Parenting: The 14 Gospel PrinciplesSample

Process

You need to see parenting as one unending conversation.

As a parent, I find this mentality incredibly freeing. Let me explain. You are freed from the pressure of needing to get from your child what you are never going to get in a single conversation. You know that this conversation is only one moment in an ongoing conversation that began when the child was born and will probably not even end when your child leaves your home. You are liberated from having to load your hopes for your child into one conversation, because you know that you live with this child and you will get many more opportunities.

You see, God loves your child even more than you do, and because he loves her, he has put her in a family of faith, and he will expose what is wrong with that child again and again so that you have opportunity after opportunity to take yet another step in the process of awareness, conviction, commitment, and change that he has called you to be part of in the life of your child.

—Paul David Tripp