Tim Chester, of The Crowded House in the UK reminds us that one of the main areas of life in which The Gospel is lived out is the home; the family. But it’s not always apparent how the Gospel should affect the way we parent. After all, isn’t a large part of parenting setting rules and boundaries? How can we go about this without raising little legalists?

The Gospel story informs our parenting and leads us to “missional parenting.” As the Gospel of Mark opens, we are told that the “Good News” is that the Kingdom of God has come. And yet, to many of us, the fact that God is in charge and we are not is not immediately seen as “good news.” But the Gospel places us not under a tyrannical rule but a grace-filled Father.

One of the main problems with way we parent is that we still see the idea of “rule” as oppressive. We resent our government, we complain about our bosses and we often exasperate our children, driving them to resent our rule rather than experiencing boundaries as an extension of our love for them.

Chester offers five points to help us understand how the Gospel impacts parenting:

• The main goal: model loving authority.

The home is one of the main places we learn to submit to authority instead of living for ourselves. The family is an important context in which we proclaim and demonstrate the goodness of Christ’s rule, though there are two ways we often get this wrong: 1) child-centered and 2) parent-centered. Christ is the center, not us.The main goal is not control but children who love God.

• The main hope: your child knowing and serving God.

When our children look at our lives, what would they say matters most to us? If it is not God, then perhaps we shouldn’t worry as much about the “world’s” influence on our children but our influence. The goal is to teach our children to treasure Christ above all things and they will watch whether or not this is true of us first. If we don’t “get grace,” parenting will crush you. Our children will know what we value most. What do you praise your child for most? Sports? Grades? or loving others? They will learn to pursue what you praise them for most. For many of us, children are actually an idol; where we find fulfillment.

• The main focus: Your Child’s heart.

Our behaviors always flow from the heart. It is not enough simply to modify a child’s behavior. We often discipline for selfish reasons (we want a quiet home, our reputation, etc.). If this is the case, we’ll often go to whatever lengths necessary to control behavior through manipulations, fear, bribery, and emotionalism. Our role as parents is to address behavior through addressing the heart. We must not only ask what the behavior is but what drives it. Do we continually make excuses for our child’s misbehavior (he’s just tired, it’s all the sugar he eats, etc.). Our actions are always the outworking of the heart.

• The main battleground: Your heart.

One of the main difficulties in parenting is not always our child’s behavior, but our own hearts. When our heart is not completely given over to God, we will not respond calmly to situations but out of frustration.

• The main theme: Grace

Parenting often feels like a battle, because it is. One of our main roles as parents is to bear the image of God to our children; to show them what our Heavenly Father is like. Children need to learn to live under authority but they also need to learn of a Father who loves His enemies and gives His own live for those enemies. Our number one aim is to show how great it is to live under God’s gracious reign of love.

Tim Chester, of The Crowded House in the UK will be preaching for our Church of the Cross family this Sunday. His book Total Church (co-written with Steve Timmis) has had a tremendous influence on the way our church family lives together. Chester’s book You Can Change is one of the best “gospel-application” books I’ve read in a long time. I refer to it in a variety of situations.

Chester is here in AZ to speak at the Together For Adoption conference and the Surge Network had him train local leaders last night. Chester hit on something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately; the question of motivation. It seems as though many people approach the Christian life as a list of rules and regulations; they can do and things they cannot do. They are concerned with things Christians “should not” be doing, which is somewhat understandable. After all, those who follow Christ should be different than the rest of the world.

What’s difficult about this is that, at least externally, many of these people “look holy” (Colossians 2:16-23,  2 Timothy 3:5, etc.) without understanding the true and better motivation for striving to become more like Jesus. The result is often that we have people that look good externally while rotting on the inside (Matthew 23:27, etc.). For many of us, Christianity is about changing our behaviors while forgetting that our behaviors always flow from the heart. Christianity is often a question of motivation. As Chester said last night:

the Gospel changes behavior; not by you shouldn’t do that, but you need not do that.

If you find yourself driving and spot a police officer in your rear-view mirror, you might grumble to yourself: dagnabbit, I’m running late and I have to get to my destination but this cop is behind me, grrrrrrr, I guess I have to go the speed limit, at least while he’s behind me as you grip the steering wheel in frustration. That police officer could care less about why you’re driving the speed limit as long as you drive the speed limit.

