The Number One Task of the Parent

Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome the Kingdom Perspective.

What is the most important task of a parent?

We get some clue when we consider the Fatherhood of God. God doesn’t take the title “Our Heavenly Father” because He hopes to model His care after our example. Quite the opposite! Rather, He is trying to set an example for us. He is the model and standard of all fatherhood, to which we fathers are called to imitate, even if, ever so imperfectly.

Even more so, when we peer into the very being of God, we discover that God exists eternally as a relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so, at the source, the heart of all reality, is a relational connection between a Father and a Son. God is eternal love relationship.

So, how does this inform our most basic duty as parents? Well, in Scripture, every time the Father speaks about His Son, His voice booms from heaven something like this: “This is my beloved Son, in whom my soul delights.” The first words out of the mouth of the model parent are not words of commandment or correction, but enjoyment. Relational delight is at the very bottom of all reality.

My friends, as we feast on the overflow of the Father’s delight in the Son, we become those that learn to enjoy (to delight in) the sons and daughters He’s given to us—even as, we command and correct them.

And that’s something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed….

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

~ John 17:1-5, 20-26 (ESV)