, it helps to give us a more complete picture of what is going on in the life of a person.
In this season where our kids are with us all the time and we have a heightened sense of stress and anxiety, we can easily focus on the deficiencies and flaws of our kids. Perhaps we need to get things done for work, and so we see their neediness as an obstacle to our progress. Maybe we want some rest and some peace and quiet so we view our kids’ questions as irritations or annoyances.
We need to ask ourselves on a daily basis, how is my child a saint, a sinner, and a sufferer? Of course, we need to deal with the sin in our kids’ lives, but we also need to take time to reflect and ask, “What are the evidences of God’s grace in the life of my child? How have they grown and matured in this past month? And also how is my child a sufferer?”
Our children live in a fallen world just like you and me, and our kids have to deal with all sorts of difficulties and challenges and pressures, including living with us as their parents. So we must ask ourselves what are the physical and emotional and spiritual struggles that our children are going through and how can we be an instrument of grace in their life?
In order to see our kids the way God sees them and cultivate an attitude like Christ towards our kids, we need to work hard at having a balanced view of our kids so that we can properly encourage and exhort, challenge and comfort, and shepherd their hearts towards Christ during this time.
3. Consider the gospel and how God parents you
Our God is so gracious, so loving, and so patient. There have been so many times in my life where I am simply amazed at how gracious God is towards me in my struggle with pride or selfishness or lack of love for others.
When I stop to consider how much grace He extends to me, it changes my heart, grows my thankfulness, and motivates me to parent my kids the way my heavenly Father parents me. One author calls this the “waterfall effect” and I think that’s a helpful illustration because it paints a picture that love flows downward not upward.
We ourselves must be transformed by grace in order to extend grace to others. As 1 John 4:19 states, “We love because he first loved us.” When we find ourselves impatient, angry, frustrated, instead of looking inward or looking to our kids for motivation, we need to look upward and remember God’s love towards us and let that flow through me to our spouse and our kids.
One of the things that Mel and I share with
others is that a Gospel-centered home is not one where everyone’s trying to be perfect or act as if they have it all together. Instead, a Gospel-centered home is one where everyone is constantly reconciling every day through the power of the gospel.
Every day, multiple times a day, in our household someone is saying sorry to someone else. Me to Mel, the kids to each other, Mel to the kids. And in this season, we’re having to say sorry to each other more than ever. But here’s the thing. Every time we ask each other for forgiveness and confess our sin together before the Lord, we grow in our hatred of our sin, we increase in our love for Christ and each other, and we display to our family and the world the value and worth of the gospel and the hope that we have in the midst of sin and suffering. And for us, we tell our kids regularly, we are great, great sinners, but Christ is a greater Savior.
Church, may we take this season to grow in loving our kids the way God loves us.