Why? Because you have been put into your position as parent to display before your children how beautiful, wise, patient, guiding, protective, rescuing, and forgiving God’s authority is. You must never exercise authority in a selfish way. You must never exercise authority in an abusive way. You must never exercise authority in an angry, impatient way. In the lives of your children, you are the look of God’s face, you are the touch of his hand, and you are the tone of his voice. This means that every time you exercise authority in the lives of your children, it must be a beautiful picture of the authority of God. He makes his invisible authority visible by sending visible authority figures as his representatives. He has authority only because he represents a king who has authority. Topics: Parenting The ambassador doesn’t have any authority in and of himself. This is why Jesus came, to provide us with the rescue that we all need but that we cannot provide for ourselves. So I need much more than just rescue and relief from my children I need rescue from me. My children are simply the occasion where my heart reveals itself in words and actions. No, the cause of my actions is found inside my own heart. My children don’t cause me to do and say what I do and say. What was the result? This question gets after consequences.įor more on this topic you can visit his resource page here.This means that my biggest, ongoing problem as a dad is not my children, it’s me.Your behavior is always the result of what you’re thinking and what you desire? What we’ve done is bracketed behavior with the thoughts and motives, interpretations, desires of the heart…Hebrews 4:12-13 – the heart is always thinking and always desiring. Why did you do it and what were you seeking to accomplish? This question gets after motives, goals, purposes, etc.With this question we’re teaching our children (and ourselves for that matter) that the behavior and words that came out in the situation were not formed by the situation but by how my heart reacted to the situation. What did you do in response? This goes after words and behavior.What were you thinking/feeling as it was happening? This question gets after the heart. You need to understand that no matter where you are, no matter what the situation is your heart is endless operating…you’re always interpreting, always worshipping, always desiring or wanting something.It’s impossible to recount something without biases. What was going on? This question is designed to simply get a sense of what was going on.You can change the verbiage but its important to walk through these question in the order given. He shares that the order of the questions must not be changed. Here’s some insight Paul Tripp gives on understanding the biblical function of our hearts.

Parenting by paul david tripp