The Parent’s Hope

Introduction

Well, good morning. I’m going to ask you to take your Bible, turn to the book of 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 3. We’re going to begin reading there in just one minute. In 2 Timothy chapter 3. While you’re turning there, I just want to say thank you. Thank you, all of you who are regular members for showing up here today and worshiping together with us. And thank you for our visitors, those who are joining us from wherever you’re coming, we’re glad that you’re here and you’ve chosen to participate in our worship of our great God together. I want to ask you a question this morning as we begin. And that is how do you make your decisions in life? How do you decide how you’re going to live and what you’re going to do?

What kind of choices you’re going to make. And I guess if you ask random people on the street, you’re going to get a lot of different answers to that question. Some people just choose to follow what’s inside their own heart. Some people choose to listen to various influencers on the internet, or they listen to their parents, they listen to their grandparents, they listen to all kinds of different voices. But here in this place, while we are listening, willing to listen to wisdom from other people and other sources, the thing that dictates the direction of our lives is the word of God. And that’s why what we do here in our worship is based on what we find in the Word of God. And when we sit down and listen to a lesson, those lessons are based on God’s word.

And when we consider things like parenting, like we’ve been considering for the past few Sundays, and we’re going to close this series of sermons out this morning, we look into what God says, not into what the culture says or academics says or anything like that. We listen to what God says. If you’re visiting with us this morning, we want you to know that’s what we’re all about here. We believe that God’s word shows us the way to heaven. It’s inspired word of God. And so as we consider his word this morning, as we begin our lesson this morning, we’re going to listen to what his word says and base our decisions on that. 2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning in verse 13. This is the Apostle Paul writing to a young preacher named Timothy, and the Bible says this but evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. In just a second, I’m gonna put those two, I’m gonna close that loop and show you how that relates to parenting. But let me start by saying this. One thing that I’ve noticed in my own life, and you may have may have noticed in your life, is that the devil loves to prey on our vulnerabilities.

One thing he loves to do is to make us feel like we are unqualified, like we are not capable, and like we are not the right person for the job. And he does that because he wants to limit what we can accomplish in this life. He wants to tell us you’re not the right person. You can’t do this. Leave that for somebody else because you’re not the one who’s gonna get this done. He does that because he wants to limit what we can do. He wants us to second guess our good choices. He wants us to pass up good opportunities for safers, less effective options. And sometimes he just wants to shut us up when we should speak. I feel that sometimes as a preacher and as a teacher.

The devil whispering in my ear, you can’t talk about prayer. Your prayer life isn’t robust enough. You can’t preach about marriage. Your marriage isn’t as strong as it should be yet. You can’t talk about evangelism. You haven’t converted enough atheists to the gospel yet. And you can’t talk about parenting. You can’t preach about parenting because you haven’t proven yourself yet. Your kids aren’t well behaved enough yet. You haven’t given enough years to your parenting experience yet. You’re still a novice at this. And that has been a struggle for me at least during this series. Brent’s got older kids than I do, maybe less so for him, but certainly for me, with young kids at home, feeling like I am not the guy for the job, not the guy who’s supposed to be talking about parenting, has been a struggle for me as I’ve presented these lessons.

Am I really the one who needs to get up here and talk about this? Now, sitting here this morning, you may not struggle with feeling adequate to deliver a sermon on parenting because you don’t have to. You’re off the hook, you’re not the preacher here. But maybe like me, sometimes you do feel inadequate as a parent. In fact, sometimes I think the task of parenting just seems downright overwhelming and unfair. Don’t you? If you think about it really does seem that way. Because as a parent, you have been given probably the most important job in the entire world. Can you think of anything that’s more important than raising kids in this world? And by its very nature, not only have you been given the most important job in the world, you have literally zero experience when you begin parenting, right?

In fact, God designed it that way so that you begin the most important job in the world with no experience, and everyone does. Isn’t that fair? When you become a parent, it takes over your entire life. Changes everything about the way you do things. And as you do it, the world around you is full of confusion about how it’s supposed to be done. Right? You got influencers on social media telling you to do it one way, academics telling you to do it another way, your parents telling you to do it one way, your grandparents telling you to do it a different way, all your friends are telling you another different way to do it. And everyone, no matter what you choose, is full of criticisms and judgments about how you do it.

