(upbeat music) - Kelly, a mom, writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I'm wondering if you would speak "on the subject of dealing with rebellious children. "How do you keep trusting God when you see no evidence "of His working in a child's life?" - Well, this is exactly the right question to ask.

How do we keep on trusting God? The crucial need for every parent is to trust God, to trust God that He has worked for us in Jesus to save us from our sins, to trust God that He will fulfill all of His promises to His children, to trust God that He will uphold us.

Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I'll help you, I'll uphold you, that He'll keep that promise. To trust God that He will withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly, to trust God that He will give us only what is good for us and that all His ways are just and wise.

What our children need from us most is to see joyful, hopeful, peaceful, obedient, trusting God and to keep trusting God in God. And the biblical answer to the question, how do we keep trusting God in this and every situation is surely given clearly, probably most clearly in Romans 10, 17.

So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. And I think that means not just you get converted and get faith the first time by hearing Christ, but you get faith strengthened every day by hearing. Faith comes daily by hearing. Right now in this podcast, faith doesn't come from John Piper.

Faith comes from John Piper's reading the Bible and applying the Bible, or it doesn't come at all. So let me give a few texts that would, I hope, strengthen our faith in respect to our children. Number one, it helps parents, I think, to realize, strange as it may sound, that God's own children rebel against Him.

Isaiah 1, verse 2, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken, 'Children I have reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.'" God said that. "The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand." No parent on earth has ever been a sinless parent or a completely wise parent or a completely loving parent or a completely patient parent.

The sins that we have committed as parents in the presence of our children and against our children are countless, and we must constantly repent and seek forgiveness, God and them, but even the very best parent, God Himself, has rebellious children. So don't let Satan load you down with faith-destroying guilt greater than you can bear or should bear, that's number one.

Number two, remember that the apostle Paul gave himself as an example of the worst sinner, and that means not only that he did the worst things, but that he sinned against the greatest light. Goodness gracious, he grew up at the feet of Gamaliel, the best teacher of the Old Testament there was in those days, and he gave us this illustration to encourage us that none of us and none of our children is beyond conversion.

So he wrote in 1 Timothy 1, 12, "I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful, appointing me to His service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, innocent," I mean, insolent, not innocent, "insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the mercy of our Lord overflowed for me with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

The saying is trustworthy, deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost, but I received mercy for this reason," and that's this podcast. "I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display, through the lips of John Piper speaking right now, His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life." That means that all the people listening to me who know somebody, who are somebody, that have sinned so grievously, so long, grew up in such a wonderful home, and threw it away so often, are not beyond the power of the patience of Jesus to reach them.

So we preach that to ourselves, and we strengthen our faith with that amazing statement of the Apostle Paul, and here's the third thing. "Meditate often on the truth that God is sovereign over the human heart, and therefore is able to put a camel through the eye of a needle, which is impossible," and I say that because when the rich man turned away from Jesus, because he was in love with the world, and you may think that's who your kids are, that's what they've done, they've turned away, and they're in love with the world now.

Well, Jesus says about him how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God, and the disciples were amazed, and they said, "Well, who then can be saved?" They were astonished, and Jesus responded in Mark 10, 27, "With man it is impossible," and that's the way a lot of parents feel, and they shouldn't dwell on that, they should dwell on the next half.

"With man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God." So parents should preach, we should preach to ourselves over and over again, "With man it is impossible, but not with God, not with God. All things are possible with God, all things are possible with God," and he's talking about getting a person who's in love with his riches or his worldliness into the kingdom of God, and he says, "I can do that, I can do that, he can't, you can't, but I can, so trust me." And the fourth thing I would say is focus your attention on delighting yourself in the Lord, not on delighting in the conversion of your children.

Now, don't take this in the wrong way, it is right to delight in the conversion of your children, if you don't, something's deeply wrong, but I'm simply talking about what gets the focus in your life. I'm thinking, of course, of Psalm 37, four, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." Focus your spiritual energies on cultivating a robust, deep, unshakable, satisfying delight in God as God, and only then will we be in a position to receive the rest of this verse.

He'll give you the desires of your heart. And the last thing is let the longing, the aching, the praying, the weeping for your children, let the longing that you feel for the conversion and the obedience of your children become the measure of your longing for other lost people. This has been a great lesson to me as I've raised children and how deeply I long for them to follow Christ, and then I wake up to realize I'm not longing for others quite that way, or even close to quite that way.

So I've tried, and this is a convicting thing, let God's good work of producing desire in your heart for the conversion of your children, let it produce a desire for the conversion of other lost people in your life as well. And then the last thing really is pray, pray, pray, because Jesus said, "Keep on knocking." He loves it when you knock.

He will never grow weary of the prayers that you launch His way for your children. - That's very convicting as a dad, and beautiful. Wonderful counsel, Pastor John, thank you. And Kelly, thank you for emailing us your question. We are gonna return tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast, and for more, visit us online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn (upbeat music) (upbeat music)