TLP 123: Parenting Like the Holy Spirit

Parenting Like the Holy Spirit in Conviction

So, I'm going to make the claim that our parenting should, in many ways, mirror the Spirit's work in this world, and I'm going to make some application for us today.

To truth, love, parent, where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents. Here's your host, A .M. Brewster.

Welcome dads and moms. It's another beautiful day to be a parent, and I'm excited about talking about today's topic with you. Today we're discussing parenting like the Holy Spirit himself. I hope you are excited, but in all your excitement, please don't forget to do two things.

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Just whatever you do, please rate and review. Number two, please click on the five ways to support TLP link in the description. Hopefully you'll learn a lot and be encouraged to partner with us as we serve families all over the world.

Last year, we were actively listened to in over 65 different countries. Your prayers and gifts are making a difference in families across the globe. But you know who makes an even bigger impact across the globe?

Well, the Holy Spirit himself is currently at work in this dark world. And today we're going to learn what he does and how we can parent like him. John is my favorite gospel, I think, pretty sure. I know many of you feel the same way.

The Holy Spirit Convicts the World of Sin

John tells us how on the night Jesus was betrayed, he led his men to Gethsemane and told them some very hard things. And one of the things he told them that was going to be very difficult for them to accept was that he was going away and that they wouldn't see him anymore.

This caused some serious consternation among the disciples. And in John 16, 6, Jesus replied to them saying, because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.

It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. Many of you know that the Helper to whom Jesus was referring was the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, the comforter.

Jesus explained that unless he went away, the Holy Spirit would not come. But once Jesus was gone from the world, the Holy Spirit would be necessary for three special tasks. Later, after the crucifixion and resurrection on the day of Pentecost, we learn that the Holy Spirit did come and minister to the believers in a way he never had before.

We are very blessed to live in the New Testament age where we can experience the full ministry of the Spirit. But what does he do? Well, Jesus told the disciples, and when he comes, referring to the Holy Spirit, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in me, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer, concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.

That's it.

Three simple but powerful things. So I'm going to make the claim that our parenting should in many ways mirror the Spirit's work in this world. I'm going to make some applications for us today. Now before we look too specifically at the three ways the Spirit's working in the world, I want to point out that all three of them involve the act of conviction.

The Greek word translated convict can mean to convince, to reprove, to rebuke, to tell one that he has fault, to admonish. And if you didn't listen to episode four in our pilot season, please do. It's called Don't Lose Your Influence, and it has everything to do with another word that's frequently translated admonish.

It's a very important concept we have to understand in our parenting. And then episode 74, we discussed punishment versus correction. That episode has a lot of very important information about today's topic as well.

I mentioned these other episodes so that I don't have to recreate the wheel or repeat myself all the time, and I highly suggest you get in the habit of listening to and re-listening to past episodes.

We also try to organize our episodes thematically at our website, truthloveparent .com. You can head over there and find all of our episodes about certain topics and listen to them in succession in order to broaden your mind and spirit with the topic at hand.

So anyway, all three of the Holy Spirit's work on earth involves convicting, and that's huge. The idea of conviction is to expose something to the light, and oftentimes that involves.

Shame.

Now listen, I'm not talking about whatever the world means when it talks about shaming somebody, right? I'm talking about biblical shame that grows from genuine guilt. Adam and Eve felt shame when they sinned against God.

They hid from Him. They tried to cover themselves with leaves because they had understood that they did something that was wicked, and they felt shame. And as we discussed last time, the reality of our spiritually needy state should cause grief and mourning.

If it doesn't, we'll never submit to God in meekness. Shame is good when it's biblical. We shouldn't try to make someone feel ashamed though, but we should expose that which God already says is shameful.

Did you catch that? It's not my goal as a parent to make my child feel ashamed. My goal as a parent is to expose myself to God and His truth, and if their lives have not been falling in line with His revealed truth, they are naturally going to feel shame.

So this conviction involves pointing things out. So let's look at the first thing the Holy Spirit points out. Number one, Jesus told us that the Spirit came to convict the world of sin. This one's obvious, and the Holy Spirit's been doing that for a long time.

We know that the Holy Spirit was instrumental in writing the Bible, and we also know that the Old Testament law was given to us in part to show us our need for a Messiah, a Savior. The Old Testament is oftentimes called a schoolmaster to teach us that we're sinners.

Now remember, this has nothing to do with the failure philosophy of self-esteem, okay? Using the light of God's truth to expose the darkness in a person's heart is the most loving thing we can do. In fact, Penn Jillette, the famous magician from the magic team of Penn and Teller, once did a short video talking about how the worst thing a professing Christian to do is not proselytize.

Penn's an atheist, and yet he argues that if you really believe in hell, you'd have to be a terrible person not to tell other people of their impending doom. I'm going to link that video in the description.

It's fascinating to watch because this atheist is a stronger advocate for evangelism than a lot of professing Christians are. So our first observation is that we can't be a loving parent if we're not going to assist the Holy Spirit in his role of convicting our children of sin.

The Holy Spirit Convicts the World of Righteousness

Secondly, we need to understand how we participate in this process. Well, it's really simple, and we've discussed it in a number of ways. We talked about it in Christian Parenting 101, in the Fifth Parent series, in the Four Children series, in the episode about training your children.

All those episodes have this one thing in common. The content of our parenting must be God's truth. In verse 9 of John 16, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin specifically because they don't believe in Jesus.

It doesn't matter if our opinions differ from our kids. It doesn't matter if we like kale and they don't. It doesn't matter if we think an outfit is flattering or stylish or cool and they don't. What matters is what God says.

Not liking kale is not a sin, and that's comforting for me because I don't like kale. But transgressing against God's written word is a sin, and I need to know I've sinned before I can change. When our children show by their actions and words and feelings that they don't believe what God said about himself and life, we need to reveal that to them.

And third, we need to understand the timing of this role. We talked about this a little bit during the Speed Parenting episodes and the episodes entitled Should I Ever Ignore My Child's Sin? I made the observation that we should never ignore our kid's sin, and even if we don't have a lot of time, the best thing we can do is deal with the truth of the moment in the moment.

One of my first jobs was working at Boston Market, and one day I made a mistake and my manager lit into me. Not only was she very upset about the current bad choice, but she released on me a litany of other accusations concerning things from the past that I didn't even know I had done.

She just let it all bottle up, and the newest infraction was kind of the proverbial straw. And I remember standing there as a very confused and beaten down young man, not even realizing that I had done so many things incorrectly.

Now by God's grace, I was actually able to respond very calmly and respectfully. I apologized, but then I politely asked my manager to tell me any time I do something wrong because I can't fix what I don't know is broken.

We help our children when we lovingly shine the light of God's truth into their lives in the moment. When we challenge their beliefs about the Bible, when we show them clear passages that expose their sinful behavior, when we walk them through the way God expects us to think, we are doing our children a divine and beneficial service.

We are parenting them like the Holy Spirit. All right, let's move to the Holy Spirit's second role in this world. Number two, we learn that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of righteousness. Where the first sounded obvious, this one may seem a little surprising.

Conviction sounds very negative. How do we convict someone of their righteousness? Well, we're not really convicting them of their righteousness. Jesus said in verse 10 that the Holy Spirit convicts of righteousness because, quote, I go to the Father and you will see me no longer.

It's not that we should make our children feel guilty about doing right, but we should expose to them what righteousness is and how it contradicts their choices. You see, when Jesus was on earth, he exemplified all that was perfect and right, but with him gone, we have no physical example to whom to look.

That's why it's so important for the Holy Spirit to use the Word of God to expose what righteousness is. And that's why we need to not only tell our kids about holy living, but we should model it for them in our own lives.

This goes back to the Deuteronomy passage that commands us to discuss and live out the truth of God at every moment of our day. And we also discussed the importance of this in our episode called Your Kids Need an Interpreter.

We need to be ready in season and out of season to explain the truths of Scripture. So, in order to parent like the Holy Spirit, we need to be a loving and consistent source of conviction of what is wrong and what is right.

The Holy Spirit Convicts the World of Judgment

And lastly, number three, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of judgment. Our Lord continues and says, quote, concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged, unquote.

I love the profound implications of this short sentence. Implication number one, because there is wrong and because there is right, there must be accountability for what is wrong. There is no such thing as, well, that's right for you.

You get to God your way, I'll get to Him my way.

Nope.

The Holy Spirit's ministry makes perfect sense from start to finish. If He's going to say that I'm doing wrong, then He needs to be prepared to tell me what's.

Right.

And if I should be living the right way and not living the wrong way, it makes all the sense in the world that there be consequences for not doing right. And anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

The second implication is found in the statement, because the ruler of this world is judged. Yes, the consequences of our choices are ours. We can't blame Satan for our choices. But if the temporary ruler of this world, Lucifer himself, cannot escape the judgment of God, what on earth makes us think that we're going to somehow sneak past?

