(upbeat music) - We hear from grieving parents a lot, and I suppose that to parent in this broken world is pretty much a guarantee of parental grieving. I mean, we are going to grieve to some extent. And so what do you do when your children grow up in the church, but then they leave the faith, and you're left with the lingering question over how you have failed them?

Today's email comes from a father. Pastor John, does God promise to save my children? Some teachers say that I need to have faith and that I should claim it and that God would save them. I have four children, all raised in the local church, all walked away from the faith.

Two seem to be returning, but both struggle with sinful lifestyles. The other two are very far from God. I'm so depressed over my children's spiritual condition and have asked the Lord to forgive me for being so depressed. Do you have any advice for me? So two painful questions. Does the Bible promise to save our children?

What do I do if I feel like I have failed or I'm just depressed 'cause I don't know? First, does God promise to save my children? That's the way some people construe Proverbs 22.6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

I doubt that it is an absolute promise that way, but a generalization as it stands that we can hope for, pray for, work for. In fact, however, there is another vying, possible translation of this verse. Bring up a child in his own way, that's the literal translation, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

And his own might be bad, which means it's a threat, not a promise. Bring up a child in his own way and you're gonna lose him. So don't bring him up in his own way, bring him up in God's way. But in either case, I'm not gonna argue for that translation.

I'm just saying in either case, warning or promise, I don't see the nature of Proverbs or the rest of the Bible suggesting that this is an absolute guarantee of believing children to believing and faithful parents. And I've got three reasons for that and more, but here's three. One, in Isaiah 1, 2, God says, "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." Now, if it were true that good parenting always resulted in faithful children, that would be a very strange thing for God Almighty, who is the perfect parent, to say. That's number one. Number two, I'm just reading right now, I'm just coming to the end.

I read this every year as I read through the Bible, I read this long, sorry history of the kings of Israel with bad kings being followed by sons who turn out to be good kings. And good kings who are followed by sons who turn out to be bad kings.

And it is a simply stunning mixture of good and evil and gives me great pause not to make quick and easy assumptions that the bad always produce bad kids and the good always produce good kids. It's simply not true. It's not so simple, not in the Bible. And the third is the most important for me.

Jesus said about family relations and the effect his gospel has on them, Luke 12 51, "Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. For from now on, in one house, there will be five divided, three against two, two against three.

They will be divided, father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother. And even more strikingly, Matthew 10 21, brother will deliver brother to death, father, his child, and children will rise up against parents and have them put to death." Now, all in all, as I look at those and lots of other things, I don't think the Bible gives any absolute promise to parents that faithful parenting will result in faithful children.

It's likely to, and we should pray that it will, hope that it will, but an absolute promise, I don't think so. Which leads now to the last part of the question. What am I gonna do with the horrific discouragement? I mean, he's talking about depression here that is undoing him over the unbelief of all four of his children.

What are we to do? The first thing I would say is that none of us can pass final judgment on our own parenting, and neither can our children. Memories, their memories and our memories are fallible. Situations were very complex. We can know for sure that sins we remember, and there will always be some, sins against our children should be confessed to God, confessed to them, and made right as far as they will allow us to make it right.

But that is no final judgment about how we did. That will only come to light at the last day. And that's true for our children and their assessment, as well as our own assessment. Which means that the possibilities of peace and joy and hope and love in the present moment cannot, must not depend decisively on our assessment of how we did as parents.

We all sinned. We all did less than we could. None of us prayed as much as we could. None of us fasted as much as we could. Did you fast at all? None of us humbled ourselves as much as we could. None of us were as consistent in our life as we could have been.

None of us were as faithful to the Word of God as we could have been. None of us in exhortation or kindness or meekness or gentleness were as good as we could have been. It is hopeless to base our present peace and joy on the assurance that we did a good job as parents, that is building a house on sand.

Our hope in the present moment to survive emotionally and even thrive amid the profound, gut-wrenching disappointments of life is the fact that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, to save parents from their sins, and to save children from their sins. We must build our present lives on the gospel and not on parenting successes and not be undone by parenting failures.

That's a denial of the gospel. The key is to seek, to ask God by the Holy Spirit to give us the faith and the wisdom to weave together three passages of Scripture and walk in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul. And here they are, and these seem utterly impossible, but hear me out.

First, he said in Romans 9, 2, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh." So we do have anguish over those we love who are not believing.

Second, Paul says in chapter 10, verse 1, "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved." So we do devote ourselves unstintingly, morning and night, day after day, to earnest prayer that those we love will be saved. And we engage in special seasons of focused prayer.

We draw friends into that, and we, as led by the Lord, fast for our children. And third, we hand over our souls and the souls of our children to the sovereign goodness and wisdom of God and forsake anxiety, according to Philippians 4.7. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your hearts be made known to God, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all under sin, understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Now, in the natural human heart, this combination of emotions is impossible.

It certainly seems so to me from time to time. Number one, unceasing anguish in your heart because of the lostness of your loved ones. Number two, daily, earnest intercession to God on their behalf. Number three, peace that passes all understanding because we entrust ourselves and our loved ones to God.

I suppose that's precisely why Paul calls it peace that surpasses all understanding. It isn't based on rational deduction. The peace of God in these kinds of situations, painful situations, that peace is a miracle. It is a gift. It cannot be produced by the natural reasoning mind. So, may the Lord give us, give our friend who wrote this painful note, may the Lord give us grace to live in this kind of peace in spite of all our troubles so that our children can see it because that's what they need more than anything.

- It's heavy stuff. Thank you, Pastor John, for addressing it with us. I really appreciate you putting the thoughtful time that you do into answers like this one. Well, three times per week, we publish and you can subscribe to our audio feeds to keep up and you can search our episode archive to look back and you can even reach us by email with a question you may be facing inside the darkness of the pain of parenting in this broken world.

You can do all that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, speaking of earnest prayers for the souls of the lost, when Jesus talks about fruitfulness, he is not afraid to throw around numbers, numbers like 100-fold and 60-fold and 30-fold. So, very practically, does this mean that pastoring a small church that's not growing numerically is less fruitful than pastoring a large, growing church?

It's a good, honest question from a discouraged pastor and it's on the docket for Wednesday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)