Modest parents know this: God does not need you. He can choose to work through you, but he can also work despite you. This attitude is not to feel the antidote for the feeling. Of course you are not qualified! There was never a qualifying process to start with.
The fact that God does not need you, but invites you to the discipleship process, he is not that he keeps you on arm length. Instead, God’s loving protection is for you. Your heart is not made to deal with the weight of the burden of discipleship. By trusting God with the discipleship of our children, pride is proud of us when things work well and crush if things don’t.
Of the unique place you take as the parent of your child, there are two important responsibilities that are unique of you: place them where God has promised to work and prepare them for eternity.
1. Put your children in the places where God has already promised work. From the beginning, God has ordered a few things as essential for the life of His followers: the Word of God, Prayer and the Sacraments of the Supper and Baptism of the Lord. We call this the “ordinary means of grace” because God has promised to work through these ordinary things to bring salvation. Where are these things found? In the church.
You may have been hurt by the church. You may have hurt the church too. Let this direct explanation make nothing to minimize the pain you may bear with you: your children must be part of an evangelier church. Your children must sit under the preached Word of God Week in and Week, simply because this is how God is planned to bring salvation to His people.
Let me go one step further. Your children must go to a church that meets personally. Virtual Church was an emergency solution to which most churches passed during Covid. However, that emergency solution became too many people as standard.11 Only adding to this problem is our desire to “make up lost time.” Because we have been robbed for most of two years, we have now taken our family schedules full of sports, out -of -school and trips. We just don’t have time for the church anymore.
Although much has changed in the past decade, this simple fact remains: you and your children must be in a physical location, at least weekly, with other Christians. They need visible, tangible memories of the goodness of God in the sacraments. They need the proximity of God found in prayer. They must gather with other disciples from all layers of life. They must hear the old man in the couch sing behind them and sing ‘Amazing Grace’ for the ten thousandth time. They have to look the teenager, ten years further, to walk faithfully with God. If Jesus calls the church his bride, and if he gave the keys of the kingdom to the church, then the church is essential for the discipleship of your child.
2. Prepare them for eternity. Discipleship is not about preparing your children to lead a better life in this world. Read that again. Much of Evangelical Christianity is poisoned by the Welfare Gospel. We may not believe that God will make us millionaires, but we are sure that Jesus should make our lives more pleasant and easier.
However, Jesus tells his disciples in John 16 that he does not train them, so that they will live better, more productive and less swear lives. Instead, he tells them about the glory of the gospel – “that you have peace in me” (verse 33). Why? “In this world you will have problems. But make your heart! I have overcome the world” (verse 33 NIV).
Nowadays a disturbing amount of evangelical Christianity focuses on making the earth a more comfortable place. To this end, we have our hope of political figures, education, morality, tax policy and international relations. These areas just mentioned are worth our attention and care as people have made in God’s image. We must be caretakers and stewards of God’s good creation (more about this in a later chapter).
But when something (literally something) is put forward as the thing that will finally bring us peace – whether it is a new house, president, school, friendship or athletic chase, we miss what Jesus explicitly told are disciples: “In this world you will have problems.” Discussion of our children in the direction of the Kingdom of God means that they will live at odds with the world. Loyal disciples will take the narrow path and make choices that will banish them. They will have problems because Jesus promised that they would do that, and Jesus tends to be a man of his Word.
This work of preparing our children to face problems is very, very good work. Paul says it this way: “For I remember that the suffering of this current time is not worth comparing the glory that must be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).
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11. For each family there can be exceptional circumstances and seasons where virtual church is the best choice. However, every family must go back to personal worship as soon as it is feasible and wise. If the worship experience of a church or family is only virtual, there can be no experience with all the ordinary means of grace or a real, physical community that supports each other.
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Discipleship without all the pressure
If disciples your children sound like a discouraging, shame -filled impossibility, you are not the only one. As a predecessor of a children and father of four, Chris Ammen has experienced your first -hand frustration and understands that most parents feel insufficient for the task. But what if our inadequacy is not failure, but is just the place where God chooses to work?
In his debut book he celebrates the freedom that we need to disciples to disciples our children from a place of weakness and dependence on God, while discovering important truths, such as the meaning of discipleship, the character of God and your role in raising your children to love and follow Him.
Read more about the book and how you can buy here.