It seems as though many of us approach the Christian life like driving with a cop behind us. We begrudgingly change certain behaviors because we shouldn’t do certain things. Yet, if we are trying to change behaviors because of “should,” it is a burden, we feel beat up or prideful/judgmental (depending on how well we succeed or fail at changing certain behaviors).

It is true that there are behaviors that are not fitting for Christians, but we are continually faced with the question of how to best change those behaviors. If we simply tell ourselves that we shouldn’t do this or that, we’re most likely not going to see real, long-term change because our motivation is not deep enough.

It’s of the utmost importance that we continually ask the question of motivation. Why are we trying to change certain behaviors? Though Scripture does say that a Christian’s behavior should, over the course of time, change, it follows the pattern of indicative before imperative. God did not come to the Israelites while they were slaves in Egypt and tell them: “OK, here’s 10 rules I want you to live by and if you do well, then I’ll redeem you from slavery.”

In fact, the order is quite the opposite. God redeemed His people from slavery, then took them to Sinai, even prefacing the Ten Commandments with a reminder of Who He Is and What He had done for His people (Exodus 20:1-3). This pattern holds true throughout Scripture. When Paul urges the Philippians to live in unity and consider one another as more significant than themselves, he points to the fact that Christ is our motivation (Philippians 2:1-11). When Paul tells husbands to sacrificially love their wives, he points out that this exactly how Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33) and when Paul urges the Corinthians to give for the famine in Jerusalem, he points to the fact that, though Jesus was “rich,” He became “poor” for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9).

The question of behavior change in the Christian life is not one of we no longer should do certain things but that we no longer need to do certain things. It forces us to ask why we are prone to certain sins; are we looking for control, comfort/satisfaction, are we trying to prove ourselves or have a good appearance before others? The most effective way to fight sin is not with rules but with a greater pleasure. We no longer have to look to the trinkets of this world because Jesus is the True and Better.

Our motivation for change is not just to bring behaviors “in line” but joyful humility at Who God is and what He has done for us in Christ. We no longer need to sin because we have the True and Better in Jesus. This requires the self-awareness to not only continually examine our actions but the affections that drive them and bring them back to the Cross. Jesus says that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). I wonder how many of actually experience this freedom in the Christian life?

the Gospel changes behavior; not by you shouldn’t do that, but you need not do that.

Re-routing many Christians towards a missional lifestyle is a slow, long, difficult process. For many people, we are asking them to reconsider everything they’ve experienced “in church.”

I’ve been revisiting many of these thoughts lately as we push forward with our Church of the Cross family.

As Tim Chester and Steve Timmis remind us in Total Church, as we orient our lives around the Gospel and Community, we might need to re-examine some of our preconceived notions of what “church” should look like. It might mean:

• seeing church as an identity instead of a responsibility to be juggled alongside other commitments
• celebrating ordinary life as the context in which the word of God is proclaimed with “God-talk” as a normal feature of everyday conversation
• running fewer evangelistic events, youth clubs, and social projects and spending more time sharing our lives with unbelievers
• starting new congregations instead of growing existing ones
• preparing Bible talks with other people instead of just studying alone at a desk
• adopting a 24-7 approach to mission and pastoral care instead of staring ministry programs
• switching the emphasis from Bible teaching to Bible learning and action
• spending more time with people on the margins of society
• learning to disciple one another – and to be disciples – day by day
• having churches that are messy instead of churches that pretend

Timmis and Chester push us even further to learn to redefine “success” and “failure” in the life of the local church:

If someone was being sent as a missionary to a hostile context overseas, our attitude would be something like this: We would expect to pray often for them. We would expect progress in building relationships and sharing the Gospel to be slow. We would be excited by small steps – a gospel conversation here, an opportunity to get to know someone there. We would thrive on regular updates from the front line. But the truth is that the lives of many Christians in work, and play, are just like the life of that far-flung missionary! They are lived out in tough environments where progress is often slow and many factors make evangelism extremely difficult. The challenge is to make news from the staff canteen as valued as news from the overseas mission field.

Making church life “simple,” is often much more difficult than we realize; especially if we’ve ever been part of a culture in which the “holier” people are the ones who are at the “church building” the most.