Quotes by Tedd Tripp

Tedd Tripp (b. 1946) — Pastor, Buchautor und Konferenzredner · evangelikal-reformiert · USA

Tedd Tripp ist ein US-amerikanischer evangelikal-reformierter Pastor, Seelsorger und Autor, der von 1980 bis 2012 eine Gemeinde in Pennsylvania leitete. Weithin bekannt wurde er durch sein Erziehungsbuch „Eltern – Hüter der Herzen“ („Shepherding a Child’s Heart“), das eine Ausrichtung auf die Herzenshaltung des Kindes betont, wegen der Befürwortung körperlicher Züchtigung jedoch scharf kritisiert wird. Heutigen Bibellesern begegnet er als einflussreiche Stimme konservativer Familienethik, deren Methoden und Autoritätsverständnis stark polarisieren.

Era: Today

Recurring topics: Relationships & Family, Wisdom & Understanding, Growth & Character, Guilt & Forgiveness, Grace & Redemption, Discipleship, Witness & Mission, Love

Quotes by Tedd Tripp

The finest art of communication is not learning how to express your thoughts. It is learning how to draw out the thoughts of another.

Tedd Tripp

How can you balance discipline and love? Discipline is an expression of love… Rather than being something to balance with love, it is the deepest expression of love.

Tedd Tripp

Repentance and faith are not rites of initiation to Christianity. Repentance and faith are the way to relate to God. Repentance and faith are not acts performed one time to become a Christian. They are attitudes of heart toward myself and my sin. Faith is not just the way to get saved, it is the lifeline of Christian living.

Tedd Tripp

All behavior is linked to attitudes of the heart. Therefore, discipline must address attitudes of the heart.

Tedd Tripp

Behavior is heart driven, therefore, correction, discipline and training – all parenting – must be addressed to the heart. The fundamental task of parenting is shepherding the hearts of your children.

Tedd Tripp

Communication is the art of expressing in godly ways what is in my heart and of hearing completely and understanding what another thinks and feels.

Tedd Tripp

Always remember the goal of family worship is knowing God. When you lose sight of that goal, family worship becomes an empty ritual.

Tedd Tripp

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion” (Pr. 18:2). The agenda of a fool in conversation is getting things off his chest. Even when he is not speaking, he is not truly listening. He is simply shaping what he will say next. His next volley in the conversation is not returning the ball you served, but serving a new ball.

Tedd Tripp

Communication must be multi-faceted and richly textured. It must include encouragement, correction, rebuke, entreaty, instruction, warning, understanding, teaching and prayer. All these must be part of your interaction with your children.

Tedd Tripp

Remember, (your child’s) behavior does not just spring forth uncaused. His behavior – the things he says and does – reflects his heart. If you are to really help him, you must be concerned with the attitudes of heart that drive his behavior. A change in behavior that does not stem from a change in heart is not commendable; it is condemnable. Is it not the hypocrisy that Jesus condemned in the Pharisees? In Matthew 15, Jesus denounces the Pharisees who honored Him with their lips while their hearts were far from Him. Jesus censures them as people who wash the outside of the cup while the inside is still unclean. Yet this is what we often do in child-rearing. We demand changed behavior and never address the heart that drives the behavior.

Tedd Tripp

Biblical discipline addresses behavior through addressing the heart. Remember, the heart determines behavior. If you address the heart biblically, the behavior will be impacted. The expediency of dealing with behavior rather than the heart means that deep needs within the child are ignored.

Tedd Tripp

Many parents have a punitive mindset. They see discipline as the child paying for his sins. Rather than correction having the positive goal of restoration, it has the negative goal of payment. It is like the convict paying his debt to society by doing time in prison. This is not a biblical concept of discipline.

Tedd Tripp

Honoring parents means to treat them with respect and esteem because of their position of authority. It is honoring them because of their role of authority. If a child is going to honor his parents, it will be the result of two things. 1) The parent must train him to do so. 2) The parent must be honorable in his conduct and demeanor.

Tedd Tripp

Obedience is out of vogue in our culture. You can find classes that provide assertiveness training. Try to find classes in submissiveness training! Obedience is the willing submission of one person to the authority of another. It means more than a child doing what he is told. It means doing what he is told; Without Challenge, Without Excuse, and Without Delay.

Tedd Tripp

Teenagers experience frequent failure. As Christian parents you must become adept at taking your child to the cross to find forgiveness and power to live. You do your children great disservice if you strip away all the excuses for failure and force them to see their sin as it is, without giving them well worn paths to the cross.

Tedd Tripp

“The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Pr. 20:5). The goals and motivations of the human heart are not easily discovered. The patience, skill, and ability of an understanding person are required to draw out those deep waters.

Tedd Tripp

This God-given conscience is your ally in discipline and correction. Your most powerful appeals will be those that smite the conscience. When the offended conscience is aroused, correction and discipline can find its mark.

Tedd Tripp

When children are little we often fail to engage them in significant conversation. When they try to engage us, we respond with uninterested “uh huh’s.” Eventually they learn the ropes. They realize that we are not interested in what goes on in them. They learn that a “good talk” for us is a “good listen” for them. When they become teens, the tables turn. Parents wish they could engage their teens, but the teens have long since stopped trying.

Tedd Tripp

Character could be defined as living consistently with who God is and who I am.

Tedd Tripp

Your children are the product of two things. The first – shaping influence, is their physical make-up and their life experience. The second – Godward orientation, determines how they interact with that experience. Parenting involves 1) providing the best shaping influences you can and 2) the careful shepherding of your children’s responses to those influences.

Tedd Tripp

What keeps us from being thoughtful listeners?… The simple answer is that listening is expensive. It requires changing the pace at which we live our lives. It takes time… The more profound answer to the question has to do with our humanity. We are members of a fallen race. We are proud, and proud people don’t listen well. We are fearful people, and fear keeps us from entrusting ourselves to others. We think more highly of ourselves than we ought. We are frequently hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We are compulsively self-serving and often too full of ourselves to humbly listen to others.

Tedd Tripp

Let’s rethink this matter of getting your children saved. Perhaps one of the problems with this perspective is that it looks for a major spiritual event of salvation and misses the spiritual process of nurturing your children. It is your task to faithfully teach them the ways of God. It is the Holy Spirit’s task to work through the Word of God to change their hearts. Even when the Spirit illuminates and quickens them to life, it is a life of progressive growth.

Tedd Tripp

We are complex combinations of strengths and weaknesses. There are things that we can do with ease. There are other things that are painful and arduous.

Tedd Tripp

Children trust you when they know you love them and are committed to their good, when they know you understand them, when they know you understand their strengths and weaknesses, when they know that you have invested yourself in encouragement, correction, rebuke, entreaty, instruction, warning, understanding, teaching and prayer. When a child knows that all his life you have sought to see the world through his eyes, and that you have not tried to make him like you or like anyone but a creature God made to know Him and live in the relationship of fellowship and communication with God for which he was made, he will trust you.

Tedd Tripp

Obeying when you see the sense in it is not submission; it is agreement. Submission necessarily means doing what you do not wish to do. It is never easy or painless. True biblical submission must be found in knowing Christ and His grace.

Tedd Tripp

The most powerful way to keep your children from being attracted by the offers of comraderie from the wicked is to make home an attractive place to be. Young people do not run from places where they are loved and know unconditional acceptance. They do not run away from homes where there are solid relationships. They do not run from homes in which the family is planning activities and doing exciting things.

Tedd Tripp

You must regard parenting as one of your most important tasks while you have children at home. This is your calling. You must raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. You cannot do so without investing yourself in a life of sensitive communication in which you help them understand life and God’s world. There is nothing more important. You have only a brief season of life to invest yourself in this task. You have only one opportunity to do it. You cannot go back and do it over… To do this job of parenting well, it must be a primary task. It is your primary calling.

Tedd Tripp

Your focus can be sharpened by the realization that discipline is not you working on your agenda, venting your wrath toward your children; it is you coming as God’s representative, bringing the reproofs of life to your son or your daughter. You only muddy the waters when the bottom line in discipline is your displeasure over their behavior, rather than God’s displeasure with rebellion against His ordained authority.

Tedd Tripp

Determinism makes parents conclude that good shaping influences will automatically produce good children. This often bears bitter fruit later in life. Parents who have an unruly and troublesome teenager or young adult conclude that the problem is the shaping influences they provided. They think if they had made a little better home, things would have turned out OK. They forget that the child is never determined solely by shaping influences of life. Remember that Proverbs 4:23 instructs you that the heart is the fountain from which life flows. Your child’s heart determines how he responds to your parenting.

Tedd Tripp

“If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Pr. 18:13). The fool responds without really hearing, with no careful thought or consideration. Speaking in haste is shameful. When we don’t listen, we disclose a low regard for the other’s words and a high regard for our own.

Tedd Tripp

As a parent seeking to shepherd, you want to influence your (teen) to respond to the things that are reasonable, drawn from insight into human character based on Scripture. You are seeking to influence and provide counsel. You can accomplish nothing of lasting value simply by being an authority.

Tedd Tripp

As a parent you have authority because God calls you to be an authority in your child’s life. You have the authority to act on behalf of God. As a father or mother, you do not exercise rule over your jurisdiction, but over God’s. You act at His command. You discharge a duty that He has given. You may not try to shape the lives of your children as pleases you, but as pleases Him.

Tedd Tripp

I am always amazed at how quickly defiant teens find each other. The rebellious teen who is new to a school will find the fellow rebels before recess. Why is this? A teen falls in with rebellious company because he is a rebel, he does not become a rebel because of the company he keeps.

Tedd Tripp

I have used the phrase “shepherding the heart” to embody the process of guiding our children. It means helping them understand themselves, God’s world, the ways of God, how sin works in the human heart, and how the gospel comes to them at the most profound levels of human need. Shepherding the hearts of children also involves helping them understand their motivations, goals, wants, wishes and desires. It exposes the true nature of reality and encourages faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You undertake the shepherding process through (this) kind of rich, mulit-faceted communication.

Tedd Tripp

The focal point of your discipline and correction must be your children seeing their utter inability to do the things which God requires unless they know the help and strength of God. Your correction must hold the standard of righteousness as high as God holds it… The alternative is to reduce the standard to what may be fairly expected of your children without the grace of God. The alternative is to give them a law they can keep. The alternative is a lesser standard that does not require grace and does not cast them on Christ, but rather on their own resources. Dependence on their own resources moves them away from the cross. It moves them away from any self-assessment that would force them to conclude that they desperately need Jesus’ forgiveness and power.

Tedd Tripp

The Gospel seems irrelevant to the smug child who isn’t required to do anything he does not want to do. It seems irrelevant to the arrogant child who has been told all his life how wonderful he is. But the gospel has great relevance for the child who is persuaded that God calls him to do something that is not native to his sinful heart – to joyfully and willingly submit to the authority of someone else! Only the power of the gospel can give a willing heart and the strength to obey.

Tedd Tripp

37 quotes in total — browse the collection.

Sources: wikipedia.org, learnofchrist.com, westseattleblog.com, spiritualsoundingboard.com

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