The following article is a part of the new Parenting series that is running this month.
In parenting, it is often the successful outcomes—the final grade, the win, the various “happily ever afters”—that draw our admiration and set the mark of aim for our kids.
It’s good to have goals for our kids. Our dreams and plans stem from a love for them. Guiding them is part of the job description. But sometimes we fall into the trap of parenting solely to make those goals happen for our kids. We try to control everything, including ourselves and our kids, to that end. The task of parenting ends up serving the realization of the successful outcome.
But ensuring our children’s “success” is a responsibility we were never meant to bear. Whatever that “success” is, God is ultimately responsible for it, not us (1 Cor. 3:5–7). From little to big, all outcomes are in His sovereign hands (Job 42:2). As we parent our kids, we can only wait on God to give what only He can give.
Over-Assuming our Capability and Under-Assuming God’s Sovereignty
In Genesis 11 we see people who didn’t want to wait on God to do anything for them. They presumed that their abilities could rival God’s, and they decided building a tower “to the heavens” would prove it.
Like the people of Genesis 11, we parents have also come to presume that the capacity to produce an outcome is ours to grasp. Few of us would claim that we know how to engineer our kids or their circumstances to our ideals. But we don’t hesitate to attribute shiny, competent kids to the competency of their parents. We love to laud people as #bossmoms and #bossdads when they are going to extremes for their kids. And if it’s our kids that are exemplary, we’re happy to map out how exactly we got there, advising others how to do the same.
It never occurred to the tower of Babel builders that their initial success was brought about by something or someone outside of themselves. Their communication allowed them to work together seamlessly. They had discovered some new brick building technology. But those were just two of the many other factors that God’s sovereignty had allowed to exist at the time. Yet they were happy to take full credit for their own prowess, and sought to serve their own purposes by it.
We are no different. We take credit where we shouldn’t. We forget that it was God’s sovereign hand that invisibly directed all our parenting successes, and look again to our own capability for the next endeavor.
When we forget God in our successes, we also forget Him in our failures.
In our presumption that we can control and have power over our kids’ outcomes, we are shattered when our own powers cannot deliver. And when we cannot, in all our striving, make it rain or cause the sun to shine, the entire burden of failure is heaped onto us. Trapped in something of our own making, we carry the blame for failing to bring about what we never had the power to control.
When we over-assume our own control and under-assume God’s, we become self-reliant in success or despairing in the face of failure.
A Sovereign Father’s Responsibility
My daughter’s piano teacher once said something that took me by surprise. My daughter was expressing her fear of failure because of an upcoming piano exam. Her teacher told her, “I only signed you up because I think you can do it. If I didn’t think you could do it, I wouldn’t have. So if you fail, that’s on me. Your failure would be my responsibility.”
I was astounded by how apt, good and kind this teacher’s words were. My daughter appreciated the vote of confidence, but she was most comforted by her teacher’s willingness to take responsibility for her potential failure.
Christian parents, let’s remember we have more than a vote of confidence in our own abilities or someone to “blame” for things gone wrong. God takes responsibility not just for what happens to us; He takes responsibility for us. He takes His responsibility for us so seriously, making our problems His problems, that Jesus gave his own life to rescue us from our sins. Because of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection, we who are united with Christ through faith are reconciled to God. Because of Jesus, we fallen and needy people can lay claim to a sovereign and capable God. We get to call Him our own Heavenly Father.
As God’s children, we are our divine Parent’s responsibility. We may feel an immense responsibility for our kids, but we ourselves are enshrined and sheltered impenetrably within the bounds of another parent’s responsibility for his children. The great difference is that unlike us, our Heavenly Father has full sovereign control over all our successes and failures.
Assurance in our Father’s Sovereign Control
It’s a hard and scary truth to accept, that someone else determines the results of all our parenting efforts. But when we remember that it is our loving Father that has supreme control over all things, God’s ownership over all our parenting outcomes becomes a comfort and an assurance.
- God’s plans are unfathomable, His ways are mysterious; higher than our ways. No one can offer Him any counsel (Rom 11:33, Is 45:8-9). His ways are the best ways.
- Nothing can thwart His (best) plans for us and our children (Ps 115:3).
- He knows us better than our closest friends, and He considers us and our kids when He acts. He acts on our behalf (Is 64:4). He is in our corner.
- He has foreknown all the outcomes of us and our kids, accounted for them, and has a plan to use them (Ps 33:11). Everything makes sense to Him.
- We live firmly inside God’s good plan for us (Rom 8:28). He will not send us or our kids somewhere we were not meant to go.
- His love for us will not end, so His goodness towards us is forever (Rom 8:38)
Christian parents, it is abundantly good that everything does not hang on our parenting prowess. We are not responsible for everything, but our sovereign Heavenly Father is responsible for us, His beloved children.
Faithful Parenting By Remembering
So we do well to remember our truer, greater purpose as parents who are firstly God’s beloved children: Our parenthood is a divine call, with divinely ordained, boundaried responsibility. We instruct, correct, provide and care for, and love our children in obedience to our own loving Father. We do so by a strength that He graciously and generously supplies.
Parents, let’s stop idolizing our ideal outcomes, and put them in their place. It is alright not to have ultimate control over the results of our parenting. We can faithfully parent on with hope, remembering that today, we, our children, and all our outcomes are in just the right place: In the hands of a sovereign, loving Father.
Photo Credit: Ray Hennessy