Week 3: Identity in Everyday Life

Today’s application: Knowing I am not defined by my failures changes how I parent!

Who we are as parents is not perfect. We mess up and say things we wish we hadn’t, yet even then, God is at work in the identity of your kids. Actor, filmmaker, and family man, Kirk Cameron, drops some incredible wisdom on how to take imperfect parenting decisions and turn them into God moments. Keeping our identity rooted in Christ as parents is the best way to encourage our children to find their own identity in Christ, too!

Kirk says, “About parenting regrets… I can look back and say, “I wish I had done that differently.” At the end of the day, the Gospel is not “you get rewarded if you perform well enough.” The Gospel is “God and his grace come to your rescue even when your performance is not as it should be.” I think that grace applies to our parenting as well…

This is a learning experience for me, too. Even when I mess up, there’s an opportunity for me to model repentance to my kids. I regretted what I said, but we can use it as an opportunity to model responding to our conscience and then repent! Even that, God uses for good if we have our identity rooted in Christ and if we believe this is not all on my shoulders and my performance as a dad. This is really resting on the goodness and graciousness of God who is working with a guy who is still a work-in-process. Together as a family we can continue to move toward the one who is going to make us into the people we want to be.”

In the final and 3rd week of the World’s Biggest Small Group: Identity, we’re taking the truths we’ve learned and start applying them to everyday situations we face in life and culture. Here’s where you’ll see – our identity truly changes everything. The verse we’re thinking on this week is:

¹⁰For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

(Ephesians 2:10 New Living Translation)