Six Ways Parents of Rebellious Children Fight for Faith

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Kelly, a mom, writes in to ask this,

00:00:07.640 | "Pastor John, I'm wondering if you would speak

00:00:09.980 | "on the subject of dealing with rebellious children.

00:00:12.980 | "How do you keep trusting God when you see no evidence

00:00:16.260 | "of His working in a child's life?"

00:00:19.520 | - Well, this is exactly the right question to ask.

00:00:22.460 | How do we keep on trusting God?

00:00:25.200 | The crucial need for every parent is to trust God,

00:00:30.200 | to trust God that He has worked for us in Jesus

00:00:35.640 | to save us from our sins,

00:00:38.140 | to trust God that He will fulfill all of His promises

00:00:42.140 | to His children, to trust God that He will uphold us.

00:00:47.140 | Fear not, for I am with you.

00:00:50.080 | Be not dismayed, for I am your God.

00:00:51.620 | I will strengthen you, I'll help you, I'll uphold you,

00:00:54.360 | that He'll keep that promise.

00:00:56.500 | To trust God that He will withhold no good thing

00:01:00.060 | from those who walk uprightly,

00:01:01.900 | to trust God that He will give us only what is good for us

00:01:05.800 | and that all His ways are just and wise.

00:01:09.680 | What our children need from us most is to see joyful,

00:01:14.680 | hopeful, peaceful, obedient, trusting God

00:01:23.160 | and to keep trusting God in God.

00:01:25.660 | And the biblical answer to the question,

00:01:27.620 | how do we keep trusting God in this and every situation

00:01:31.600 | is surely given clearly, probably most clearly

00:01:36.600 | in Romans 10, 17.

00:01:39.140 | So faith comes from hearing

00:01:43.540 | and hearing through the word of Christ.

00:01:46.680 | And I think that means not just you get converted

00:01:50.680 | and get faith the first time by hearing Christ,

00:01:54.920 | but you get faith strengthened every day by hearing.

00:01:59.920 | Faith comes daily by hearing.

00:02:04.860 | Right now in this podcast,

00:02:06.900 | faith doesn't come from John Piper.

00:02:09.240 | Faith comes from John Piper's reading the Bible

00:02:11.700 | and applying the Bible, or it doesn't come at all.

00:02:15.980 | So let me give a few texts that would, I hope,

00:02:20.980 | strengthen our faith in respect to our children.

00:02:26.460 | Number one, it helps parents, I think,

00:02:31.460 | to realize, strange as it may sound,

00:02:34.820 | that God's own children rebel against Him.

00:02:38.660 | Isaiah 1, verse 2,

00:02:40.340 | "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth,

00:02:43.740 | for the Lord has spoken, 'Children I have reared

00:02:47.240 | and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.'"

00:02:52.240 | God said that.

00:02:53.520 | "The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib,

00:02:58.120 | but Israel does not know, my people do not understand."

00:03:01.620 | No parent on earth has ever been a sinless parent

00:03:05.760 | or a completely wise parent or a completely loving parent

00:03:09.060 | or a completely patient parent.

00:03:11.440 | The sins that we have committed as parents

00:03:13.900 | in the presence of our children

00:03:15.380 | and against our children are countless,

00:03:17.900 | and we must constantly repent and seek forgiveness,

00:03:22.140 | God and them, but even the very best parent,

00:03:27.140 | God Himself, has rebellious children.

00:03:31.100 | So don't let Satan load you down

00:03:35.820 | with faith-destroying guilt greater than you can bear

00:03:40.440 | or should bear, that's number one.

00:03:43.100 | Number two, remember that the apostle Paul

00:03:47.580 | gave himself as an example of the worst sinner,

00:03:52.580 | and that means not only that he did the worst things,

00:03:57.240 | but that he sinned against the greatest light.

00:03:59.420 | Goodness gracious, he grew up at the feet of Gamaliel,

00:04:02.620 | the best teacher of the Old Testament there was

00:04:04.620 | in those days, and he gave us this illustration

00:04:09.140 | to encourage us that none of us and none of our children

00:04:12.300 | is beyond conversion.

00:04:14.180 | So he wrote in 1 Timothy 1, 12,

00:04:17.340 | "I thank Him who has given me strength,

00:04:19.740 | Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful,

00:04:23.100 | appointing me to His service, though formerly

00:04:26.220 | I was a blasphemer, persecutor, innocent,"

00:04:30.740 | I mean, insolent, not innocent, "insolent opponent,

00:04:35.020 | but I received mercy because I had acted

00:04:38.560 | ignorantly in unbelief, and the mercy of our Lord

00:04:42.340 | overflowed for me with faith and love

00:04:45.220 | that are in Christ Jesus.

00:04:46.780 | The saying is trustworthy, deserving of full acceptance

00:04:49.620 | that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,

00:04:52.120 | of whom I am the foremost, but I received mercy

00:04:57.120 | for this reason," and that's this podcast.

