TLP 593: Discipline & the Gospel

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Since we can't avoid disciplining our kids, we must come face -to -face with the uncomfortable reality that we're either intentionally disciplining them for God or for self.

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Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way

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Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth, Love, Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

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God the preeminence in their parenting. Welcome back to Season 32, where we're covering a lot of biblical parenting territory.

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So far this season, we've discussed how parenting isn't your purpose, whether or not you should give your child an allowance.

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We dug to the roots of why your child didn't do what you asked them to do. We considered your children and children's church, the nature of show -and -tell parenting, and the difference between discipline and punishment.

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Hopefully you have consumed and learned from each of those episodes, especially the last one. Without a correct understanding of biblical discipline, today's topic won't make much sense.

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And today's topic is so incredibly important. I could argue that today's discussion is at the very core of what it is to be a

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Christ -honoring parent. It touches every aspect of our parenting, and it unpacks the single most important facet of our lives.

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So because this episode is so important, I have included free episode notes, a transcript, and links to related resources in the description.

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The episode notes can be used for yourself, with your kids, or even as curriculum that you teach to others in a

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Sunday school, small group, workshop, etc. For those of you who prefer reading over listening, the transcript will serve you well, and the related resources are provided so you can continue beyond this episode to deepen your understanding and application of the related concepts.

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So let's begin. I claimed that today's discussion is at the very core of what it is to be a

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Christ -honoring parent. I can argue that biblically, and I have many times on this podcast since 2016.

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But I can also make a significant case for it anecdotally. As a biblical counselor, I have the privilege of walking with individuals and families in their darkest hours.

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I've had an unfortunate front -row seat to family issues of all kinds. But my anecdotal evidence goes far beyond the thousands of hours

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I've administered to families all over the globe. Having moved 22 times in my life,

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I have interacted with many families in many churches. Having taught in Christian schools for 10 years,

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I have observed multiple families. But I don't really need any of this evidence because I know my own family and the failures in my and my wife's parenting.

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And it all comes down to what we're going to talk about today. Decades ago, Paul David Tripp wrote a parenting book called

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Age of Opportunity. He imagined it would be the first and last parenting book he would write because he believed it covered all of the information that really needed to be covered in order to lay a

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Christ -honoring foundation. But then, 15 years after writing the first, he came out with a book called

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Parenting. Now, I highly recommend both of those books to you, but I mention it for this reason.

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In the introduction to Parenting, Paul writes these words, I have to be honest here. I wrote a parenting book and I told myself and repeatedly told others that I was not about to write another one.

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Yet here I am doing just that. Why? Because as I listened to people tell me how they had used

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Age of Opportunity in the lives of their teenagers, I became increasingly uncomfortable. I kept thinking, no, that's not exactly it.

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Or no, that's not what I meant. Or no, there's something missing. It took a while, but it finally hit me that what bothered me in these conversations, well, what was missing in these parents was the gospel that was the foundation behind everything that I wrote.

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So with the publisher's encouragement, I decided to write a parenting book, but not the typical kind. This will not be a book of practical strategies for dealing with children at the various ages of their development.

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This book will not provide practical steps for dealing with the kinds of things every parent faces. This book is meant to be a reorienting book.

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It is meant to give you a new way of thinking about and responding to everything that will be on your plate as a parent.

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This book is meant to give you vision, motivation, renewed strength, and the rest of heart that every parent needs.

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It is written to give you the big gospel picture of the task to which your Savior has called you."

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And that, in a much more, much more abbreviated way, is what I hope we accomplish with this episode.

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Now, of course, it would take a series, one I might just do one day to get anywhere near the scope of Tripp's book or the scope to which we really could go or should go as Christians, but this will meet a very important need nonetheless.

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Gospel -less parenting is a sin. It's the greatest way we can fail our kids.

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It reveals a deficit in our understanding of God and ourselves. Now, it's not something from which we can't come back.

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It's not a death sentence per se, but it is wrong and we owe it to our Savior to make Him the center of our homes.

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Therefore, it needs to be at the center of our discipline. But before we get too much further, I would like to remind you that MyPillow donates to TLP a percentage of their revenue when our listeners purchase their products using the promo code

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EVERMIND. But we don't get the donations if you don't do the purchasing, so head on over to MyPillow .com

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to see their amazing catalog of products for nearly every room in the house and shop knowing that you're not just getting amazing products for your home, but you're supporting

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Truth Love Family at the same time. The same goes for shopping Amazon with our affiliate links.

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Just use the link in the description of this episode to place all of your Amazon purchases and know that we're receiving a portion of the proceeds.

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But the best way to financially support TLP is to give monthly at truthloveparent .com forward slash donate.

