Purpose and Parenting

The LoL Parenting Program is predicated upon an expository of the Seven milestones of parenting:

1. Purpose

2. Becoming & Abiding

3. Leadership

4. Stewardship & Responsibility

5. Mentorship

6. Accountability

7. Release

Our earlier posts looked at "purpose" as God's children and the LoL view of parenting. We extend our discourse further by looking at the why of parenting. What is the purpose of parenting and family life?

God would begin an expression of His Fatherhood over man from a place of purpose ("man" that would bear His image, be His likeness, and have His authority to take leadership and dominion over God's creation) Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” Genesis 1:26 NLT

Similarly, everything in life must begin at the point of purpose. From Genesis, the book of beginnings, we find that the "that it may" will always follow the "Let there be." The bedrock of every creation is PURPOSE, including PARENTING. I was in a training class not so long ago, and the trainer gave a very revealing analogy about some mason working at a quarry.

They were 3 of them hewing cut stone pieces from rocks. A man walking by asked the first mason what he was doing. Thrown back by such an obvious question, the first mason retorted, "Cutting out stones, of course!" And went back to his work.

The same man walked by the 2nd mason and asked the same question, "What are you doing?" The second mason looked up and replied, "I am cutting out stones for building the world's best Cathedral." And he went back to his work.

Finally, the same man walked by the third mason, and again he asked, "What are you doing?" The third man looked up and replied " I am part of the team building the world's best Cathedral; I'm cutting out these stones for that project" And he went back to his work.

LESSONS FROM THE QUARRY

1. Work without purpose is laborious; the first mason did not sound like he was enjoying his work. As parents, parenting can feel that way if we have not come to an understanding of our purpose as parents when parenting just happens as a life event we never planned for or have taken time to prepare for.

2. Purpose drives intentionality and precision in the work we do. With intentionality and precision comes a vision toward the desired outcome that serves as a motivation.

3. Motivation and vision keep us hopeful and on track even when it gets difficult. When we understand our own purpose in the parenting journey, we intentionally set our parenting goals. When the vision is clear, the process becomes dear; each difficult curve is navigated, driven by the outcome we desire.

As parents, we have been assigned the role of "fletchers" by God and given the capacity to fletch our children to precision. Then the Maker can take from our quiver and shoot them into their appointed season (Psalm 127:4).

THE PURPOSE OF PARENTING

The primary purpose of parenting is kingdom manifestation and dominion. The purpose of parenting is kingdom manifestation and dominion, initiated when God created the first Adam and established in Christ the second Adam. The 2nd Adam was necessary not just to redeem man but to extend the genealogy of God for dominion on earth.

We start our parenting journey from the place of a call into kingdom manifestation and dominion; the mandate of God to man to be fruitful, multiply and take dominion of the earth was not given to a fallen and conquered man. It is given to the redeemed sons of the Most High.

Therefore parenting that fulfills God's mandate for Fruitfulness and multiplicity starts with the man becoming the express image of God through the revealed Christ. Otherwise, we have a man that can not ascend into the eternity of God. A man fashioned after the similitude of the world he has embraced.

If we have been born of God in Christ, we will produce seeds after our kind in Christ, and our seeds will produce seeds after a lineage and ancestry that is God. It is only then that the earth is replenished.

A secondary purpose of parenting is to raise godly seeds (Mal 2:15). We cannot produce godly seeds out of our fleshly desires and ambitions, such seeds must be seeds born out of the will of God (John 1: 12-13); Jesus came as a standard of the type of seed God seeks from us, and in Him, God established an eternal genealogy that we are to take our being from.

The third purpose of parenting is to tend/nurture, guard, and keep the kingdom of God in our homes, the sanctity of the union, and the seeds we are rewarded with. Purpose, indeed, will be a perpetual thread that runs through the entire span of your union, family life, and life span. And these individual purposes must tie to the Sovereign purpose of the eternal God.

THE ROLE OF THE MAN & HIS WOMAN IN PURPOSEFUL PARENTING

The man and his wife have their God-given roles that they must perform one to the other in keeping with their responsibility of tending, guarding, and keeping each other and their home. If they don't keep each other, they cannot keep their home or the seeds they will receive.

1. In keeping with their commitments to one another, the man is called to a life of obligation, leadership, sacrifice, and devotion to his wife and children, just as Christ exemplified by His life as the Husband of the church. Christ was obligated to die for the church, He led the first church by being an example of the life God has called us to inherit, He sacrificed His life to give us access to that life, and He lives forever devoted to bringing us through, in our walk with Him until He presents us perfect and without blemish before His Father! Likewise, the man is obligated to love his wife, be a covering over her, be a leader to his family and be devoted to guiding them in God's ways, just as God testified of Abraham.

2. The wife is called to a life of devotion to her husband and his received vision from God, similarly to the Church, and she is to honor, respect, revere, and submit to her husband's authority and lead her children to do likewise.

For the journey of parenting to be fruitful and produce its God-intended outcome, the man and the woman must start from the place of a unified purpose in God, a synchrony of their individual purposes that aligns with the life God has called us all to live - a life yielded and transformed into the likeness of Christ. The new man has the inherent capacity to produce godly seeds that will replenish a fallen world.

Therefore, parenting for the believer and professor of faith must begin with becoming; becoming the express image of God in Christ. Every tree will produce after its kind; when we fully embrace Him, we can fully reveal Him so that our children can automatically acquire the kingdom's culture! Like the mason at the quarry who had a vision of how each hewn stone would fit into that cathedral and, by that vision, worked with intentionality, do you see God's vision for your family? What awesome possibilities lie within each of your children that God trusts you to raise them into becoming for Him! How can you work with God to ensure that this vision comes alive through your simple everyday interactions with your child? Take time to reflect, pray, and share in the comments section.

The next milestone in this series is "Becoming & Abiding," a blueprint on how we can engage our journey to "become" the seed that produces after the genealogy of the second Adam.