Church growth strategies, discipleship curriculums, or evangelism training sessions don’t work very well if the gospel isn’t central. I love surprising my wife with romantic acts, but Luella and I need the gospel of Jesus Christ to be central in our marriage, and we need the big-picture themes of Scripture to be our guide more than anything else. If you want a healthy relationship with your spouse, built on the foundation of unity, understanding and love, going to BuzzFeed to find the latest 14 ways to make date night more romantic won’t be your best choice. You need a big gospel parenting worldview that will not only make sense of your task, but will change the way you approach it. You need God’s helicopter view of what he’s called you to do. If you’re going not only to cope, but to thrive with vision and joy as a parent, you need more than seven steps to solving whatever. I try to impart helpful guidance in the moments we have together, but what they (and I) really need is a big picture gospel worldview that can explain, guide, and motivate all the things that God is calling them to do. The centrality of the gospel in everythingĪfter I speak, I always have someone ask for an effective strategy for this, a guaranteed formula for that, or a proven approach to something else they’re struggling with. It sounds obvious, almost cliché, but it’s more significant in our lives than we realize. Then it hit me: the missing piece was the gospel. It took me a while to figure out what was off. Something was missing in the way these parents were interpreting and applying the strategies detailed in the pages of our books.

But for the past two decades, as I saw how people were using that book (and my brother Tedd’s book Shepherding a Child’s Heart), I grew increasingly uncomfortable. I felt God calling me to write more books, but I was equally as persuaded that Age of Opportunity would be my only one on the topic of parenting. In 1997, I wrote my first book, Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens. Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest Email LinkedIn

Paul tripp gospel parenting