What’s a Parent to Do?

(You Can Run but You Can’t Hide)

And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. –Jonah 1:17

Over the course of the last several years, I have heard numerous parents lament the spiritual state of their aging children. Some of these young adults have made life-altering decisions that directly impact their future. Others have been described as simply being on a negative trajectory. Our culture is so anti-God and anti-family. We are experiencing social and spiritual shockwaves. A secular nutritionist that my wife follows just wrote a painful article on how millennial children are out and out disowning their parents and want nothing to do with them, even as they are living in their house and eating their food! We are definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
In lieu of this, what is a parent to do? Some parents get depressed and believe they have totally messed up the whole parent thing. One dad asked me, “What have we done wrong?” My response?

“Probably a lot of things!” If perfection in parenting is the only way to produce godly children, we all are in big trouble because we all make mistakes. Like our children, we are fallen creatures who are totally dependent upon the grace of God. Even with His grace, I do not do all that well at times.
This does not mean, however, that we are the source of all our children’s problems. To hear some parents talk, their children blame them for their comfortable middle class lifestyle, the war in Ukraine, out of control inflation, and $5.50 gas. While we most definitely want to take responsibility for areas where we have knowingly erred—I just apologized to my children an hour ago on a matter—this does not mean we are responsible for every woe and emotional boo-boo our children experience. While I do want to be a parent who apologies when appropriate, I will not live the life of an apologetic parent. Frankly speaking, that is gross.

When our children hit a rough spot induced by raging hormones, social insecurities, and perhaps spiritual compromise, the good news is that God is even more concerned about them than we are. In His mercy, patience, and sovereignty, God gives them—and us—room to roam during certain seasons of life, often to their detriment. Some struggle in their transition to adulthood as do we parents who are watching it take place. Between the now and the not yet is a precarious time for young adults, and Satan takes full advantage in offering them numerous temptations. So many are ignorant about how life really works while others are obnoxiously arrogant at times. Some are even arrogant in their ignorance! This is a recipe for disaster.

Here is the good news, parents. God is in total control, and this is not His first rodeo. He is used to people running from Him. Consider Jonah. This Old Testament prophet did not want to go to Nineveh with warnings that God was going to destroy the city in forty days. Perhaps he thought they might kill him at the suggestion. Maybe he did not like them because of their previous attacks on Israel and wanted God to destroy them. Or if God spared them, would Jonah be labeled as a false prophet in their eyes. Regardless of his motivation, he decided to run from God.
Depending on your theology, God ordained or allowed him to get on a ship that was sailing in the opposite direction. What is interesting is his choice provided the very means God was going to use to get the prophet’s undivided attention. If Jonah would have run by land, he could have had a few more alternatives, but God put him on a ship miles away from land. If that was not enough, God then appointed a whale to take him down several hundred feet deep into the water to further limit his options. In defiantly running away from God, he actually ran into Him with absolutely nowhere to hide. Jonah ran into a concrete barrier and the barrier did not budge. Needless to say, Jonah ended up going to Nineveh.

Like Jonah, your children may run, but they cannot hide from God … or from the prayers of their parents. Yes, we parents need to teach them the principles of God’s Word like sowing and reaping, waiting on the Lord, and purity; however, our prayers to God will do more good than our words to our children. We must spend time before the throne of grace, asking God to turn their hearts like water in an irrigation dish. (Prov. 21:1) Pray that God will keep them on a short leash, exposing secret sin and chastening them early. (Psalms 22:19) Pray that God will put a hornet between them and any bad company. (Deut. 7:20) Ask God to wall them in so they cannot find their worldly lovers in spite of how hard they look for them. (Hosea 2:6,7)

Above all, have faith in God that He hears your prayers, and He will act. That is what a parent is to do.