00:05:02.640 | "I received mercy for this reason, so that in me,

00:05:07.140 | as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display,

00:05:11.540 | through the lips of John Piper speaking right now,

00:05:14.220 | His perfect patience as an example to those

00:05:18.420 | who were to believe in Him for eternal life."

00:05:22.080 | That means that all the people listening to me

00:05:24.960 | who know somebody, who are somebody,

00:05:28.060 | that have sinned so grievously, so long,

00:05:30.260 | grew up in such a wonderful home,

00:05:31.840 | and threw it away so often, are not beyond

00:05:36.400 | the power of the patience of Jesus to reach them.

00:05:39.960 | So we preach that to ourselves,

00:05:41.480 | and we strengthen our faith with that amazing statement

00:05:45.280 | of the Apostle Paul, and here's the third thing.

00:05:47.280 | "Meditate often on the truth that God is sovereign

00:05:52.280 | over the human heart, and therefore is able

00:05:55.600 | to put a camel through the eye of a needle,

00:05:58.960 | which is impossible," and I say that

00:06:01.760 | because when the rich man turned away from Jesus,

00:06:05.020 | because he was in love with the world,

00:06:06.360 | and you may think that's who your kids are,

00:06:09.480 | that's what they've done, they've turned away,

00:06:11.760 | and they're in love with the world now.

00:06:14.720 | Well, Jesus says about him how difficult it is

00:06:18.300 | for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,

00:06:21.100 | and the disciples were amazed, and they said,

00:06:23.360 | "Well, who then can be saved?"

00:06:27.160 | They were astonished, and Jesus responded in Mark 10, 27,

00:06:32.920 | "With man it is impossible,"

00:06:35.680 | and that's the way a lot of parents feel,

00:06:37.420 | and they shouldn't dwell on that,

00:06:38.520 | they should dwell on the next half.

00:06:40.460 | "With man it is impossible, but not with God,

00:06:44.180 | for all things are possible with God."

00:06:47.540 | So parents should preach, we should preach to ourselves

00:06:50.780 | over and over again, "With man it is impossible,

00:06:53.880 | but not with God, not with God.

00:06:55.980 | All things are possible with God,

00:06:58.220 | all things are possible with God,"

00:07:00.740 | and he's talking about getting a person

00:07:03.760 | who's in love with his riches or his worldliness

00:07:07.120 | into the kingdom of God, and he says, "I can do that,

00:07:11.000 | I can do that, he can't, you can't, but I can, so trust me."

00:07:16.000 | And the fourth thing I would say is focus your attention

00:07:19.160 | on delighting yourself in the Lord,

00:07:22.400 | not on delighting in the conversion of your children.

00:07:25.120 | Now, don't take this in the wrong way,

00:07:30.720 | it is right to delight in the conversion of your children,

00:07:33.660 | if you don't, something's deeply wrong,

00:07:35.540 | but I'm simply talking about

00:07:37.280 | what gets the focus in your life.

00:07:40.320 | I'm thinking, of course, of Psalm 37, four,

00:07:42.960 | "Delight yourself in the Lord,

00:07:44.780 | and he will give you the desires of your heart."

00:07:47.780 | Focus your spiritual energies on cultivating a robust,

00:07:52.780 | deep, unshakable, satisfying delight in God as God,

00:07:58.860 | and only then will we be in a position

00:08:01.960 | to receive the rest of this verse.

00:08:03.900 | He'll give you the desires of your heart.

00:08:06.660 | And the last thing is let the longing, the aching,

00:08:11.660 | the praying, the weeping for your children,

00:08:15.600 | let the longing that you feel for the conversion

00:08:20.600 | and the obedience of your children

00:08:23.540 | become the measure of your longing for other lost people.

00:08:29.380 | This has been a great lesson to me

00:08:31.400 | as I've raised children and how deeply I long for them

00:08:35.820 | to follow Christ, and then I wake up to realize

00:08:38.480 | I'm not longing for others quite that way,

00:08:42.280 | or even close to quite that way.

00:08:44.240 | So I've tried, and this is a convicting thing,

00:08:48.840 | let God's good work of producing desire in your heart

00:08:53.840 | for the conversion of your children,

00:08:56.240 | let it produce a desire for the conversion

00:08:58.920 | of other lost people in your life as well.

00:09:02.720 | And then the last thing really is pray, pray, pray,

00:09:06.360 | because Jesus said, "Keep on knocking."

00:09:09.300 | He loves it when you knock.

00:09:10.800 | He will never grow weary of the prayers

00:09:13.420 | that you launch His way for your children.

00:09:17.200 | - That's very convicting as a dad, and beautiful.

00:09:20.080 | Wonderful counsel, Pastor John, thank you.

00:09:21.760 | And Kelly, thank you for emailing us your question.

00:09:24.120 | We are gonna return tomorrow.

00:09:25.400 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:09:26.680 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast,

00:09:29.080 | and for more, visit us online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn

00:09:34.900 | (upbeat music)

00:09:37.480 | (upbeat music)

00:09:40.060 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Six Ways Parents of Rebellious Children Fight for Faith

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