Beyond that, as you parent, you realize that every child is different. And that every child changes, especially once you think you’ve figured them out. And add to that the idea that you only get 18 years to do this. Obviously, parenting is a lifelong endeavor. For as long as you are alive and your kids are alive, you’re parenting them, sure. But you get 18 years of really solid parenting work before your kids leave the nest. And that time seems to fly by. And you add to that the idea that as you’re doing this parenting job with all of this confusion and all of this judgment and criticism that has all these weighty consequences, we’re led to believe by people in this culture that every single misstep we make as parents could become a trauma scar that my kids have to deal with later in life.

It almost seems unfair, like some kind of cruel joke. And oftentimes the task of parenting leaves us feeling overwhelmed and outmatched, wondering how in the world am I supposed to do this right. And I hope that the lessons Brent and I have offered have been helpful in that way and have given you some things that you can hang on to and have shown you ways to be effective parentings as parents as you go about this job. But what I want to do this morning as we close this series of lessons is spend a little time offering a little hope and a little perspective. And what I want us to appreciate is that there are reasons to be hopeful as parents, even though sometimes we may be tempted to be discouraged and overwhelmed.

1. Perfection Is Not Necessary to Raise Good Kids

I want us to appreciate that parenting is often, in some ways, much simpler than we’re led to believe. And success in parenting is much closer to us than we might think. And so I have three ideas I want to give you, three truths that I think we can pull from scripture that might give us a little hope and a little perspective as we go about this crucial task of raising kids. And the first one is this. Hopefully, this truth will give you a little bit of hope, and that is that in parenting, we need to remember that perfection is not necessary to raise good kids. We need to understand that we do not need a perfect set of circumstances in order to be successful as parents.

And sometimes we get caught up in that kind of thinking, right? We think to ourselves that everything in my life has to be just so. I’ve got to hit all the marks and check all the boxes and make sure everything is exactly as it should be, because again, if I mess up in one way, if I make one misstep, that could become a trauma scar, that could become a catastrophe. Everything could fall apart if I don’t do everything right and get everything right and put all the puzzle pieces exactly where they’re supposed to be. If things aren’t perfect, I cannot raise good kids and I’ll mess them up in some way.

If I make a misstep here, then that I’m gonna ruin my kids. Or sometimes what we do is we look into our past or we look into our current circumstance, which isn’t quite exactly the perfect way that somebody would draw it up, and we tell ourselves, well, I can’t raise good kids, or I can’t raise them as good as they possibly could become because I’ve got these issues that make our circumstances not quite perfect. We think things like, what if I had kids too early in my marriage and I didn’t get a good chance to build a good relationship with my wife before kids came along? That’s gonna make it hard for me to raise kids the way that I’m supposed to. Or what if I don’t make enough money?

What if I can’t afford the things that my kids need? Or what if for whatever reason, for a variety of different circumstances, mom can’t stay home with the kids and raise them and nurture them because that’s just not something we can do in our circumstances for whatever reason? Or what if we don’t have a good relationship with my parents or a set of grandparents? What if they’re not close by to help us out? Or what if, what if I have children out of wedlock? What am I gonna do about that? Is that gonna ruin my kids? Will I still be able to raise them in a decent way? Or what if I have to deal with custody stuff and step parent stuff and all of that different miasma of different issues that come up with stuff like that.

Can I still raise good kids in those kinds of circumstances? Sometimes we worry that if all the pieces of the puzzle aren’t put together perfectly, our children will suffer and we won’t be able to do this job right. But I want you to understand the cool thing about the Bible is that’s not the message of the Bible at all. Not when we read different parenting stories and family stories in the Bible. Now, just to be totally clear so that I am not misunderstood, certainly by no means is God endorsing that we have children out of wedlock and do things that are considered sinful. He’s not saying we should do that, but the Bible does send a clear message that good kids, really good kids can be raised, even in circumstances that aren’t perfect.

