There’s no guarantee that your child will take you up on being discipled by you. And so you may try going down this road only to see them reject your attempts. But your calling as a parent isn’t based on producing results or the apparent lack of them. Your calling is to partner with the Lord by presenting his gospel to your child as clearly as you can while you trust him to open blind eyes now, like he did while he lived on earth.

Helping Your Child See What They Don’t

Active rebellion. Passive resistance. Foolish choices. What’s the common denominator that links how your child rejects their knowledge of God and his ways?

It seems like a good idea to them at the time.

When your children sin, they truly believe that what they do will give them a better world than the one you’ve tried to hold out as good and desirable. They’re spiritually blind—and they don’t know it.

Your calling as a parent is to speak into their darkness with words to try to help them see what they don’t. You may first need to restore peace and order to any chaos they’ve brought. But afterward, your goal is to help them see that God’s ways of living really are better than anything else that they could want.

What’s that look like? Think in terms of five different areas of blindness that you’re trying to bring light to.

1. Can They See What Their Heart Is Doing?

First, you and your child need to see the effect on his or her heart. Jesus—and the rest of Scripture—talks about an invisible part of a person that drives and controls all the rest. So, the behavior you can see from your child comes from a deeper worshiping core that you can’t see (Luke 6:43–45). Words that only address his or her behavior fail to disciple your child in the faith—or worse, those words disciple them into an alternative faith.

For instance, what happens if you tell your child something like, “You wouldn’t like it if someone did that to you, would you? Of course not. So, you shouldn’t do that to anyone else.” Do that and you will disciple them into being driven by their own self-interest—to what feels good for them. You won’t disciple them into loving God or others. Instead, your words will turn them inward, not outward, as the first and second greatest commandments do (Matt. 22:36–40).

Instead, you want to use words that make their heart visible. Ask something like, “What was more important to you just now rather than ______ [listening to me, telling the truth, brushing your teeth, cleaning up your room, sharing with your sister, coming home on time, etc.]? What did you want, value, long for, desire? How come you did what you did?”

Use your words to help make visible their invisible heart.

2. Can They See the Ugliness of What Their Heart Has Produced?

Second, since your child was deceived by their heart into thinking that sin looked good in the moment (Heb. 3:13), help them see how ugly it really is.

Here it can be helpful to compare the kind of world that God’s laws produce with the kind that their lawlessness does.

Ask them, “You didn’t do what you know is good and right, so, what’s come out of that? What are the consequences to others? What are they feeling or having to go through? What’s now broken that wasn’t before? How are you feeling about this?”

If your child is old enough, you can then ask them to imagine what life would be like right now if they had lived like God has said to live.

Sin always looks pleasurable in the moment (Heb. 11:25)—otherwise there’d be no point in pursuing it! Part of discipling your child means helping them see that it ends up making a world that no one wants to live in (Prov. 14:12).

Use your words to help them understand the difference between real beauty and its ugly counterfeit.

3. Can They See the Gospel?

Third, you need to help them see Jesus.

Read More