Welcome to Sunday Fuel! This series of questions is designed to assist your personal reflection and fellowship with others about the sermon from this past Sunday.
Go to This Sunday’s Sermon (start at 24:52)
Note: Though these questions are focused on parents and their children, they can be applied to other discipleship relationships.
Yield: Grow in Christlike patience by entrusting your desires to God (1 Peter 2:23).
Evaluate your desires.
- Identify: When it comes to your relationships, what frustrations test your patience? What might be the ruling desire (a desire—including good ones—that has become sinful) at the root of it?
- Describe: How do you respond when you do not get what you desire? In what way might you want to punish others with this response when they fail to meet your demands?
Consider your desires.
- What “99 cent taco” are you holding on to at the expense of something greater? Evaluate this desire in light of the greater value of knowing and trusting Christ.
- What long-term impact might this value have on your parenting choices? On your children’s growth in Christ? How might this diminish God’s intended grace to our children through us?
Surrender your desires with an open hand.
- Humbly entrust your desire to God: “My heart wants (name your desire), but help me to want (identify God’s desire) more.”
Pursue: Grow in Christlike patience by remembering Christ’s love for you (1 Peter 2:24).
Identify your children’s struggles.
- What do your children suffer or struggle with? What sinful desires might rule their hearts?
Humbly empathize with their struggles.
- How might your children’s struggles be like yours? How do you also struggle with this same thing in your own context or stage of life?
“I am more like my children than unlike them—and so are you. The reality is that there are few struggles in the lives of my children that aren’t in my life as well (materialism, relationships, wanting my own way, attraction to the world, subtle idolatries, etc.). This admission transformed my parenting. Instead of approaching them with self-righteous outrage, I moved toward them as a sinner in need of grace needing to confront a sinner in need of grace.”—Paul Tripp
Turn to the gospel.
- How has Christ demonstrated his patience towards you in your sin, weakness, or childishness? (1 Tim. 1:15-16) Take time to remember his love for you as the worst of sinners.
Turn to your child.
- How might God’s patience with you help you to extend patience to your child in their situation?
- How might you get in the trenches with them as they struggle?
- What gospel truth have you learned in your own struggle that you might share with them, that they might seek Christ for redemption and hope?