You think about that story we read about Timothy at the very beginning. What we see in the Bible is that just because, just because your circumstances aren’t perfect doesn’t mean you can’t raise good kids. We see that in the story of Timothy. What we read in his story, what the Bible tells us is that his dad was by all appearances a spiritual no-show. The Bible tells us that Timothy had a dad, but it doesn’t say he was a believer. It says that he was a Greek, which seems to give the indication that he wasn’t a believer. He was not a Christ follower. And so Timothy is raised in a family where his mother is a believer, his grandmother is a believer, and his dad doesn’t follow Christ.

And some people might look at that situation and say, hey, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. If mom and dad aren’t on the same page spiritually, how can you possibly raise a good kid? Well, Lois and Eunice find some way to do that, don’t they? Because as we read in that passage to begin, his mother and his grandfather and grandmother connected him to the scriptures, and that gave him the knowledge that he needed to become the kind of man that he ultimately became. And that is what Timothy was. He was such an impressive young man that when the apostle Paul came to Lystra, he saw him and said, I’ve got to have that young man with me on my journeys. I want to take him with me.

He’s indispensable. So even though his family wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t exactly the way you would want to draw it up, Lois and Eunice are still able to raise a wonderful young man. We see this in the story of Samuel as well. You remember the story of Hannah that we read about in 1 Samuel chapter 1. We learn that Samuel is born into an extremely toxic family environment. The story begins with a man named Elkinah who’s actually married to two women. He’s married to Peninah and Hannah. And the Bible tells us that Penina would always cut down Hannah and say ugly things to her and tear her down in every possible way, to the point that she was extremely overwhelmed and distressed. And this is the kind of toxic family situation Samuel’s born into.

A dad who’s engaged in polygamy and the wives are constantly in rivalry against each other. Not exactly a perfect set of circumstances for raising kids, right? You add to that the idea that Samuel didn’t get much time with his mom and dad. The Bible tells us that when Hannah prayed to God for Samuel to come to her, that she promised that if God gave her a son, she would give him to the Lord. And that’s exactly what she does. After Samuel is weaned, after he’s old enough to depart from her, she gives him to Eli, and he stays there with Eli and doesn’t go home with mom and dad. And that’s not exactly the perfect kind of circumstance for raising kids, is it? And yet somehow, even though he was born in that toxic environment, even though his mom and dad only saw him infrequently, Samuel becomes an amazing man.

He becomes a prophet of God who leaves a s leads a spiritual revival in Israel, turning the hearts of the people back to God. Not exactly perfect circumstances, but he still becomes an amazing young man. We see the same thing in Moses’ story, don’t we? Moses is born to his father and mother, and then ultimately they have to hide him in those reeds in that basket that we read about when we’re in children’s classes, and he’s found ultimately by Pharaoh’s daughter, and he’s adopted into her family. Now the Bible does tell us that after that time, he got to spend some time with his mother. It worked out that she was the one who got to wean him, but after that, he goes to Pharaoh’s household and he’s raised in that Egyptian royalty climate.

And that’s not exactly the ideal situation that we dream of as parents, isn’t it? That a bunch of royal pagans would raise our kids and teach them all the things that they want to teach them. And yet, Moses becomes Moses, a shadow of Christ, the man that God uses to save his people. Even when we look at the birth of Jesus, it’s not exactly perfect circumstances, at least not as we would count them, when the Savior of mankind is born into this world. Jesus is born to Mary, a young woman who isn’t even married yet. And he spends the early years of his life running for his life from King Herod, who wants to kill him. He spends his childhood, not with a wealthy family or even a middle class family, with a poor family that doesn’t have much means.

Mary and Joseph, although they were pure and they did things right, they were constantly under a cloud of suspicion because of the circumstances of Jesus’ birth. And none of that is ideal. And yet those are the circumstances that God chooses for his son to be born into. And I think he picked that. Because in God’s eyes, and we see this in the other stories too, what matters far more than the circumstances you’re born into is the character of the people who raise you. And so one thing that the Bible tells us very clearly that we need to take to heart, we can hope in is that you do not need a perfect set of circumstances to raise good kids. Actually, you don’t need a perfect set of circumstances to raise amazing kids who can change the world.

2. The Gospel Is What Matters Most

That’s something the Bible shows us over and over and over again. And I hope we can find hope in that perfection is not necessary. And secondly, I think we can hope in this. That the Bible tells us that when it comes to raising kids, the gospel is what matters most. The reason why we do not need a perfect set of circumstances to raise good kids is because a perfect set of circumstances is not the thing that our kids actually need more than anything else. What our kids need more than anything else is they need to be connected to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the thing that changes a child’s heart and transforms them into the kind of person they’re supposed to be. The kind of person God intends for them to be.

You know, we referenced in the first lesson in the series, we referenced Luke chapter 8 and verse 15. I want to reference it again here. There, Jesus is talking about the parable of the soils. And in Luke 8 and verse 15, he says, But the seed and the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart and hold it fast and bear fruit with perseverance. And what he’s telling us there is the thing that really changes the heart. The thing that really makes somebody a disciple of Jesus is that they have heard the gospel, they have accepted it, they have received it, and they have allowed it to transform them. And we need to understand that is our goal as parents.

That is our primary aim as parents. Not to make sure they have all the clothes that they want, not to make sure they get into all the different sports activities that they get into, not to make sure they make really good grades and get into a good college and live in a decent middle class house here in Decker Prairie, Texas. The goal is to make sure my kids are connected to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what they need most from us. This is also what we see in Lois and Eunice. Again, the reason why Timothy becomes the kind of man that he becomes is not because Lois and Eunice taught child psychology at Lystra University. It’s because they connected him to the scriptures. And those scriptures changed him.

And the fact that they connected to those scriptures is the reason why he was able to overcome the adverse circumstances that he experienced. It is not a perfect situation to have your dad who’s not a believer in a house with a mom who is a believer. And yet he’s able to overcome that because Lois and Eunice are able to give Timothy what matters most. They connect him to the gospel. And as good parents, that’s what we need to strive to do more than anything else is get our kids connected to the gospel. And we need to recognize that there are two things that I want to that I want to point out about that. The first one is this that one of the things that good godly parents do is they use their imperfections and they use their missteps to accomplish this.

They use their failures to help their kids get connected to the gospels. You know, one of the reasons why you don’t have to be perfect in order to raise good kids is because you can use those moments of imperfections to teach your kids about those gospels. If you have the humility to look at your kids in the eyes and say, Yes, dad lost his temper. And I shouldn’t do that. I did something wrong. Will you forgive me? And I’m going to pray to God, and I’m going to ask God to forgive me through the blood of Jesus because I have been saved from my sins through him. You can use those moments that you might think to yourself, Well, I raised my voice too much, I lose my temper too much.

I’m not the kind of parent that I should be. Well, you can use those moments to connect your kids to the gospel and help them see the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And instead of raising being raised thinking to themselves that mom and dad are perfect, or worse, that mom and dad aren’t perfect, but they aren’t willing to admit it. You can raise your kids, helping them see mom and dad aren’t perfect, but when they need forgiveness, they go to Jesus. I can do the same thing in my life. Good parents use their mistakes and their imperfections to get their children even more connected to the gospel of Jesus. And one of the other things that I think good parents do, and that I think we see good parents do in the Bible, is they is they make sure they don’t just teach their kids about the gospel, but they show their kids that they’re supposed to play a part in the gospel.

That’s what really good parents do. We need to train our kids to play their part well. Two of my favorite parenting stories in the Bible bring this out. One of them is related to that story of Hannah and Samuel. The Bible tells us that after Hannah prayed for a child, she was, she was able to conceive Samuel, and that when he was weaned, she gave him to the Lord. But her job as a parent didn’t end then, and there’s this really neat detail that we see in 1 Samuel 2 that tells us how Hannah, even though she only infrequently saw her son, how she helped him get connected to the mission God had for him. It says this in 1 Samuel 2, verse 18. I’m sorry if that’s too small.