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It was challenging, to say the least, as we founded this ministry at the very beginning of the lockdowns in 2020.

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I couldn't take a salary for nearly two years. And then when opportunities started to arise for traveling and speaking, inflation started to inflate to such a degree that charitable spending was the first thing people started to cut.

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Even though I have worked full -time on this non -profit for the past six years, for the past four years, my monthly salary has been $500.

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Yes, I work part -time jobs to make ends meet, but it's so hard because the more I work part -time jobs, the less time

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I have to dedicate to this ministry. But there are so many people who are looking for biblical counseling, and there are so many people in the world who don't know

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God's good news for their families. I just don't want to quit now. That's where your financial support will go so incredibly far.

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When you become a monthly supporter, not only will all of your donations be tax -exempt, but you will be giving to a mission whose sole goal is to glorify

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God by equipping dads and moms to better worship Him with their parenting. And that is a worthy goal.

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So please visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more. Now, let's talk about the gospel and discipline.

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1. What is discipline? As a quick review from last time, discipline is the process by which we disciple our children.

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We help them become disciplined as they are matured spiritually. This involves both the teaching, correcting, and training discipline as well as the reproving discipline.

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Reproof is the parenting stage where we have to give consequences because our children have sinned. These are the times when parents are tempted to punish their children instead of discipline them and we talked about that last time.

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By the way, if you've never heard it, the Biblical Parenting Essentials series was created to provide an overview of the 500 episodes worth of truth we've been teaching since 2016.

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It covers in tremendous detail the teaching, reproving, correcting, and training phases of biblical parenting.

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Here's the point I need to make before I move on though. 1. Everything you do as a parent is discipling your children because everything you do teaches, reproves, corrects, and trains them.

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The problem is that everything every parent does, including unsaved parents doing terrible things, does the same.

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We are all perfectly qualified and capable of discipling our children in sin, self -worship, and godlessness, and we all too easily teach, reprove, correct, and train to those ends without even having to think about it.

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So since we can't avoid disciplining our kids, we must come face -to -face with the uncomfortable reality that we're either intentionally discipling them for God or for self.

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So our discussion today won't simply involve the reproving discipline in which our children receive consequences for their sinful choices, but also the equipping discipline.

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Another resource you should consume is our Consequences series. That too will be linked in the description.

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2. What is the gospel? The gospel is the good news of God's redemptive plan for mankind.

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We are all born in sin and condemned to an eternity separated from God in a place called the lake of fire.

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We are born into this miserable state because we inherited our sin nature from Adam and because sin cannot exist in God's presence without being judged.

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And we are eternally incapable in and of ourselves to do anything about our sin.

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But God, God had a plan from eternity past to redeem mankind and have the perfect relationship with Him that God created in the

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Garden of Eden, only this time there would be no more potential for sin to creep in and destroy that harmony and fellowship.

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For this reason, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus the Christ, was incarnated into human flesh, lived a perfect life, died a perfect death, rose from death, conquering sin and death, and ascended to the

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Father, having perfectly purchased redemption for all who would come to Him. Every time a human being answers the call to be born again into God's family,

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God the Father imputes the perfect righteousness of Christ to the sinner's account. On the merit of Jesus alone, that sinner is counted clean, positionally righteous, and at peace with God.

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His or her name is written in the Lamb's book of life, and we call this justification.

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But that's not the end of the gospel. Far from it. Not only are we positionally righteous on account of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, but the gospel is also the work whereby we are practically sanctified into the image of Christ by conformity to His will.

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Sanctification is the process by which we are filled with the Holy Spirit and are being transformed from one degree of glory to another, where we are putting to death the deeds of the flesh and growing in practical righteousness.

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It is now that we are able to practically fulfill God's will for our lives, the totality of which is being an evangelistic and discipling influence to the world.

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Now, that's not the end of the gospel. Too often we miss all of these really important pieces.

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One day in the future, God will take us to our eternal inheritance. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the sin nature we inherited from Adam will be annihilated and we will be perfectly glorified, incapable of ever sinning again.

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We will be free to perfectly worship God for all eternity and fulfill His will for our lives exactly as He desires.

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And it is this three -pronged reality of the glorious gospel that absolutely needs to pervade every fiber of our parenting.

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It needs to not only be the starting place, it needs to be the journey, and it needs to be the goal.

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It must be the foundation, the walls, the roof, and the furnishings of our homes. Now before we can talk about how to be a gospel parent,

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I want to make you aware of some very important resources. The first is a short article I wrote called

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The First Step to Being a Good Parent. I didn't take the time to cite the biblical passages that teach what

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I just described, but this article does. Also, I did four series on the celebration of God.

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They were on the main celebratory focuses of each of the seasons of the year—mercy, grace, life, and power.

