Parenting with Grace: Teaching Responsibility Through Faith

Life often demands more than we feel equipped to handle. Yet, the God who formed us from dust knows our frailty and doesn’t leave us to face challenges alone. In this newsletter, we’ll explore how parenting reflects God’s patient guidance—lending strength and perspective until our children can stand on their own.

Lending Character Muscle—Parenting through Perspective

I was counseling a minister yesterday on child training—the invariably difficult task of instilling a sense of responsibility in youngsters, especially in their early teens. I told him that so much of responsible parenting depends on an accurate and loving appraisal of a child’s stage of development—specifically, the ability to distinguish how a parent’s mind works from how a child’s mind works.

Parents can often subconsciously begin to relate to their children as if they were adults—as if these 12-, 14-, and 15-year-olds need only to be adequately instructed in a task, given clear requirements and expectations, and then released to accomplish it, improving steadily, consistently, and excellently from there on out. And then, when this unrealistic expectation fails to materialize, the parent becomes exasperated, discouraged, and frustrated. They understand the essential component of communicating tasks and expectations but fail to grasp the equally essential component of transmitting to the child a new and better outlook on the world and his tasks.

Thus, in a manner of speaking, the parent becomes exasperated that the child is, in short, still a child. The child needs explanation, teaching, clear instruction, and consequences for disobedience—as well as rewards and approval for excellence. But you’ve got to crawl inside the mind of that kid and understand that he needs more. He needs you to walk with him through the tasks and introduce him to a new outlook on how achievable, doable, and simple they really are. I put it this way: parents must lend their character muscle to their children until the children build their own.

The Monumental Bathroom—Lessons from My Childhood

I remember being a kid, assigned my daily chores—making beds, cleaning my room, washing breakfast dishes, feeding and caring for the animals, hauling out the garbage, and, most dreaded of all, cleaning the bathroom. I remember when my mom told me and one of my brothers it was time to tackle the bathroom.

She had taught us to obey without whining or rebelling. But still, the task loomed. Even when I was resigned to it, the job felt monumental.

I never saw the bathroom the way Mom did. I never thought—Easy. Quick polish of the mirror, wipe down the counter, change the trash, shake out the rugs, sweep the floor, straighten the towels—10 minutes max. Not once.

To me, that bathroom might as well have been the Taj Mahal—an endless sprawl of complexities, unknowns, and tedious tasks liable to drag on into the late afternoon. I never looked at the task with the end in sight. Instead, I saw it from the starting line—where the obstacles loomed largest.

I resigned myself to the burden, accepted my fate, and then took a deep breath and began pulling every bottle of cleaner from the cupboard—the bigger and more toxic, the better.

Something about those cleaners made me feel stronger, more adult—more capable of facing the interminable task ahead. I’d start scrubbing with the white, smearing Comet cleaner, lose myself in some tiny corner of the counter, and focus obsessively on a speck of dirt no one had ever noticed before. Hours would pass as I tried to conquer that single, manageable square inch.

A Photograph and a Life Lesson

My mother still has a photograph from the early ’90s of two of my brothers, Jeremy and Simeon, “cleaning the bathroom” together. They’re standing Shanghai-style in the bathtub, pant legs rolled up to their thighs. Both are wearing oversized yellow hazmat gloves, and the tub is filled with a swirling concoction of cleaner water and floating brushes, rags, and scrubbers. Bottles of bleach and disinfectant surround them, likely emitting fumes potent enough to erase brain cells.

It looks like a scene from Life Smiles Back—a snapshot of how youth can turn cleaning a bathroom into a NASA-level operation.

And as I think about that picture, it reveals something profound about how we tackle the challenges of life—whether as children or as children of God.

I tell my wife, “We have to walk with the kids through the task, because the biggest hurdle is the lie in their minds—that this is impossible, interminable, and beyond their reach. Stand in the doorway until the room is done. Break big jobs into bite-sized pieces—dishes, counters, sweeping—and race them on each task. If they can borrow the muscle of your character and learn to stop looking at their chores through the lens of unbelief, nine-tenths of the battle is already won.”

So many tasks, challenges, and opportunities are forfeited—not because they’re impossible, but because we still view them like cleaning the bathroom at ten years old.

I think of the Psalmist’s words: “He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:9, 14).

God’s Parenting Model—Grace in the Process

God doesn’t treat us like we’re Him—timeless, infinite, and omnipotent. Instead, He relates to us as jars of clay—fragile, easily crumbled under pressure. If this is how our heavenly Father trains us, then it’s how we must train our children, too—praying for insight into their worldview. We need eyes to see both its innocent beauty and adventure, and its fearful limitations and shortsightedness.

