Editor’s Note: On November 9th, Marty Machowski preached a message called “Distinct Parenting” at Sovereign Grace Church in Middletown, Delaware. The entire message can be found here. An encouraging and instructive excerpt is below. As you read, notice the Spirit of God at work in your heart in both conviction and encouragement. Every parent ought to experience both.
Deut 6:5 "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart."
This is both the most sobering and comforting of any parent teaching you will ever get. If you get this one point right, you can fail in the rest of your parenting and your children will have all that they need. That is how critical this is. The reason why is because if your relationship with the Lord is vibrant and strong, you've got the Spirit of God to convict you in all the other areas. None of us are perfect. And it's actually those imperfections, if directed under the gaze of the Gospel and repentance that are our best tutors for our children. So often we can find ourselves thinking things like: "I just want to do really good at raising my children, but I haven't always done a great job spending a lot of time with them. Or I want to read to my children, but I haven't always done that well either. Or I just was a lousy teacher when I homeschooled my kids—or I never went over their homework." We can think things like, "I've broken a lot of promises."
Our mistakes are opportunities. If we love the Lord, our successes in life and in parenting will tell our children "God's grace is sufficient." If we love the Lord in front of them, all of our successes will be translated into "Do you understand? I have this because God has given it to me. My success is not of my own strength. It is the grace of God. And that communicates to our children, "Christianity works!" But if I love the Lord and I fail, well then I confess my sin and I receive forgiveness. And so for example, if I sin against my wife and out of my love for the Lord I restore quickly my relationship with her, I am a failure as a husband in that moment when I sinned, but my children don't see failure, they see hope. We must remember, if we love the Lord, our successes communicate the grace of God; and our failures communicate the grace of God. And so if you get this point right--if this is the only point you get right in your parenting, get this right.
Our indifference to God is the only killer. If we fail to be stirred up toward godliness and to pursuing God, what testimony do we have to pass along? If we are indifferent to sin and we fail to repent and confess, we have no credibility in the eyes of our children. They see us as hypocrites. Hypocrites are not ones who say one thing and do another if when they do the other, they realize that they are wrong and confess that they strayed. That's not a hypocrite. A hypocrite is to say one thing, do another and be indifferent to care.
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