It says, Now Samuel was ministering before the Lord as a boy wearing a linen ephod, and his mother would make him a little robe and bring it to him from year to year when she would come up with her husband to offer a yearly sacrifice. Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, May the Lord give you children from this woman in the place of the one whom she dedicated to the Lord, and they went to their own home. I love that little detail about Hannah. That she’s not really around her son that often. She sees him once a year when they come to offer the yearly sacrifice where Eli is. But every year, what she would do is she would make a little robe and bring it to her son.

And that was Hannah’s way of helping her son see that God had great plans for her. That was helping her see, helping Samuel see that he had a mission, that God had plans for him, and that Hannah was pushing him to fulfill that mission and recognize that she was helping shape his identity, not just as a person, not just to have self-esteem, but shape his identity as a servant of God by bringing him that little robe every year. She wants to make sure that he doesn’t just know about God, but he knows what his mission is in God’s plan. The other story that I like that relates to this is the story of David and Solomon. Now, when it comes to David is not one of the people you point to in scripture and say, hey, there’s a great dad, because David had a lot of bad things going on with his parenting.

But there is one thing that he got really right. And that had to do with the temple. You might remember from the Bible story that David was the one who originally had the idea of building a temple for God to dwell in. And even though David wanted to build that temple for God, he was willing to, God rejected him from that task and told him this wasn’t going to be a temple that he could build. It was going to be a job that was going to be assigned to his son Solomon. So rather than sit back and be upset about that, rather than sitting back and saying, okay, my son will take care of it. What David does is actually really cool. And you can read about this in 1 Chronicles 22.

It’s a long section of scripture. We’re not going to go there, but you can read it this afternoon if you want. But in 1 Chronicles 22, it tells us that what Solomon, what David does is he prepares everything he possibly can for Solomon to be able to complete that temple when the time comes. The text tells us that he charges Solomon with the task. He pulls him aside and makes sure Solomon knows this is the job that God wants you to do. He wants you to build his temple. Not only that, but he sets up advisors who can be around Solomon when he’s ready to complete that task. He also hands over the blueprints for the temple to show him how it should be made. And he sets aside mass quantities of stones and precious metals so that when Solomon’s finally ready to build this temple, everything is in place.

Everything has been set up so he can do it well. And that right there is great parenting. Making sure your kids know what the mission is, in setting them up so that they can fulfill that mission when the time comes. Understand that connecting your kids to the gospel is about more than just teaching them that Jesus saved. It’s also about helping them understand what part they’re supposed to play in the gospel and preparing them to play that role. You need to think about what things God might have planned for your daughter. And you need to think about what plans God might have in mind for your son. And as the proverb says, you need to bring them up and show them the way that they should go so that when they’re old, they do not depart from it.

3. Our Kids Are in God's Hands

There may be a lot of stuff that you overlook as a parent. There may be a lot of stuff that you mess up. You may feel like in your parenting, you’re just bumping and grinding like a 14-year-old boy trying to learn how to drive a stick shift. And maybe sometimes that’s true. But what you need to focus on is getting your kids connected to the gospel. And even if you mess some other stuff up or miss a few things here and there, if you manage to do that, you will be a success as a parent because the gospel is what matters most. And finally, let me say this. That we can have hope in parenting because we can recognize and we believe that our kids are in God’s hands.

Ultimately, we need to remember that this parenting process is not something that we are intended to do alone. That God hasn’t left us to do this by ourselves. Again, I’ll take you back to that important truth expressed in Philippians 2 and verse 13, that it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Whatever you do for God, you’re not doing it by yourself. You’re doing it with his power and with his help. And that is also true in your parenting. And that means two other things are true. The fact that God is here to help us, and we are here to work with his power and his help. That means, first of all, that he will, through his providence, through his will and his providence, bless your mission in raising your kids.

And that’s not just a fine sentiment that you might write on a greeting card. That’s actually what we see in Scripture. What we see in the stories of these kids and these parents is we see God intervening, God helping in various ways to make sure these kids become everything that they’re supposed to become. Isn’t that what we see in the story of Moses? His mom puts them in a basket in the reeds on the Nile River, right? I just spent seven years in Florida. You don’t put kids in baskets when alligators and crocodiles are nearby. But she does that to save him, and then ultimately, through the power and providence of God, Moses is fine. He’s drawn out of the water by Pharaoh’s daughter, and he becomes the kind of person who saves his people.

