God is committed to ensuring that his leaders embody the gospel. Sometimes he accomplishes this through ministry suffering. At other times, through marriage. But perhaps nowhere is his sanctifying work more relentless than in the painful bliss of parenting.
Here’s how it works.
The Child Who Makes You Look Good
In families with multiple kids, God sometimes gives you a compliant child. You know the type. The one who follows the rules, keeps their room tidy, and makes you look like a model parent. You know the profile: “Dad, I was reading my Bible today—in the original languages! God spoke to me in so many powerful ways that I wrote it all down for you in a paper about how much I love you.”
If we’re honest, we can begin using that child as a measure of our parenting. Why? Because compliant kids make our parenting look strong. They make us feel competent. On Sunday morning, our family beams like an online advertisement for biblical parenting.
The Child Who Makes You Need God
But then God gives you another child. A different kind of gift.
This one doesn’t just color outside the lines. They tear up the coloring book and throw the crayons across the room. Or eat them. These kids seem uniquely equipped to test your patience, expose the limits of your wisdom, and, occasionally, beat the tar out of your compliant child.
Here’s the gospel reality: the compliant child inspires gratitude—or should. But the difficult child can teach you the gospel. Not primarily by instructing you in gospel truth, but by requiring gospel application from you.
The wonderfully uncooperative child introduces us to our weakness. They expose our inadequacy. They drive us to desperation. And in doing so, they confront us with our need to depend upon God.
We cry out, “God, why won’t you change them?”
And sometimes God seems to answer, “I will. But I’m going to change you too.”
Yep, you heard me right. That child who just stormed upstairs shouting about how much they hate you? That may be your gospel tutor.
God sometimes takes the very things that most delight us and uses them to teach us dependence upon him. Paul learned something similar. In 2 Corinthians 12:7 he writes, “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh.”
Think about that. Weakness matters so much to God that he can take even the highest joys of life—marriage, parenting, leadership, even, in Paul’s case, extraordinary spiritual revelation—and turn them into classrooms of dependence. They become places where we reach the end of ourselves and discover again the sufficiency of Christ.
Our greatest need is not to appear adequate as parents or leaders. Our greatest need is Christ. And sometimes God gives us exactly the child we need to make sure we never forget it.
Today’s Tenacious Question
Where has God given me a “gospel tutor”—in my children, marriage, or ministry—that’s less about testing them and more about shaping me?
Prayer
Father, thank You for the surprising ways You teach me the gospel. Forgive me for measuring leadership by appearances or adequacy. Thank You for the difficult child, the thorn in my flesh, the relationships that drive me to dependence. Use these gifts to strip me of self-reliance and lead me deeper into Christ. Teach me to boast in my weakness, so that Your power may rest on me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash