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I didn't finish the last series on power before I had to step away from that podcast to focus more on expanding our followership and giving for Truth Love Parent.

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Splitting my time like that was hurting TLP. Anyway, the first three series all have the same format.

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The first episode would focus on God, the second on salvation, the third on man, and the fourth on the practical celebration in light of what we had learned.

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I'm going to link each of those series in the description, and though you will be blessed to listen to all of the episodes of each of them, you could also listen to the second episode of each series as it focuses on the specific attribute of God as it touches our salvation.

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Each of them will help you have a better biblical understanding of justification, sanctification, and glorification.

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Here's the point. The gospel must touch everything in our lives. That's its very purpose.

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Therefore, it must be the very warp and woof of our parenting. Just so that I'm not mistaken in any way, shape, or form, hold onto your hats for a cornucopia of idioms, colloquialisms, and figures of speech that will drive this point all the way home.

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The gospel must infuse every piece of our parenting, the whole nine yards, lock, stock, and barrel, the whole enchilada, from soup to dessert, from alpha to omega, the whole kit and caboodle, in every nook and cranny, the whole shebang, from stem to stern, from A to Z, from top to bottom, every jot and tittle, and the gospel must be the sum and substance of our parenting.

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Now, surely at least one of those examples had to make it clear that we cannot glorify God in our parenting if it's not gospel shod, gospel empowered, and gospel applied.

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So, number three, what is gospel discipline? In order for honey to be sourwood honey, it has to have been made from the nectar of sourwood blossoms that grow on sourwood trees.

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And in order for our discipline to be gospel discipline, it has to be, letter A, evangelistical in nature.

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I'm going to link our evangelism parenting material in the description so you can discover how to do this better.

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But for now, all we can do is recognize the need and pattern for evangelism parenting. The need for evangelism parenting is clear.

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If your children aren't born again, they need the gospel in their lives. They need to be constantly reminded of the majesty and love of God that he would pursue a relationship with them.

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But they also have to be reminded of why that relationship is currently impossible, their sin. Times of reproving discipline are perfect opportunities to remind your child that they are a sinner in need of a savior.

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This is the pattern of evangelism parenting. You take every opportunity to discuss the glorious truths of justification.

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Too many professing Christian parents simply point out what their child did that was wrong, give them punitive consequences, and move on.

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That's punitive punishment. Others give consequences designed to help the child change and mature out of their foolish behavior.

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However, the motivation for the change isn't to embrace God's will for their lives. It's simply to become who the parent wants them to be.

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That's idolatrous discipline. Instead, we need to use the disciplinary situation in front of us to sow the seed of the good news in their hearts.

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And the same is true for the daily discipline that isn't necessarily focused on reproof. Romans 8 .8

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teaches that unbelievers are incapable of pleasing the Lord in anything they do because they can only ever accomplish anything in the flesh and not the spirit.

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This provides valuable opportunities to remind them that we can never truly be spiritually successful in our maturity.

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They will never be able to be all that God created them to be outside of Him. But what if our child is born again?

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If that's the case, our gospel discipline needs to be, letter B, discipling in nature.

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Those who have been justified are in their process of being sanctified. For our reproving discipline to accomplish the

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Lord's purposes in their lives, they need to see this reproof for what it is, a necessary part of their conformity to Christ.

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It's not about punishing them. It's not about them becoming the child we want them to be. It must be about the child recognizing

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God's plan for their spiritual maturity. You should listen to the Evidence of Spiritual Life series

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I did for the year -long celebration of God. That resource will be very helpful in two ways. The first is to help you identify if your child truly has been born again or not.

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But the second is that if she is a Christian, God has given her a roadmap for her spiritual maturity.

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We should stop sinning and start being righteous, not solely so that people will like us or we won't be fired from our job or end up in jail or all the other pragmatic, self -focused motivations we idolatrously set before our children's eyes.

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We need to stop sinning and start being righteous because He deserves our obedience. It pleases the

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Lord, accomplishes His will for our lives, and according to Ephesians 2 .10, is the very purpose for which

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God created us. And since sanctification is the process by which we are being perfected and transformed from one degree of glory to another, the gospel needs to be an active part of the process.

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So, now let's finish by considering the individual steps in that process. Number four, how does gospel discipline work?

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Whether your child is born again or not, letter A, reveal God's person. It's so easy for us to be like the children of Israel.

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Despite the miraculous works we've seen the Lord do, we forget and we slip back into superficial myopathy.

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How many times we've been shared the gospel, we forget and we need to be reminded of God's awesomeness.

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We need to also be reminded of how powerful and loving and holy and gracious and merciful and all -knowing and majestic God is.

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When we rightly see God, it will motivate us to want to embrace His love for us in salvation and justification or to live for Him in sanctification.

