Family Tip Number 2

John 15:5 I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you stay joined to me, and I to you, you will produce plenty of fruit. But separated from me you won't be able to do anything.

I don’t think that it’s a particularly controversial thing to say, that in this day and age, parenting skills “ain’t what they used to be”. Would you agree?

As I mentioned yesterday, I have some friends who have brought up nine children, each one of whom is still walking with the Lord. Over the years, they seemed to me, to have been outstanding parents. So I asked them for their top five tips for building a godly family. Here’s tip number 2, as Mark wrote it to me in his email:

It’s all about grace – God’s grace. This comes from John Chapter 15, Verse 5. Jesus says “Apart from me, you can do nothing”. My wife and I kind of figured ‘that nothing’ included – not even parenting.

We really believed this literally and we tried to apply it to our parenting daily. God chooses to work through the parents that He’s appointed for each child and the choices we make or avoid will all have a very real impact for bad or for good.

In other words, we’ll be held responsible for how we parent. But any good that comes out of what we do is to His ultimate credit. God is debtor to no man and all the glory ultimately belongs to Him.

John 15:5 I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you stay joined to me, and I to you, you will produce plenty of fruit. But separated from me you won’t be able to do anything.

Being a parent is one of the most challenging things anybody can ever do. And as Mark and Precious took this verse literally as parents, what I hear them saying, is that the closer they were to Jesus, the better parents they became. Hmm.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

‹ Previous Next ›

Blessed by this devotion?

Share it with a friend!

Dig Deeper

• Grace
• Intimacy with God
• Love
• Marriage & Family
• People & Relationships
• The Word of God