Chandler / Griffin Family Discipleship

Leading Your Home through Time, Moments, and Milestones
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6632-5
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

The most important disciple a parent will make is within their own home, and yet this is the most difficult disciple to make. Family Discipleship by Matt Chandler and Adam Griffin helps readers develop a sustainable rhythm of gospel-centered discipleship through a guided framework focusing on moments of discipleship in 3 key areas: time (intentional time gathering your family around gospel activities or conversations), moments (leveraging opportunities throughout the day), and milestones (celebrating significant life events). Each section provides parents with Scriptures to consider, questions to answer, structures to implement, and ideas to try out as they seek to see Christ formed in their children. Here is a book that begins with the end in mind, offering ideas and examples of what gospel-centered family discipleship looks like, helping parents design their own discipleship plan as they seek to raise children in the love and fear of the Lord.

Matt Chandler (BA, Hardin-Simmons University) serves as lead pastor of teaching at the Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, and president of the Acts 29 Network. He lives in Texas with his wife, Lauren, and their three children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chandler, Matt

Griffin, Adam

Leseproben

Introduction

Children are immeasurably valuable. You, a parent, are the guardian of an immortal soul, a cherished human being, an incalculable treasure, the very image of God himself. When it comes to parenting, sometimes you get to enjoy it and sometimes you have to endure it. It is wonderful and unpredictable. It is the most fun, upsetting, messy, beautiful, disappointing, and encouraging position in the world. Raising kids is an endlessly challenging adventure, and it comes with a never-ending list of responsibilities. One of the grandest of those responsibilities is the call to all parents to be disciple-makers in their own homes. A disciple-maker is a follower of Christ helping others follow Christ. No matter what your household looks like, your family is the primary instrument and environment for discipleship in all the fantastic and flawed ways that it might be worked out. Your persevering and often thankless spiritual leadership in your home is one of the most important things you will ever do with your life.

Your kids need guidance, and you are their guide. We want to inspire and empower you for the magnificent call on your life to lead your household in befriending and following Jesus, and, as you’ll see, that plan does not have to be complicated. If your family already feels overloaded, this plan will not push you over the edge with a new burdensome list of obligations, but rather develop a strategy that helps easily weave in everyday ways for your family to worship God and talk about the gospel of Jesus. The hope of this book is to prepare you to equip your family for the work of ministry and to help them grow up in every way into Christ (Eph. 4:15), following a plan that is well thought-out and sustainable. As you read this book, you will realize that not only can you do this, but you can’t not do this. To parent without deliberately discipling your child is to build your family’s house on a foundation of sand.

God himself has called you to disciple your children: to teach them to obey all that he has commanded and to see Christ formed in them (Matt. 28:20; Gal. 4:19). Whether you are a new parent or your kids are older, our desire is that this resource will get you and your household on the same page concerning how you will address the spiritual upbringing of the next generation. We will help you establish a sustainable rhythm of gospel-centered living through our framework for family discipleship—time, moments, and milestones. Utilizing the framework will bless your family and focus your discipleship, no matter the number, age, development, or personality of your children.

Inside this book you’ll find Scripture to consider, questions to answer, structures to implement, and ideas to try out in family discipleship. Answering the questions and filling out the charts are the indispensable core of this resource, building your unique family plan onto the framework. Even if you skim everything else, don’t skip those. Consider answering the questions and filling out the charts with the invited insight of a mentor couple, counselor, or pastor. Share them with your church community for accountability. If you’re married, lean on these tools to get your spouse and you aligned on your family discipleship plan.

This is not, however, a “silver bullet” blueprint for building the perfect family. Inevitably, the ideas you experiment with or efforts you put into the discipleship of your home will not always meet your expectations. We can assure you that family discipleship seesaws between disappointing and delighting. When it comes to discipleship, your kids will not always respond the way you want them to. That is okay; no kids do. You are not doing this solely to illicit a desired response, but out of obedience to the call from God on your life as a parent.

