How Did I Fail My Unbelieving Children?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - We hear from grieving parents a lot,
00:00:06.560 | and I suppose that to parent in this broken world
00:00:10.160 | is pretty much a guarantee of parental grieving.
00:00:12.480 | I mean, we are going to grieve to some extent.
00:00:15.440 | And so what do you do when your children
00:00:18.200 | grow up in the church, but then they leave the faith,
00:00:21.480 | and you're left with the lingering question
00:00:23.600 | over how you have failed them?
00:00:25.640 | Today's email comes from a father.
00:00:27.920 | Pastor John, does God promise to save my children?
00:00:31.220 | Some teachers say that I need to have faith
00:00:33.080 | and that I should claim it and that God would save them.
00:00:36.100 | I have four children, all raised in the local church,
00:00:39.160 | all walked away from the faith.
00:00:41.140 | Two seem to be returning,
00:00:43.000 | but both struggle with sinful lifestyles.
00:00:45.380 | The other two are very far from God.
00:00:48.040 | I'm so depressed over my children's spiritual condition
00:00:50.760 | and have asked the Lord to forgive me for being so depressed.
00:00:54.720 | Do you have any advice for me?
00:00:56.680 | So two painful questions.
00:00:59.120 | Does the Bible promise to save our children?
00:01:01.820 | What do I do if I feel like I have failed
00:01:04.840 | or I'm just depressed 'cause I don't know?
00:01:06.940 | First, does God promise to save my children?
00:01:12.040 | That's the way some people construe Proverbs 22.6,
00:01:17.200 | train up a child in the way he should go,
00:01:18.840 | and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
00:01:22.080 | I doubt that it is an absolute promise that way,
00:01:27.080 | but a generalization as it stands
00:01:30.320 | that we can hope for, pray for, work for.
00:01:33.240 | In fact, however, there is another vying,
00:01:39.280 | possible translation of this verse.
00:01:43.160 | Bring up a child in his own way,
00:01:46.320 | that's the literal translation,
00:01:48.080 | and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
00:01:50.160 | And his own might be bad,
00:01:54.480 | which means it's a threat, not a promise.
00:01:56.760 | Bring up a child in his own way and you're gonna lose him.
00:01:59.620 | So don't bring him up in his own way,
00:02:01.040 | bring him up in God's way.
00:02:02.680 | But in either case,
00:02:04.160 | I'm not gonna argue for that translation.
00:02:06.760 | I'm just saying in either case, warning or promise,
00:02:10.400 | I don't see the nature of Proverbs
00:02:14.120 | or the rest of the Bible
00:02:16.120 | suggesting that this is an absolute guarantee
00:02:20.480 | of believing children to believing and faithful parents.
00:02:24.920 | And I've got three reasons for that and more,
00:02:27.800 | but here's three.
00:02:29.360 | One, in Isaiah 1, 2, God says,
00:02:33.040 | "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth,
00:02:36.720 | for the Lord has spoken.
00:02:38.400 | Children I have reared and brought up,
00:02:41.440 | but they have rebelled against me."
00:02:43.700 | Now, if it were true that good parenting
00:02:47.040 | always resulted in faithful children,
00:02:49.560 | that would be a very strange thing for God Almighty,
00:02:53.320 | who is the perfect parent, to say.
00:02:56.060 | That's number one.
00:02:56.900 | Number two, I'm just reading right now,
00:03:00.040 | I'm just coming to the end.
00:03:02.120 | I read this every year as I read through the Bible,
00:03:04.360 | I read this long, sorry history of the kings of Israel
00:03:09.040 | with bad kings being followed by sons
00:03:11.840 | who turn out to be good kings.
00:03:13.520 | And good kings who are followed by sons
00:03:17.040 | who turn out to be bad kings.
00:03:18.840 | And it is a simply stunning mixture of good and evil
00:03:23.760 | and gives me great pause
00:03:27.520 | not to make quick and easy assumptions
00:03:30.920 | that the bad always produce bad kids
00:03:33.700 | and the good always produce good kids.
00:03:35.520 | It's simply not true.
00:03:36.920 | It's not so simple, not in the Bible.
00:03:40.440 | And the third is the most important for me.