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So whether it's reproving discipline or daily discipline, open the scriptures to help your children turn their eyes from the worldly considerations to the face of the

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Lord. Hopefully, part of their daily discipline involves what are frequently referred to as the

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Christian disciplines, and I say this especially for your born -again children. These are prayer and Bible study.

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Assuming they are doing this and assuming you're aware of what they're studying, you could reach into their current Bible reading to help them see how the

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God of that passage needs to motivate their change today. Obviously, the entirety of scripture is a revelation of God, but I found that Genesis 1 -2,

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Job 38 -41, Philippians 2, 1 -18, Psalm 139,

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John 3, 16 -21, and Ephesians 1 -2 are tremendous starting places as they are absolutely packed with illustrations and descriptions of God's majesty.

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Letter B. Reveal God's Purpose In order to not be unintentional, idolatrous parents, we have to motivate our children's positive change and maturity for God's glory.

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It must not be about how their obedience affects us, the parent. We mustn't have a,

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I -really -need -you -to -fill -in -the -blank approach to parenting. We need to open the scriptures to help our children see that God is a better God than we or our kids are.

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We need to know the Word well enough to take them to the passages that speak into the issues before them.

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Were they caught stealing? The Bible has something to say about the motivation that should cause them to want to stop stealing and start serving.

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The Bible reveals why we need to quit strife, why they need to be the best employee they can be, why they need to relate to their crush in a

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Christ -honoring way, consume their entertainment, reach the lost, and so much more. And though they aren't linked in the description of today's episode, we have series and episodes on all of those concepts you can easily search at TruthLoveParent .com.

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Now, to teach this to our kids in this gospel -disciplining way, Romans 8 is an amazing display of God's purposes for us.

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1 Peter 2 .9, Romans 14 .23, Hebrews 4, and my personal favorite, 1

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Corinthians 10 .31 are great places to start. Letters C reveal

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God's process. You need to know the Word well enough to take them to the passages that speak into the issues before them.

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Were they caught stealing? This should sound familiar. The Bible has something to say about the method to stop stealing and start serving, not just the motivation.

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The Bible reveals how to quit strife, how they are to be the best employee they can be, how they need to relate to their crush, consume their entertainment, reach the lost, and so much more.

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Gospel discipline is consumed with the who, the what, the how, and the why so that the obedience we're encouraging is fully biblically well -rounded and gospel -centered.

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Ephesians 3 -6, Colossians 2 -4, 1 Corinthians 13, Galatians 5, 16 -25,

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Philippians 4, 4 -9, the entire book of James, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, you know, basically the entire

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New Testament is a revelation of what it will look like to grow in our sanctification. And letter

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D, reveal God's power. It's equally as idolatrous to pursue righteousness for my own glory as it is to pursue righteousness in my own power.

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Only through the supernatural empowerment of the Holy Spirit can we ever be justified or grow in our sanctification.

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We can't pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we can't muscle our way through, and there is no faking it until you're making it.

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When I was younger, the army had a slogan, be all that you can be. The problem is that we can never be all that we can be without being born again and filled by the

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Holy Spirit. And we do not have His promise of power if we're not pursuing full obedience, doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.

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You can learn more about teaching your children how to be fully obedient in our Teach Your Children to Obey series.

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Romans 8, Ephesians 3 .20, 5 .18, 6 .10, 2 Timothy 1 .7,

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Philippians 4 .13, and 2 Peter 1 .3 all reveal the source and outworking of God's power in us.

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For example, 2 Peter 1 .3 says His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the full knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and excellence.

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And Romans 8 shows the failure of living in the flesh and the success of living in the spirit.

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So, let me ask you, is your discipline an expression of the gospel? Does your reproving discipline and your daily discipline point your children to God's person, purpose, process, and power?

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Are your unsaved kids being evangelized through the daily experience of being your children?

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Are your born -again kids being disciplined in their sanctification as you're teaching, reproving, correcting, and training them?

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If the gospel is not the sum total of our parenting, we're not pleasing the Lord and we're failing to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord. But if our parenting hasn't been gospel -centered as it should, the gospel is there to give us hope.

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We can't change in our own power, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord wants to sanctify us into parents who lead our children as He had led us, to and through and toward the gospel.

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Please share this episode with other parents who want to make the gospel a necessary and vibrant part of their discipline, and email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com

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or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894 if you have questions about how to be a more gospel -driven parent in your discipline and discipleship.

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And be sure to join us next time as we discuss Escapism vs. Reflection. We want our kids to reflect, but too often we enable their escape.

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I'll see you then. Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship

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God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study God's Word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness.

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And remember that TLP is a listener -supported ministry. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more.