Highlight: Parenting is a process not an event

As parents, we often hope that we can correct our children in one singular stroke of our parental brilliance. However, anyone who has been a parent for long knows that’s usually never the case. Paul Tripp reminds us that parenting is not a single event but a long process.

“We want parenting to be an event. That means, when our child does something wrong, I want to go into his room. I want to have a conversation with him and he says ‘You’re right, I’m wrong, I need more authority in my life. I’ve got heart problems, I need a savior. Where can I find him?’”

“We want a finished conversation, so we wind ourselves up emotionally, trying to produce in a single conversation that which God has designed to be a process.”

The same situation is true in our relationship with God the Father. We are not perfected in grace and righteousness after one interaction. In our sinful nature we need God to teaches us the same lesson over and over.

“Having redeemed me by His shed blood, having justified me by His grace, what does God then do? He sets Himself on a life-long process of changing me.”

“As a child of God, my growth in grace and my change is not an event, it’s a process, it is literally a life-long process.”

When we reposition our parenting to be a long term process, not single event, we are freed from trying to fix everything about in one conversation.

“I’ve gone as far as I can in this conversation. God’s put this child in my home, I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning and we’re going have more opportunities. It can take be the emotional pressure and power out of those moments.”

“It means that parenting becomes then one long, unending conversation.”

As parents, we should be prepared to have the same conversations with our children, over and over again, the way God corrects us over and over again. We should look for opportunities to continue advancing the conversation of life with our children and everyone else around us.


Paul Tripp is the president of Paul Tripp Ministries, a nonprofit organization, whose mission statement is “Connecting the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life.”

Key Scripture: Psalm 145

Featured Songs: Puttin’ up the Pins – Sara Groves; Cinderella – Steven Curtis Chapman; Through All of It – Colton Dixon

Parenting with Paul Tripp