00:03:43.040 | Jesus said about family relations
00:03:46.800 | and the effect his gospel has on them, Luke 12 51,
00:03:51.720 | "Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth?
00:03:55.760 | No, I tell you, but division.
00:03:58.400 | For from now on, in one house,
00:04:00.840 | there will be five divided,
00:04:03.160 | three against two, two against three.
00:04:06.280 | They will be divided, father against son,
00:04:09.280 | son against father, mother against daughter,
00:04:13.080 | daughter against mother.
00:04:15.420 | And even more strikingly, Matthew 10 21,
00:04:19.160 | brother will deliver brother to death,
00:04:21.880 | father, his child,
00:04:24.120 | and children will rise up against parents
00:04:28.160 | and have them put to death."
00:04:29.760 | Now, all in all, as I look at those
00:04:34.000 | and lots of other things,
00:04:36.920 | I don't think the Bible gives any absolute promise
00:04:40.400 | to parents that faithful parenting
00:04:42.600 | will result in faithful children.
00:04:45.200 | It's likely to,
00:04:46.620 | and we should pray that it will,
00:04:49.920 | hope that it will,
00:04:51.340 | but an absolute promise, I don't think so.
00:04:56.040 | Which leads now to the last part of the question.
00:04:58.900 | What am I gonna do with the horrific discouragement?
00:05:05.840 | I mean, he's talking about depression here
00:05:08.960 | that is undoing him over the unbelief
00:05:13.600 | of all four of his children.
00:05:16.160 | What are we to do?
00:05:17.480 | The first thing I would say is that
00:05:20.600 | none of us can pass final judgment on our own parenting,
00:05:24.760 | and neither can our children.
00:05:26.560 | Memories, their memories and our memories are fallible.
00:05:29.760 | Situations were very complex.
00:05:32.760 | We can know for sure that sins we remember,
00:05:37.720 | and there will always be some,
00:05:39.480 | sins against our children should be confessed to God,
00:05:44.000 | confessed to them,
00:05:46.000 | and made right as far as they will allow us
00:05:49.040 | to make it right.
00:05:50.740 | But that is no final judgment about how we did.
00:05:54.720 | That will only come to light at the last day.
00:05:57.680 | And that's true for our children and their assessment,
00:06:00.100 | as well as our own assessment.
00:06:01.840 | Which means that the possibilities of peace and joy
00:06:05.780 | and hope and love in the present moment cannot,
00:06:09.680 | must not depend decisively on our assessment
00:06:14.120 | of how we did as parents.
00:06:16.720 | We all sinned.
00:06:19.280 | We all did less than we could.
00:06:21.720 | None of us prayed as much as we could.
00:06:24.440 | None of us fasted as much as we could.
00:06:26.920 | Did you fast at all?
00:06:29.000 | None of us humbled ourselves as much as we could.
00:06:32.720 | None of us were as consistent in our life
00:06:36.880 | as we could have been.
00:06:37.840 | None of us were as faithful to the Word of God
00:06:41.200 | as we could have been.
00:06:43.160 | None of us in exhortation or kindness or meekness
00:06:47.400 | or gentleness were as good as we could have been.
00:06:50.200 | It is hopeless to base our present peace and joy
00:06:54.680 | on the assurance that we did a good job as parents,
00:06:58.880 | that is building a house on sand.
00:07:02.000 | Our hope in the present moment to survive emotionally
00:07:07.960 | and even thrive amid the profound,
00:07:11.520 | gut-wrenching disappointments of life
00:07:14.980 | is the fact that Jesus Christ came into the world
00:07:18.120 | to save sinners, to save parents from their sins,
00:07:23.120 | and to save children from their sins.
00:07:26.400 | We must build our present lives on the gospel
00:07:31.360 | and not on parenting successes
00:07:34.800 | and not be undone by parenting failures.
00:07:38.480 | That's a denial of the gospel.
00:07:41.200 | The key is to seek, to ask God by the Holy Spirit
00:07:46.200 | to give us the faith and the wisdom
00:07:49.760 | to weave together three passages of Scripture
00:07:53.080 | and walk in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul.