How often do we approach God like kids cleaning the bathroom—inflating a simple step of obedience into an endless ordeal? At the outset, we grumble, “Lord, I don’t want to do this. It’ll take too long, and I need results now.”

What we don’t see is that this mindset—more than the task itself—is what turns a 20-minute exercise of faith into a drawn-out, soul-draining process. That’s why Jesus came, put on our flesh like a garment, walked among us, and cleaned our “bathrooms,” so to speak. Then He hands us the towel and says, “Go ahead. I’m right by your side. You’ve got this.”

And sometimes, His grace shows up in the form of a brother or sister who, by simply speaking our dilemma aloud, shrinks it down to size—making it seem small, simple, and entirely doable.

We’re reminded: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man” (1 Cor. 10:13). We’re strengthened by, “God has dealt to each one a measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3), and, “This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4). And again, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).

Perspective, and Bite-Sized Victories

Like children, we must learn to walk through life’s habitual dilemmas, guided by those who clean their bathrooms in 20 minutes. If we let them set the pace, see the challenge through their eyes, and match their rhythm of consistency, we’ll soon find ourselves seeing tasks for what they really are—simple, achievable, and swiftly completed steps of obedience.

The Lord once spoke to the obstacle and giant task before His scared children as they returned from Babylon—a people shaped by exile, steeped in fear and unbelief. He declared:

“Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, you shall become a plain” (Zech. 4:7).

Zerubbabel must have been a lot like my mom—someone who saw towering obstacles as manageable steps of faith. It’s as if God was saying, “There are plenty in this camp who would melt and perish in the tedium of unbelief. But here stands someone who sees this for what it is—an utterly achievable task, just another decisive step of obedience.”

They faced an overwhelming mission—clearing the rubble of a burned city, restoring the foundation of a destroyed  temple, and rebuilding the sanctuary of the Almighty. Yet they finished in record time.

What a privilege to work alongside people who don’t see our problems as big as we think they are—people who have seen five thousand fed, mountains moved, and impossible works accomplished time and again.

God doesn’t just step into our space, hand us a list, and threaten us with consequences. Instead, He surrounds us with a great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1). He plants us with spiritual parents, mentors, and “heroes”—some who have gone before and others who still walk beside us. And when we see through their eyes, we discover we’re capable of so much more than we imagined.

As Daniel reminds us, “The people who know their God shall be strong and do exploits” (Dan. 11:32).

A Story of Bite-Sized Courage

I remember when my wife faced the labor of delivering our first child. My mother, serving as our midwife, stepped in to help her prepare for birth. The pain gripped her so fiercely that her body seemed to recoil, instinctively recoiling from this inevitable crucible of agony that would give birth to new life.

With anguish and fear written across her face, she turned to my mom.

“Mom, do you think I can do this?”

Her eyes searched the face and eyes of a woman twice her age—a woman who had delivered hundreds of babies and birthed ten of her own.

Taking her hands, as if to transmit an invisible current of strength, my mom said:

“Honey, you’re trying to imagine and confront the totality of the birth all at once. Just say to yourself, ‘I can endure anything for 60 seconds.’ Take it in 60-second bites, and before you know it, you’ll be on the other side.”

That was the wisdom of grace—the perspective of a parent helping someone find the faith to take one decisive step, put one foot in front of the other, instead of perishing in unbelief by trying to grasp the magnitude of something beyond their view.

Faith That Sees Differently

For our children—and ourselves—we must accept the promise that “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” (1 Cor. 10:13).

“My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory” (Phil. 4:19).

So often, those riches come in the form of borrowed strength—the muscle of another’s character or faith. Sometimes it’s borrowing their outlook, letting them stand at our elbow, walking us through bite-sized pieces of the challenge until we suddenly realize we’re on the other side—standing in the light of triumph and knowing it was all by grace.

God, help us to offer that empowering perspective to those bogged down in the quagmire of unbelief and short-sightedness. And Lord, help us to accept the worldview of faith—the perspective of victory that others bring.

Let us step forward with feet of faith, choosing to see only with the eyes of faith, hear with the ears of faith, and reach out with the hands of faith. Help us to accept grace and help from others with a heart of faith—trusting that:

“He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14).

Yet we also trust that He calls us to be more than mere men.

“In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37).

Final Reflections

The same God who sees our dust and frailty also breathes His Spirit into us—filling us with strength that defies our limitations. He calls us not merely to endure but to overcome. And He pours out grace through spiritual parents, mentors, and brothers and sisters in the faith—people who walk beside us, speaking life into the shadowed corners of our unbelief.

So let’s face the challenges of our faith—and our parenting—with borrowed courage when needed, step by step, trusting that:

“He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

Whether it’s a dirty bathroom, a wavering faith, or a family in disarray, He is a faithful Father, reminding us:

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18).