My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you…
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
(Proverbs 2:1, 5-6)

by Josh Liu

Proverbs and other portions of Scripture are wrought with examples of godly parental instruction to children. Parents, fathers in particular, are seen as significant spiritual influences in the lives of their children (cf. Deuteronomy 6:20; Ephesians 6:4). The youth ministry, then, seeks to support and build up the ministries of the parents. To better equip ourselves in partnering with the parents in the discipleship of their children, the youth staffers are going through Paul David Tripp’s Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens for the 2013-2014 academic year. We hope to better understand Scriptural precepts, principles, and examples of godly parenting in order that we might more faithfully minister to the families in Lumos.

In the opening chapter, Tripp confronts a familiar tension within parents: teenage hormones. He challenges that instead of viewing teens as victims of hormones or that parenting teens is a season of survival, it ought to be considered a golden age of parenting. What he means is that prior to these teen years when the parents’ role was mainly authoritative, now, these are unprecedented opportunities to engage with their children like never before. The seemingly mundane or trivial trials of adolescence are the opportunities for parents to “jump into the battle and move toward [their] teenager. It is a time for engagement, interaction, discussion, and committed relationship. This is not a time to let a teenager hide his doubts, fears, and failures, but a time to pursue, love, encourage, teach, forgive, confess, and accept” (Tripp, p. 23). Children going through adolescence are experiencing many new things and are beginning to process those experiences differently from pre-pubescence. Don’t misunderstand–parents of young children ought to be engaging, instructing, discussing, etc. but many parents of teenagers often fall into authoritarian parenting that exasperates their children, or relinquish their call to disciple their children and become disconnected with their children. Adolescence is a great opportunity not to be missed by parents, or by the church.

Adolescence is also a great opportunity in the progressive sanctification of parents. Tripp makes the insightful observation that these teen years expose the parents’ heart; they reveal the parents’ desires, wishes, fears, and so on. A teenager does not radically change parents in an instant; rather, they often expose what was already in the heart. Tripp notes that our culture tries to avert parents’ responsibility by saying, “we need to come up with positive strategies of survival that preserve the sanity of the parents and the stability of the marriage, and that keep the teenager out of as much self-inflicted danger as possible” (Tripp, p. 18). This sounds great, but it distracts from a core issue: the parents’ hearts. Tripp concludes that “when parents begin to recognize, own, confess, and turn from their own wrong heart attitudes…the result is a marked difference in their relationship to their teen and in the way they view the struggles of the teen years” (p. 18). Adolescence is a great opportunity for parents (and the church) to mature and love Christ more.

In reflecting on all this, I was reminded that adolescence is a great opportunity for the teenagers themselves. Yes, these are formative years that build up to a particular way of life, but more so, these are significant years to shine the light of the gospel to those around them. I often challenge junior high and high school students who profess to know Christ as their Lord and Savior that they have an incredible opportunity to witness to their friends and family now. They get to see their classmates each day, often for a number of years if they continue going to the same school. They get to show their peers how one who loves and submits to Christ lives his life, responds to trials and temptations, invests his time, depends on Scripture, pursues peace and reconciliation, and so on. Adolescence is a great opportunity to evangelize and make disciples of Christ.

The youth staff and I are continually thankful for the privilege of participating in this particular time of the youth’s and parents’ lives. Indeed, this is a great age of opportunity. Please, pray.