Your family is not the only one whose plans completely fall apart, who accidentally “used a bad word” instead of capturing a family discipleship moment, whose family discipleship time ended in an argument, or whose candlelit family holiday tradition ended with wax in the carpet and a burn or two. Plans fall apart and people fall short. Take comfort that even in the Chandler and Griffin homes, which will often serve as examples throughout this book, we are far from perfect. Not only we, but every mom and dad we know, the godliest men and women we know, have some residue of shame to battle and a great need for grace regarding what they wish they would have done and what they regret saying or doing as they have led their families. At the same time, some of their fondest memories and proudest parental moments came in the midst of family discipleship. There is joy to be mined from the work of instructing your children. “A wise son makes a glad father” (Prov. 10:1), and “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7).

As a parent, you will sometimes feel inadequate. That might be especially true when it comes to your own understanding of God or his word or your ability and qualifications to teach it. Set your mind on the promises of God and his ability instead of feeling discouraged by a preoccupation with your inabilities. You, Mom or Dad, cannot save your child’s soul. Your child’s salvation “depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Rom. 9:16). If your child’s salvation depended on the quality of your parenting efforts, it would not only make parenting overwhelming but it would make salvation impossible. Your child will not love God only if you are a good enough parent, or run from God if you are in any way found wanting as a mom or dad. Just as in your own life, it is by grace through faith that your kids will be saved, “this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). What a privilege it is, then, knowing that God could do as he wishes without us, but that he still invites us flawed moms and dads into how he saves and raises a child to know him.

Unfortunately, not every one of our children will know him. Many of us, sadly, will have prodigal children, kids who rebel and run from the Lord. It is one of the most heartbreaking realities for Christian families. If you find yourself the parent of a spiritually wayward son or daughter, remember this: there is no such thing as a “hopeless case” or a “lost cause” when the God of the Bible is involved. Who can he not redeem? Who can he not transform? “The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear” (Isa. 59:1). Patience, compassion, grace, and prayer are in order. Also, remember that a prodigal child is not the cruel punishment of a malicious God because of some parenting failure of yours. Repent and redouble your efforts over your parental shortcomings? Yes. But it does you no good to torment yourself repeatedly with would’ve and could’ve. All we have to rely on for our children’s eternal destiny is the knowledge that God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6). God delights to redeem a human soul, and heaven rejoices when even one sinner repents.

God the Father and Jesus Christ are not looking at each other anxiously, crossing their fingers, and hoping you will solve the salvation of your child before it’s too late. No one gets to steal credit from God for a child’s deliverance from sin, and you should not beat yourself up when, in spite of your best efforts, your children rebel and run from God. You have no boast and no hope but the cross of Christ. That’s it! Literally, you have nothing to brag about or feel self-pity for. You have only this, what Christ has done freely for you already. And your only hope for a rebelling child is that the Father would draw him or her to himself and hopefully use you in the process.

Fortunately, discipling your kids is not a task God intends for you to carry by yourself. Yes, you’ve been given the gift of a life to steward, but you are to parent with a holy deference, asking the Holy Spirit to do what you cannot in a life that he loves more than you ever could—empowered by that same Holy Spirit for all that he asks you to do in leading your family. God never asks you to do anything that he does not empower you to do. In our own moments of parenting remorse, we are reminded that our role is to plant seeds of truth, water them, and pray that God will give them life and growth as we trust in his goodness and mercy over all our shortcomings. Family discipleship requires divine reliance: “Unless the Lord builds the house, / those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1). Relying on a kind, gracious, and loving God gives us plenty of reasons to be optimistic about raising this generation. Unlike God, you are not all-powerful, all-knowing, or all-present. You are not always right, always just, or always good. But your child’s heavenly Father is, and he even loves the lost and wandering sheep. You don’t know what the future holds, but you know the one who holds the future—trust him.

Despite bumps along the way, many of us will see faith sparked in the lives of our children through intentional discipleship. We will feel and know the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst as we gather, and we will have the opportunity to celebrate as we witness God reveal himself to a new generation. Never relent in praying to the Lord for his movement in your family. You and your child belong first and...