Jesus makes a significant top-down proclamation so that all of us who do wrong and don't do right understand that there will be consequences because of that. What does this look like in our parenting?

Well, I believe there are two parts. Number one, we should obviously always be striving to help our children see their need for Christ and salvation. We discussed evangelism parenting in episode 53 and in episode 45, the second most important question you need to ask your kids.

It was also a huge factor in our four children series that started in episode 55. And two, we should consistently and biblically admonish our children of the consequences.

Of sin.

We've explored this topic quite a bit as well in episodes like Are There Failure Philosophies in Your Home and all the episodes I mentioned earlier about correction and discipline. The two keys I want to point out on this episode are the consistent and biblical nature of this admonishment.

We must never make judgment about us. See, consequences come as a natural reaction to attacking God's character. Therefore, our admonishment must be thoroughly biblical. Secondly, our admonishment must be consistent.

There are two big mistakes that most parents make in this category. Number one, when we don't consistently address our children's sin with appropriate consequences, we're really lying to our children as to the nature of consequences.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is not only true in physics, but in the spiritual realm as well. Sin always hurts, and it doesn't just hurt the sinner, it hurts everyone around them as well.

When our children sin and we don't convict them of the natural consequences of their choices, we may give them the impression that there were no consequences. And this ties in very closely with the second issue.

Number two, some parents make the correction out to be the only consequences. Now, no doubt some of you have immediately imagined spanking or grounding or some other corrective discipline when I said consequences.

But those consequences are what I like to call the minor consequences. Sure, no one likes to have a phone confiscated or have to sit at a table until their green beans are gone or get a swat on the booty.

But consider with me what the Bible says about the other consequences of our sin. The two major consequences are both relational consequences. The greatest of the two is the vertical consequence that results in eternal separation from God in the lake of fire.

And even if we're Christians, there still is an impact on our vertical consequence in our relationship with God. Oftentimes in Scripture, we're told that if we do certain things, God won't hear our prayers or if we do certain things, that there will be consequences between the two of us.

And the second major consequence of sin is the horizontal relational carnage that exists every time there's sin in our lives. My marriage will be affected by my sins at work. Your children's relationship with you will be affected by their sins at school.

And these major consequences are far weightier and perfectly consistent because they're brought about by God Himself. And even if our child is born again and has no fear of the greatest major consequence of sin, that is being separated from God for all eternity, every parent understands that the minor consequences of losing their phone for a week pales in comparison to the broken trust that now exists in your relationship.

That's the major consequence of their sin. I share this with the guys at Victory quite often. The consequences they receive here, like demerits and write-ups, are really not that big of a deal. The guys act like somehow it's the worst thing in the world to lose a level, and I'm glad it's weighty enough for them to open their eyes, but too often they care more about the demerits that no one's going to care about once they leave here than they do about the relational consequences between them, the staff, their parents, and God.

I frequently try to remind them that the minor consequences at Victory are merely a picture of the major consequences looming in each of their lives. And even if they dodge the minor consequences because the staff didn't catch them, there still will be major consequences because God warrants us all that our sins will find us.

Out.

So, parenting like the Holy Spirit will include biblically and consistently helping our children understand the nature of consequences by teaching them and using them consistently. In conclusion, and I have this all ready for you in our episode notes at TruthLoveParent .com, in order to parent like the Holy Spirit, you need to be in the business of conviction.

This does not mean we're the judge, jury, and executioner. Instead, it means that we're more like the lighthouse warning approaching ships of the dangerous rocks ahead of them. By using God's Word, we need to expose our children's sin, reveal for them the righteous way God commands and empowers them to live, and explain the major consequences of life while consistently and biblically bringing minor consequences to bear in their lives.

I don't know about you, but there's just something exciting about parenting in the image of God. And I really want to encourage you, because of the excitement associated with this, that you share this episode on social media so that your parent friends can also benefit from this study, because this is exciting.

God made us in His image, and to parent like Him is invigorating because then we're parenting like the ambassadors that God has called us to be. Our next episode will be about what the world thinks the 2018 parenting trends will be, and if the world's right, how will those 2018 parenting trends affect us?

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Listen, it doesn't really matter what the world thinks about your parenting. God has a plan for it. He communicates that plan, and He exemplifies that plan. All we have to do is know it, believe it, and follow it.

See you next time.

Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional, premeditated parent. Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.