Mom Set FreeSýnishorn

The Pressure

When was the last time you remember saying to another mom something like, “You know, this parenting thing isn’t that hard after all. I mostly feel like I’ve got it mastered, and the pressure to get it all right doesn’t really phase me. I don’t know why everyone else thinks it’s so complicated and exhausting”? 

You can’t remember saying that? OK, good. Because neither can I. In fact, I’ve never said that. 

What I can remember saying to another mom is that I am so overwhelmed I mostly feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, and I often feel like I get it wrong. Don’t let that concern you, as this isn’t a study about how to be like me. If it were, we’d be in big trouble. This is a study about how to parent freely in the assurance of and reliance on the sovereignty and grace of God. And rest assured, I have to go back to the good news every single day in order to live and parent that way. Because I, like you, feel the pressure. 

We are under so much pressure. 

We think that if we just keep trying harder to be better examples and do more for our kids, we will finally become the moms we long to be. But, we’re exhausted. This is just no way to live and parent. It’s not how our heavenly Father created us to live and parent. But there is a better way.

We are going to start to discover the better way by turning to 2 Corinthians. This book of the Bible was a letter written by the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth. The Corinthian church was comprised of mostly inconsistent believers who had embraced a false gospel and were experiencing affliction. Paul wrote to them as someone who was well acquainted with affliction, and out of his great love for these people, he pleaded with them to embrace the true gospel. 

Read 2 Corinthians 1:8-10. 

The apostle Paul understood pressure. Note what he said in verse 8. In the NIV translation, Paul writes, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.” 

In verse 9, Paul showed us what pressure and peril are intended to do. He wrote in the NIV, “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” 

Oh friend, how applicable this is to our parenting. The pressure we are under is intended to make us rely on God. Parenting is about us relying on God to be enough for our children and for us.