00:07:55.560 | And here they are, and these seem utterly impossible,
00:07:58.760 | but hear me out.
00:08:01.320 | First, he said in Romans 9, 2,
00:08:04.520 | "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart,
00:08:09.520 | for I could wish that I myself were accursed
00:08:13.320 | and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers,
00:08:16.280 | my kinsmen, according to the flesh."
00:08:19.040 | So we do have anguish over those we love
00:08:22.840 | who are not believing.
00:08:25.180 | Second, Paul says in chapter 10, verse 1,
00:08:28.400 | "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them
00:08:31.400 | is that they may be saved."
00:08:33.080 | So we do devote ourselves unstintingly,
00:08:36.560 | morning and night, day after day, to earnest prayer
00:08:40.520 | that those we love will be saved.
00:08:43.960 | And we engage in special seasons of focused prayer.
00:08:47.220 | We draw friends into that,
00:08:49.160 | and we, as led by the Lord, fast for our children.
00:08:52.680 | And third, we hand over our souls
00:08:56.220 | and the souls of our children
00:08:57.500 | to the sovereign goodness and wisdom of God
00:08:59.580 | and forsake anxiety, according to Philippians 4.7.
00:09:04.260 | "Do not be anxious about anything,
00:09:08.780 | but in everything, by prayer and supplication,
00:09:11.660 | with thanksgiving, let your hearts be made known to God,
00:09:14.740 | let your requests be made known to God,
00:09:17.660 | and the peace of God, which passes all under sin,
00:09:22.680 | understanding, will guard your hearts and minds
00:09:25.840 | in Christ Jesus."
00:09:26.800 | Now, in the natural human heart,
00:09:30.720 | this combination of emotions is impossible.
00:09:35.720 | It certainly seems so to me from time to time.
00:09:39.840 | Number one, unceasing anguish in your heart
00:09:43.360 | because of the lostness of your loved ones.
00:09:45.820 | Number two, daily, earnest intercession to God
00:09:49.400 | on their behalf.
00:09:50.240 | Number three, peace that passes all understanding
00:09:54.580 | because we entrust ourselves and our loved ones to God.
00:09:58.220 | I suppose that's precisely why Paul calls it
00:10:02.780 | peace that surpasses all understanding.
00:10:07.780 | It isn't based on rational deduction.
00:10:14.780 | The peace of God in these kinds of situations,
00:10:18.940 | painful situations, that peace is a miracle.
00:10:23.940 | It is a gift.
00:10:26.280 | It cannot be produced by the natural reasoning mind.
00:10:31.280 | So, may the Lord give us,
00:10:37.600 | give our friend who wrote this painful note,
00:10:41.240 | may the Lord give us grace to live in this kind of peace
00:10:46.900 | in spite of all our troubles
00:10:51.540 | so that our children can see it
00:10:55.300 | because that's what they need more than anything.
00:10:59.740 | - It's heavy stuff.
00:11:00.660 | Thank you, Pastor John, for addressing it with us.
00:11:02.860 | I really appreciate you putting the thoughtful time
00:11:05.140 | that you do into answers like this one.
00:11:08.060 | Well, three times per week, we publish
00:11:09.780 | and you can subscribe to our audio feeds to keep up
00:11:12.300 | and you can search our episode archive to look back
00:11:15.260 | and you can even reach us by email
00:11:16.500 | with a question you may be facing inside the darkness
00:11:18.820 | of the pain of parenting in this broken world.
00:11:21.500 | You can do all that through our online home
00:11:22.940 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:26.500 | Well, speaking of earnest prayers for the souls of the lost,
00:11:31.180 | when Jesus talks about fruitfulness,
00:11:33.100 | he is not afraid to throw around numbers,
00:11:35.500 | numbers like 100-fold and 60-fold and 30-fold.
00:11:39.700 | So, very practically, does this mean that pastoring
00:11:42.100 | a small church that's not growing numerically
00:11:44.500 | is less fruitful than pastoring a large, growing church?
00:11:48.740 | It's a good, honest question from a discouraged pastor
00:11:52.700 | and it's on the docket for Wednesday.
00:11:54.780 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:55.940 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:11:58.580 | (upbeat music)
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