Getting to the heart of Biblical Parenting
By: Paul Tripp

"Dear friend, I am very encouraged by your desire to grow in your understanding of biblical parenting, and it is our prayer that you will glorify God in the way you are raising up the next generation. As we all know, it is challenging work, but there is grace available from our Savior..." Paul Tripp's biblical parenting seminar



Part 1, Getting to the heart of parenting

*Judges 2:6-15

The heart is the target: The inner man (spirit, mind, will & emotion) is what causes
behavior; Proverbs 4:23: "Above all else, gaurd your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."

What rules your heart?
What the heart does: the heart recieves the grace of the new covenant.
What the bible says the heart can do: repent, believe, see, sing, discern, grieve, think, pray, love, hate, fear, become hard, give, lust, be faithful, upright, righteous, turn away, store things, rejoice, be humble, love God, be proud, know, meditate, seek God, remember.

The heart is very important. It is the wellspring of life.

How do we address the heart? Shepherding the child's heart begins with communication. Communication shapes so much of biblical parenting- Western culture says that we are what our experience makes us; the bible says that we are what our heart is. This profound insight is only found in scripture.
Mark 7:11-23: Jesus says here that nothing outside of a man or a woman can make him or her unclean, but that it is what is inside of our hearts that make us unclean.
Luke 6:43-46 and Matthew 15: 11-30 tell us that no good tree bears bad fruit.
Slander, murder, lust, greed, sloth,etc. all come from our hearts-

These behavior problems are first problems of the heart.

The heart must be addressed before the behaviors can be addressed.

This is why behavior charts, alone, will not work.

Behavior can be restrained ( think Eddie Haskell)without any heart change.
The content and character of our hearts can be filthy while we are looking clean on the outside, this is what Jesus was talking about when He said that Pharisee's were like whitewashed tombs: they were clean on the outside, but they were dirty on the inside.


A change in outward behavior without a change in inward behavior is not what we want.

When we address fighting, for example, we need to know that fighting reveals the content of our heart : something is going on in the heart that causes them to typically live in conflict with other people. The goal of parenting this child biblically is to get at the heart issues that make this child ever want to fight.
Two teens can live in the exact same situations, and yet one will be combative and one will not. Why? because the issue is in the heart of the teen, not in the environment/experiences of the teen.

Addressing just the fruits of the problem- the yelling, or cursing, or hitting, or disrespectfullness of tone or speech without first addressing the heart is, as Tripp coins, like "stapling apples to a barren fruit tree." The stapling of apples to the leaves does not make the barren tree fruitful. The tree is still not growing fruit, you have just addressed the 'behavior' of the tree without addressing the root issues, the 'heart' of the tree.

We rot when we are not attatched to the life-giving roots of the tree of God, we are the branches and He is the vine. Apart from Him, we can do nothing...

To produce a true life-giving harvest one must be attatched to the vine- this is why a threat or "I'm bigger,so listen to me" will not work, and do not bring glory to God. These methods of parenting wrongly instruct the heart. They rob your child of the desire and growth of being holy- the opposite of just staying out of trouble.
When we say "just stay out of trouble" we help our children become skilled sinners, instead of helping them become holy.


Part 2 to follow next post.... hope you enjoyed Tripp's teachings, so far :)


These are the Reccomended Resources for parents from this seminar:


Books that expand the vision for parenting given by the bible:

By Paul David Tripp:

A quest for more

Age of opportunity

War of words

Instruments In the Redeemers Hands

Lost in the Middle

Relationships: a mess worth making by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp

How people change, by by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp