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Great Questions for Targeting Our Children’s Hearts…

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from Paul Tripp’s Getting To the Heart of Parenting. We’ve been teaching a class of young adults this material. We worked through each of the 10 sessions, now, we are using the rest of the quarter to review the sessions 2 at a time. Last Sunday, we reviewed the sessions entitled “Targeting the Heart.” Here are questions Tripp recommended using to get the heart and motive of your children:

What was going on?
What were you thinking and feeling as it was happening?
What did you do in response?
Why did you do it? or What were you seeking to accomplish?
What was the result?

To encourage younger parents, Tripp said he first used these when his 4 yr. old took a toy from his 2 yr. old brother. This is applicable stuff and can give us a grid to work from in engaging our children’s hearts with the Gospel. Only Jesus can help these to do what is right and honorable to God!

Confession as a path to change…

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Over at the Desiring God blog, they posted part 1 of The Grace of Confession by Paul Tripp. Meanwhile on Take Your Vitamin Z, Zach Nielsen posted an excerpt from Tripp’s book, What Did You Expect, highlighting this same truth (No Change Without Confession). Here’s the excerpt:

The couple is stuck in a cycle of repeating the same things over and over again. They repeat the same misunderstandings. They rehearse and re-rehearse the same arguments. They repeat the same wrongs. Again and again things are not resolved. Night after night they go to bed with nothing reconciled; they awake with memories of another bad moment, and they march toward the next time when the cycle will be repeated. It all becomes predictable and discouraging. They hate the cycle. They wish things were what they once were. Their minds swing between nostalgia and disappointment. They want things to be different, but they don’t seem to know how to break free, and they don’t seem willing to do the one thing that makes change possible—confess.

They tell themselves they will do better. They promise they will spend more time together. They promise they will pray together for a moment before they start their day. They decide to spend more time together outside the house. They promise they will talk more. But it is not long before all the promises fade away. It is not long before they are in the same place again. All their commitments to change have been subverted by the one thing they seem unwilling to do: take the focus off the other and put it on themselves. Here is the point: no change takes place in a marriage that does not begin with confession.

Confession is the doorway to growth and change in your relationship. It is essential. It is fundamental. Without it you are relegated to a cycle of repeated and deepening patterns of misunderstanding, wrong, and conflict. With it, the future is bright and hopeful, no matter how big the issues that you are now facing.

Confess sin and see if God doesn’t work to impart grace and begin to change you.

Paul Tripp on Parenting

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On Sunday AMs, I’m teaching Paul Tripp’s Getting To the Heart of Parenting (75% off at WTS Books for a season). Yesterday, Tripp posted an article on parenting entitled The Joyful Impossibility. He mentions 2 things he learned one evening that changed the experience of parenting for him:

1. I faced the fact that I had no ability whatsoever to change my children.
2. I faced the fact that in order to be a tool of grace, I desperately needed grace myself.

Read the article and be reminded of these things yourself.

Weekend Preview – Parenting/Prayer

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This weekend, on top of New Years, we are launching some new things at Crestview. During SS, I will be teaching through Paul Tripp’s Getting To The Heart of Parenting curriculum (the other adult class features Tom Dixon teaching Marks of the Messenger: Knowing, Living and Speaking the Gospel by Mack Stiles).

To introduce Tripp and my class, I will be showing about the first 45 minutes of an interview that Desiring God did with Tripp (called Ask Paul Tripp Live). Here’s the video:

In the AM Worship Service, we will also begin looking at Jesus’ words on prayer from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:5ff). This will be our kickoff for the Week of Prayer and include a prayer time after a Noon Meal. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Review of Paul Tripp’s Seminar

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We attended the Pre Conference Seminar with Paul Tripp. Desiring God has posted notes from both sessions on their blog (Session 1 / Session 2).

Bob thought that what stood out to him was how he was able to relate every problem an individual or pastor would have needs to be brought back to the Gospel. He also appreciated Tripp’s sense of humor. And thought Tripp’s strength, real-life illustrations, were helpful in his communication of truth.

I thought that this session was personally convicting in many ways. Tripp was relentless in helping us see our hearts in ways that we maybe haven’t seen them in the past. He did this masterfully for all of us in that room. Question after question and example after example helped us see our hearts and how ministry temptations must be fled from for the help that is offered in the body of Christ.

I would encourage you to read through the notes from this session.

Getting Rolling with Pre-Conference Seminar…

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Today, at 1PM, we will be taking in the Pre-Conference Seminar here at the Desiring God Conference for Pastors. The speaker is Paul Tripp. Here’s a preview of what Tripp will be presenting…

For all of the excitement and privilege of ministry in the local church, it is important to remember that ministry with, to and for the Body of Christ is accompanied by a unique set of obstacles and temptations. Successful, God-honoring, productive ministry in the church is never just a matter of mastering the requisite body of information and possessing the right set of skills. Ministry in the local church, whatever it is, is always shaped by the condition of your heart. What are the issues that are at the heart of ministry struggle and failure? What are the protections that need to be built into the life of everyone who is active in ministry of any kind? How do we assure that the message of the transforming grace of Jesus Christ is not only operating in the lives of those being ministered to, but in the one doing ministry as well?

The schedule shows 2 sessions:

Session #1:
Title: The Pastor: Who Do We Think He Is Anyway?

Session #2:
Title: The Pastor: Not Yet Perfect, Still Under Attack

After this conference, we will register, grab some dinner, and prep for the evening session with Sam Storms. If I get a chance, I’ll update everyone later.

Quest for More (Again)

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I’m rereading Paul Tripp’s excellent book, A Quest for More. Chapter 1 is available online for all to read. Tripp does an excellent job highlighting how we tend to live for transcendent, kingdom building activity. Slowly we all naturally drift toward living for something. This book is a must read for us in our contemporary individualism. I would highly recommend it.

Another good tool just became available online, thanks to Justin Buzzard. He has a post highlighting the big truth and big question of each of the 17 chapters. This tool alone would be worth your time as a means to exposing your heart. Enjoy.

Tripp on the “Little Moments”

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Tony Reinke did an excellent service in posting this (from Paul Tripp’s latest curriculum What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage):

You and I don’t do many significant things in our lives. We only make 3-4 major decisions. Most of us will not be written up in history books. Sorry, it’s true. For most of us, several decades after we die, the people we leave behind will struggle to remember the events of our lives. You live in the utterly mundane. You live in little moments. And if God doesn’t rule your little moments He doesn’t rule you because that is where you live. I think one of the big problems we make in our marriages is when we name little moments as “little moments” and say they are not important. If the character of a life is not set by four or five big moments but is set by 10,000 little moments, every little moment of your life is important. That’s where your life is formed and that’s where your relationships are built and formed. We cannot back away from the little moments because that happens to be where we live. And our God is a God of the little moments. He enters those little moments with his truth and wisdom and grace. [session 1, 7:50-9:30]

This was especially helpful as I anticipate HomeWord tonight and the truth we will look at from 1 Corinthians 7:32-35.

Youth Ministry vs. Adult Ministry…

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Over at the DG Blog, they are beginning to blog about an interview Abraham Piper and Tyler Kennedy had with Paul Tripp. An early question had to do with the differences seen in ministering to youth versus ministering to adults. I LOVE Tripp’s answer:

There are ways in which there’s no difference. There’s only one gospel, not a different one for children, young people, and adults.

And there’s a way the struggles of the heart are the same. These struggles play out differently depending on our stage in life, but when it comes down to it, we all want to be sovereign over our own lives.

If you understand that about your heart, and you’re humble about it, you’ll get what a kid or teenager is going through. You’ll understand that it isn’t first a problem of misbehavior; it’s first a problem in the heart.

There is also an audio of this interview and probably more posts coming.

I learned this lesson on aiming at the heart a few years back and it has revolutionized my entire approach to ministry in the local church.