Relationships in HD — Part 14: Parenting Like the Father

Relationships in HD — Part 15: Parenting Like the Father

Description: In Part 15 of Relationships in HD, Pastor Eric turns the camera toward the character of God the Father—and shows how His heart, His patience, and His approachability form the pattern for every parent, grandparent, and mentor in the church. This message speaks not only to moms and dads, but to everyone called to disciple the next generation. If you belong to Christ, someone younger in the faith needs you.

From John 1, John 8, and Romans 8, Eric walks through one of the most essential truths in the Christian life: not everyone is automatically a child of God, but everyone who believes in Jesus is adopted, loved, forgiven, and welcomed as a son or daughter. Out of that identity flows our calling: to reflect our Father’s heart to those entrusted to us.

Using the Prodigal Son as the centerpiece, Eric shows how God parents us—with generosity, patience, kindness, open arms, and restorative grace—and challenges parents to build the kind of character that causes their children to come home when they fall. This message also addresses the dangers of absent parenting, angry parenting, overbearing parenting, shame-based parenting, and the tendency to treat our children as interruptions rather than priorities.

Practical, gospel-soaked, and deeply pastoral, this is a call to imitate our Father in heaven and become safe, steady, compassionate mentors in a world starving for spiritual mothers and fathers.

Key Scriptures (NKJV): John 1:11–12; John 8:44; Romans 8:15–16; Galatians 4:6; Matthew 6:5–13; Matthew 11:28–30; Luke 15:11–24; James 4:6–10; Hebrews 4:14–16; Jeremiah 31:3; Psalm 145:8.

Highlights:

• Spiritual parenting: why every believer—parent or not—is called to mentor the younger.

• Not all people are God’s children—only those who receive Christ are adopted into His family.

• God the Father as the model: available, approachable, generous, compassionate, slow to anger.

• Parenting through God’s character: kindness, mercy, patience, and truth.

• The Prodigal Son: a picture of the Father’s heart and a pattern for restoring relationships.

• Why children need space to grow—and why helicopter parenting harms development.

• Making children a priority (without making them idols).

• The power of humility: repenting to your children when you’ve blown it.

• Being a refuge for your kids—someone they run to, not run from.

• Grace and discipline: discipline as training, not punishment.

• God’s open-door invitation: “Come to Me… I will give you rest.”

Next Steps: Ask God to help you imitate His fatherly heart this week. Choose one concrete way to be more available, more patient, more compassionate, or more approachable to your child—or to someone younger in the faith. If needed, take the humble step of apologizing for past failures. Then pray Romans 8:15–16 and thank God that He is your Father—and ask Him to make you a living picture of His grace.