You also see that in the story of Samuel, right? That Samuel’s there, he’s serving under Eli, and yet in the middle of the night, one night God calls him and God speaks to him, and God intervenes, and God helps him become the prophet he should become. You see this in the story of Jesus. That when jealous tyrants like Herod rise up to kill children to protect their throne, God preserves his only begotten son. He intervenes and sends Jesus and his family to Egypt. We see over and over and over again in the Bible that God is helping parents in the process of parenting. Through his will and his providence, he blesses their mission. The Bible tells us that God is able to do far more abundantly beyond what we could ask or think.

And that relates to so many different things in our Christian walk, but it definitely includes parenting. And we need to remember this as well. Because our kids are in God’s hands, that means he also, he also is willing through his wisdom to supply what our kids lack. We need to remember that we’re not going to do this parenting thing perfectly. I want you to know this morning that David and Heidi Banning, my parents, did not raise me perfectly. They missed some stuff. And before you text them and tell them that I was trashing them in the pulpit, let me say also that Robert and Martha Banning did not raise David Banning perfectly. They also missed some stuff. They didn’t do it perfectly. And Jonathan and Leah Banning are going to mess some stuff up when we raise our own kids.

And what we see in the Bible is that in the areas where we fail, God tends to provide.

That Timothy’s dad isn’t what he should be. Timothy’s dad failed as a dad. He was not a spiritual leader. He wasn’t that father in the faith that a young man like Timothy needed. And yet, what does the Bible tell us? The Bible tells us that at some point God brought Paul to Lystra. And through that relationship, not through his own dad, but through his relationship with Paul, Timothy gets the father and the faith that he always needed. God tends to supply the things that our kids lack. When we drop the ball, he brings people into our life who give our kids what they need. Now, that is not to say that as parents we can sit back and lie on the couch and scroll our phones all day and ignore our kids and fail in all of our responsibilities and look at our kids and say, well, God’s gonna make sure they get what they need.

Guess I don’t have to do my job. But it is to say this. That I need to trust that God will supply the things that my kids lack. We need to trust that in the areas where I’m not everything that I should be, God is going to help my kids. We need to trust that we can stop punishing ourselves for our past mistakes. We can stop worrying over the parenting mistakes we’ve made in the past and the times that we’ve dropped the ball. And we need to move forward in faith, knowing that I may have messed some stuff up in the past, but God can fix that. And today, what I’m going to do today is not worry about what I did wrong in the past and where I failed in previous years.

Conclusion

What I’m going to do today is I’m going to rise up and I’m going to say, today, from this point on, I’m going to be the mom. I’m going to be the dad that my kids need. And if I mess something up in the past, God will handle that. And if I mess something up in the future, God can help with that too. We need to remember that our kids are in God’s hand. He will supply the things that they need. Hopefully, this morning that gives you a little bit of hope as you go about this process of shepherding your children’s hearts. The truth is, in parenting, I often feel unqualified. In preaching, I often feel unqualified as well. But both of those fears are stayed when I understand that I’m not doing this alone.

That it is God and His power and His Providence that are present to help us in these endeavors. The truth is that we are weak, but He is strong. That we are unqualified, but He is qualified. And that’s true in parenting, that’s true in preaching. It’s also true when it comes to our salvation. That none of us have the right to stand before God and demand that he led us into heaven. None of us have earned the right to spend eternity with God. We are unqualified for that. But the Bible teaches us that because of Jesus and His sacrifice, his blood makes it possible for me to be cleansed from my sins and made righteous in the eyes of God. And the Bible tells me that I can be cleansed of my sin if only I will trust him and I will obey the gospel.

The Bible teaches this that if I’m willing to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, if I’m willing to confess that faith before men and repent of my sins that caused him to go to the cross, then I can be baptized in water for the remission of my sins, and I can rise to walk in newness of life. If we can help you do that right now, if you need to do that right now, we invite you to come to the front while we stand.