Discipling Your Child in Faith: 2 Tasks Every Parent Needs to Know

Humble parents know this: God does not need you. He may choose to workthrough you, but he also might work in spite of you. This posture is the antidotefor the feeling of not feeling qualified. Of course you are not qualified! Therewas never any qualification process to begin with.

The fact that God does not need you but invites you into the process of discipleshipis not him keeping you at arm’s length. Instead, it’s God’s loving protectionfor you. Your heart is not made to handle the weight of the burden ofdiscipleship. Trusting God with our kids’ discipleship keeps us from pride whenthings work out well and crushing despair when things don’t.

From the unique place you occupy as your child’s parent, there are two keyresponsibilities that are uniquely yours: Put them where God has promised towork, and prepare them for eternity.

1. Put your children in the places where God has already promised towork.From the beginning, God has ordained a few things as essential to the lifeof his followers: the word of God, prayer, and the sacraments of the Lord’s Supperand baptism. We call these the “ordinary means of grace” because God haspromised to work through these ordinary things to bring salvation. Where arethese things found? In the church.

You may have been hurt by the church. You may have hurt the church aswell. Let this direct statement do nothing to minimize the pain you may carrywith you: Your children need to be a part of a gospel-rich church. Your childrenneed to sit under the preached word of God week in and week out simplybecause this is how God has planned to bring salvation to his people.

Let me go a step further. Your children need to go to a church that meets in-person.Virtual church was an emergency solution most churches transitionedto during COVID. However, that emergency solution became too many people’sdefault.11 Only adding to this problem is our desire to “make up for losttime.” Having been deprived for the better part of two years, we have nowcrammed our family schedules full of sports, extracurriculars, and trips. Wesimply have no time left for church.

While much has changed in the last decade, this simple fact remains: Youand your children need to be in a physical location, at least weekly, with otherChristians. They need visible, tangible reminders of the goodness of God inthe sacraments. They need the nearness of God found in prayer. They needto gather with other disciples from all walks of life. They need to hear the oldman in the pew behind them singing “Amazing Grace” for the ten-thousandthtime. They need to watch the teenager, ten years down the road, walking faithfullywith God. If Jesus calls the church his bride, and if he gave the keys of thekingdom to the church, then the church is essential to your child’s discipleship.

2. Prepare them for eternity.Discipleship is not about preparing your children to live better lives in thisworld. Read that again. Much of evangelical Christianity has been poisoned bythe prosperity gospel. We may not believe God will make us millionaires, butwe’re sure that Jesus ought to make our lives more enjoyable and easier.

However, Jesus tells his disciples in John 16 that he is training them not sothey will live better, more productive, and less encumbered lives. Instead, hetells them about the glories of the gospel—“that in me you may have peace”(verse 33). Why? “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I haveovercome the world” (verse 33 NIV).

Today, a disturbing amount of evangelical Christianity focuses on makingEarth a more comfortable place. To that end, we put our hopes in politicalfigures, education, morality, fiscal policies, and international relations. Theseareas just listed are worthy of our attention and care as humans made in God’simage. We are to be caretakers and stewards of God’s good creation (more onthis in a later chapter).

But when anything (literally anything) is put forward as the thing that willfinally bring us peace—be it a new house, president, school, friendship, or athleticpursuit—we miss what Jesus explicitly told his disciples: “In this world,you will have trouble.” Discipling our children toward the kingdom of Godmeans they will live at odds with the world. Faithful disciples will take the narrowpath and make choices that will ostracize them. They will have troublebecause Jesus promised they would, and Jesus tends to be a man of his word.

This work of preparing our children to face trouble is very, very good work.Paul says it this way: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present timeare not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans8:18).

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11. For every family, there may be exceptional circumstances and seasons where virtual church is the best choice.However, every family should move back toward in-person worship as soon as it is feasible and wise. If achurch or family’s worship experience is only virtual, there cannot be an experience of all the ordinary meansof grace or a real, physical community that supports one another.