Parents As Prophets

“Then the Lord said, ‘As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush…” – Isaiah 20:3

It was hard being a prophet. Apparently the job description included giving up clothing and shoes for three years as an object lesson. The prophets brought the intangible, easy-to-brush-off realities of God to the people around them in an extremely palpable, concrete way, even if it caused them extreme discomfort and embarrassment.

Paul Tripp likes to say that the one word that describes parents the most is “ambassador.” Children don’t belong to us. They are God’s possession (Psalm 127:3) for his purpose; we are God’s agents in their lives. “The word that the Bible uses for this intermediary position,” Tripp writes, “is ‘ambassador’… The only thing an ambassador does, if he’s interested in keeping his job, is to faithfully represent the message, methods and character of the leader who has sent him.”

As an ambassador, you find your sense of identity as a parent from Jesus, not from your children. Your work as a parent is not to turn your kids into something, but to represent God and realize you have no power to change them. Your work is motivated not by what you want them to be, but by the potential of what grace could cause them to be. As an ambassador, success is not about working towards a specific catalog of horizontal outcomes, but about being faithful; it’s not about what you’ve produced but what you have done. As an ambassador, you care about your children breaking God’s law, not about the hassle or embarrassment they’ve brought you.

It’s not unlike being an Isaiah, personifying intangible spiritual truths so that they can be seen, heard, touched by the people God has put in your care. It involves an abandonment of your own agendas and preferences at some level. It involves having your own encounters with God. At heart, it involves hearing “whom shall I send?” and responding as Isaiah did: “Here I am! Send me” (6:8).

Specks And Logs

“How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.” – Luke 6:42

My pastor in college used to say, “if something bothers you about someone, ask what same thing God is trying to reveal in you.” It was generally annoying advice. I recall attempting to apply it a few times, but finding it easier to avoid bothersome people. But lately, I’ve been thinking about this in parenting, where one can’t exactly avoid annoyances. 

Have you considered that when your children sin, God is dealing with you as much as with your child? He is showing you something about this sin and its consequences in your life, as much as in your child’s life? He is revealing something about his grace for you as much as his grace for your child?

I’m not sure this is true in every instance, but it seems a principle worth considering. Jesus doesn’t say, just ignore the speck in your brother’s eye: he says, first take out your own log so you can see better how to take out the speck. The prerequisite for communicating the gospel to our children is that we have an ongoing experience of it ourselves, and the more we experience it in a particular area of sin, the more clearly we can show our children the gospel in that area. After all, that is the point. It’s easy just to point our children to the law when they sin. To issue an order, throw out a punishment, and walk out of the room. But that’s not parenting. Our kids sometimes do need negative consequences, but it can’t stop there. The law is not a change-agent. I am not a change-agent. I can only point my kids to the gospel. It is grace that changes them.

For some reason, when confronted with misbehavior in our children, it’s so easy to become self-righteous. To say, “Why did you wait until the last minute?” when we too procrastinate. “Why are you fighting over such a small thing?” when we too lose perspective on what’s important. “Why can’t you just stop and let your brother have his way for once?” when we can be just as stubborn about what we want. But when we see these things in ourselves, it’s easier to come alongside our children. It’s easier to see that the heart of the problem is not only the immediate situation but what that situation reveals about the sin in us. That what we need is not only a situational fix but utter rescue. It’s easier to say something like how Paul Tripp puts it: “I know exactly how you got into this mess because I’m like you. But hear me, son. There’s help for you and me. Because God sent his son to live the life that we could never live on our own, to rise again and conquer sin and death, we can be rescued from ourselves.”

As we ask God to show us the logs in our own eyes, he transforms us too. Through Eric, I’ve seen how self-centeredness and pursuing goals to the detriment of relationships has led to losses in my past, and I’ve asked God to help me live differently. Through Ellie, I’ve seen how I tend to sinfully judge emotional women, and how part of God’s rescuing story is allowing me to experience my own emotions and worries within his loving presence. How have you experienced the sins you see in your children in your own past? What trace of those sins do you find now in your life? How has God revealed his grace to you in these areas?