Shepherding a Child's Heart

by Tedd Tripp

The purpose for your authority in the lives of your children is not to hold them under your power, but to empower them to be self-controlled people living freely under the authority of God.

Children rarely run from a home where their needs are met. Who would want to walk out on a relationship in which he feels loved and respected?

Grades are unimportant. Some children can achieve “A’s” without any diligent effort. Others struggle for a good solid “C”. What is important is that your child learn to do his work diligently for God. God has promised that he will reward the faithful.

Knowing that gifts and abilities are a stewardship from the Lord, your child’s objective should be faithfulness.

Bribery latches on to evil in the child’s heart and uses it as a motivation. The child is not taught to look out for the interests of others. The child learns nothing about being under authority because God is God and the parent is his agent. The child does not learn biblical reasons for integrity, responsibility, or neatness in one’s room.

Your first objective in correction must not be to tell your children how you feel about what they have done or said. You must try to understand what is going on inside them.

Why is it that we can see that David learned to trust God in the thick of things as a boy with the lion and the bear, and yet we think that our children cannot learn these lessons of faith as well? What is worse, we set a life before our children that doesn’t even require faith. We give a keepable standard that casts them on their own resources and native abilities and endowments—turning them away from Christ and his cross to themselves and their own resources.

Personal indignities must not be the condition upon which we rebuke our children.