Parenting by God’s Design: A 5-Day DevotionSample

Day 3: The Secret to Successful Parenting

Yesterday, we showed you why there is no formula for parenting. So, what then is the secret to parenting successfully? 

The secret is wisdom. Wisdom is the thing that we need for faithful parenting. 

According to the Bible, wisdom comes from God and is accessible to every person who wishes to discover it. We like to define wisdom as “skill at living life.” There are biblical reasons we use this definition. This definition strips away the mysticism that can be attached to the concept and makes it attainable for everyone. A skill is something that you can acquire, develop, and grow. The Bible is a Holy Spirit-inspired treasure trove of parenting wisdom. Proverbs is chock-full of guidance for parents, and the key parenting concept is wisdom.

The longer you live, the more wisdom you gain. The more wisdom you gain, the more wisdom you can apply. The more wisdom you apply, the more successful your parenting is likely to be. 

We remember being called to the principal’s office when one of our older boys was in first grade. We had never been in that situation before. We were nervous and a little embarrassed. We vacillated between being angry with the teacher and defending our son to being angry with our son and wanting to discipline him. But God was giving us an opportunity to build our parenting skills—our wisdom!

As our other sons grew up, we have unfortunately had numerous opportunities to speak to school officials about their behavior. We’ve gained a certain kind of confidence in these encounters and we don’t really get nervous anymore. We have learned the balance between standing up for our boys and letting them take their medicine. That’s because we have developed wisdom—skill at talking to the school about our children.

Some of you have very young children, and you are reading this and thinking, “These people don’t have it together. If they were really good parents, why are their kids always in trouble at school?” We understand why you might think that, because we used to secretly make the same comments about parents that we observed in our church and in our community. We made those comments because when our kids were very young, we actually believed that parenting was going to be formulaic. We would have never said that out loud, but in hindsight, we can see that our quiet, slightly judgmental conversations proved what we really thought. We thought if parents weren’t getting C2, it was because they hadn’t figured out how to plug and crank A2 + B2.

God, having a fantastic sense of humor, allowed our children to grow up a little more and allowed us to discover that we don’t even have a clue what A2 or B2 are half the time. Parenting isn’t about perfecting methods and techniques. It isn’t about a formula. It is about acquiring and applying wisdom.

We don’t want you to get the wrong idea about our kids. By God’s grace, all of our kids are believers, and if you met them, they would make a good first impression. They are hard workers. They do well in school. They are good athletes. They love Jesus and his church. But they didn’t start out that way. And they may not all stay that way. Every one of them—like each one of us—is a work in progress. We have learned that any success we have had in parenting is not because of formulas; it is because God has taught us wisdom.