Today we investigate what may well be one of the best parenting resources available!
“Parenting” by Paul David Tripp Check out 5 Ways to Support TLP. Click here for our free Parenting Course! Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Instagram. Follow us on Twitter. Follow AMBrewster on Twitter. Pin us on Pinterest. Subscribe to us on YouTube. Need some help? Write to us at [email protected]. Click "Read More" for today’s Episode Notes and Transcript.
Episode Notes
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TranscriptIntroduction
If you’ve ever looked for help in your parenting, you’ve probably purchased a book or two.
Whether you downloaded it off iTunes or got it from Aamzon, most of you probably read it from cover to cover, some of you may have taken good notes, answered the questions, or highlighted huge chunks, and some of you may have actually been able to put into practice the concepts you studied. But even though I praise God for the avalanche of Christian resources there are in the world, I find that so many of the “Christian parenting” books offer little genuine help. Sometimes it’s due to the fact that anyone can publish a book these days, but sometimes it reflects a deeper issue with the Failure Philosophies of the Church. Either way, how’s a Christ-honoring parent supposed to find good resources. More on that in a minute! We praise God for the number of people who’ve contacted us at [email protected]. I and my team of counselors have laughed and cried and praised God with many of your, and we’re honored to serve you that way. But we want you to know that we have a new email address. This one should be easier to remember. It’s [email protected]. And you don’t just have to contact us if you’d like assistance or advice. You can tell us how we’re doing or how we can do better. Fred has contacted us a couple times to tell us that some of our links were broken. I really appreciate his help in that. But you can also contact us to suggest topics or ask questions you’d like to have answered on the air. If you do that, please specify it. We don’t want to answer a personal issue for everyone to hear: “Yeah, Samantha Jones mentioned her kid hates her and wants to know if she should disown him, but her pain-in-the-neck husband disagrees.” Yeah, that probably won’t work out too well. Okay, how hard does it have to be to find biblical, clear help for our parenting? Besides the Bible, what’s the best parenting resource out there? I’d argue that it’s the resource that conforms the most to the Bible. Topic
I’d like to provide you with three things today: an answer, a promise, and a suggestion.
Here’s my answer about how to invest your time and money on truly beneficial resources. 1. Answer - Unless you read each book for yourself (which will cost a lot of money and take too much time), you have to have information about the book before you buy it. The more important question I can imagine is, “Does this book contain a jumble of cultural ideas and biblical proof-texts, or is it a book that identifies and clarifies God’s teaching and help you achieve His will for your life?” This is basically the same duty as a pastor/teacher. We’ve been tasked with feeding the Lord’s sheep in the green pastures of His fertile Scriptures. But how can you know such a thing about a book you’ve never read. Well, it’s generally pretty simple. Can you trust the author? And, if you’re not familiar with the author, can you trust the person suggesting the book? That’s the problem with the internet and Christian bookstores. Their goal is to sell books. They’ll say just about anything, or find a reviewer who will. How else would Joel Osteen have sold so many books! The point is, if the person who wrote the book (or the person suggesting the book) doesn’t consistently live out God’s Word, I wouldn’t suggest taking their opinion. And we do this all the time. There are only certain people you’ll trust for a movie review, or to suggest an awesome restaurant, or to point you in the direction of the best software for your company. You trust the people who 1. know what they’re talking about, 2. have proven themselves, and 3. have your best interest in mind. So that leads me to my second idea of the day. 2. Promise - Truth.Love.Parent. is still very much in its infancy. We’ve been live for just over 7 months, and this is only our fifty-second episode. But whether it’s on our podcast, in social media, on our website, or in our parenting tools, we’ve striven to make Christ the center of all we do. Team TLP promises you three things: We will all continue growing in our relationship with God through our personal and corporate sanctification. We will continue studying how God’s Word applies to our families, and stay current with the secular Failure Philosophies so we can pass that information on to you. We’ll take all of your comments and criticism to heart. We’re not perfect, and in our growing process, we invite you to speak Truth into our lives as you have so graciously allowed us to speak It into yours. Send us the books you’re curious about, let us know if you disagree with our conclusions, and always feel free to ask questions. To that end, we want to be one of your most trustworthy sources for Truth in parenting. We know it takes time to earn trust, but we promise to do our best to earn yours by staying faithful to God and His Word. In review, without studying all the parenting books and philosophies out there, we believe the answer to finding the most Christ-honoring resources is to find trustworthy people who know what they’re talking about. And we promise to do our best to become those people for you. And here’s my last theme for today. 3. Suggestion - If I have earned your trust at all, I’d like to suggest you read what I consider to be the best Christian parenting book I’ve read to date. Earlier in the year I had the opportunity to interview Paul David Tripp. That interview had to be canceled due to Paul’s health complications, but let me tell you how excited I was at the prospect. Paul Tripp has written some of my all-time favorite books on Christian living. He writes not only from a love for God and people, but from a significant knowledgeable base. He’s been teaching and counseling and speaking and writing for decades, and the Lord has blessed him with keen insight, a clear writing style, and penetrating explanations and applications of the Bible. Last year, in the same month we published our first episode, Paul wrote his second parenting book. His first was called “Age of Opportunity.” I’ve suggested that book to many people over the years. And Paul thought that was the last book he would write on parenting. He said, “I told myself and repeatedly told others that I was not about to write another one, yet here I am doing just that. Why? Because as I listened to people tell me how they used Age in the lives of their teenagers, I became increasingly uncomfortable. I kept thinking, ‘No, that’s not exactly it,’ or ‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ or ‘No, there’s something missing.’ It took a while, but it finally hit me that what bothered me in these conversations and what was missing in the these parent was the gospel that was the foundation behind everything that I wrote. So with the publisher’s encouragement I decided to write a parenting book, but not the typical kind. This will not be a book of practical strategies for dealing with children at the various ages of their development. This book will not provide practical steps for dealing with the kinds of things every parent faces. This is meant to be a reorienting book. It is meant to give you a new way of thinking about and responding to everything that will be on your plate as a parent. This book is meant to give you vision, motivation, renewed strength, and the rest of heart that every parent needs. It is written to give you the big gospel picture of the task to which your Savior has called you.” The book he wrote is called simply, “Parenting.” I’ll link it for you in the description, but it will also be a mainstay on our Parenting Resources page of our upcoming website. I believe this book delivers on its promise. And I love it because not only do we all need that, but that’s been one of the driving goals of Truth.Love.Parent. since its inception. To quote Paul again, we want to “give you a new way of thinking about and responding to everything that will be on your plate as a parent.” When you align your thinking, your words and actions follow right along. Please take the time to purchase and read “Parenting” by Paul David Tripp. That is my answer, my promise, and my suggestion, but I want to end the show by giving you a peek into the future and goals of Truth.Love.Parent. TLP has a ministry paradigm consisting of five simple spokes — and later this year we plan to launch the hub of that wheel at TruthLoveParent.com. Our website will feature all five of our ministries outlets.
Like I said, we want to earn your trust by becoming a brilliant light for Gospel-centered families. And you can play a massive part in that.
Conclusion
SO, if you couldn’t tell, the title of today’s show served a dual purpose. The title is “The Best Parenting Resource.” I believe the Paul David Tripp’s book “Parenting” is one of the best parenting books out there, but I also hope I’ve communicated the passion Team TLP has for making Truth.Love.Parent. a key resource in your parenting.
Thank you for joining us today as we strive to be and provide you the best parenting resources available.
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