What do you think?
Rate this book
The Gospel-Centered Parent
Our children are precious to us, so naturally we want to protect them and guarantee their safety and happiness. We want to get it right, so our children will be all right. But we live in a broken world where things don't always (or never?) go as planned. Children make mistakes and, if they are honest, parents know they make mistakes too. So it's easy for parents to live in fear, regret, confusion, and sometime hopelessness about parenting and the children they love. Is there a better way? Can you learn to live by faith, to trust the God who made you and your children with their past, present, and future? How can Christian parents live by faith as they parent their children? These are questions that are best answered in community. Rose Marie Miller is a mother and grandmother who is familiar with being afraid and also the power of the gospel to free you from it. She is a wise and experienced guide for your small group as you tackle these issues by looking at what God has to say about his love, forgiveness, and care for you and your child. This 9-session small group resource will help Christian parents apply the gospel of Jesus Christ to their families. Each lesson looks at parenting through the lens of God's grace for sinners (parents and children) and gives parents a gospel-center to their parenting. Parents will learn how to live out the biblical principles of faith, repentance, and faithfulness to their calling as Christian parents with their children. Each lesson is self-contained, featuring clear teaching from biblical Scripture, and requires no extra work outside of the group setting. The self-explanatory Leader's Guide at the back of the book helps small group leaders with discussion questions and background material that clearly explain and apply the gospel truths from each lesson.
144 pages, Paperback
First published July 28, 2015
13 people are currently reading
177 people want to read
About the author
Rose Marie Miller
7 books9 followersRose Marie Miller, Bible teacher; conference speaker; missionary with World Harvest Mission; and author of From Fear to Freedom: Living as Sons and Daughters of God. Rose Marie and her late husband C. John (Jack) Miller worked together to plant the New Life Presbyterian Churches and begin World Harvest Mission. She has five children, twenty-four grandchildren, and twenty great-grandchildren and divides her time between London, England and Jenkintown, PA.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 15, 2025
4.5 ⭐️
This is the best resource I have read on the topic of raising kids since Paul David Tripp’s game-changing Parenting was released in 2016.
Most parenting books I’ve read emphasize getting your kids to obey and generally behave the way you want them to behave. Obedience is important - and biblical - but its over-emphasis smacks of manipulation and control, not parents who shepherd their children’s hearts to love God and admit spiritual neediness.
The Gospel-Centered Parent breaks this mold by placing the focus on parents needing the parenting of their Heavenly Father. As we parent, we recognize the depth of our own sin, and we are encouraged to repent and seek God and pray to Him to do in our children’s lives what only He can do.
Each of the ten chapters (covering rich topics like prayer, discipline, and guiding your kids through suffering) includes fantastic discussion questions, a brief article on the subject, and thought-provoking exercises that challenge you as the parent to evaluate your own heart and family culture.
This is the best resource I have read on the topic of raising kids since Paul David Tripp’s game-changing Parenting was released in 2016.
Most parenting books I’ve read emphasize getting your kids to obey and generally behave the way you want them to behave. Obedience is important - and biblical - but its over-emphasis smacks of manipulation and control, not parents who shepherd their children’s hearts to love God and admit spiritual neediness.
The Gospel-Centered Parent breaks this mold by placing the focus on parents needing the parenting of their Heavenly Father. As we parent, we recognize the depth of our own sin, and we are encouraged to repent and seek God and pray to Him to do in our children’s lives what only He can do.
Each of the ten chapters (covering rich topics like prayer, discipline, and guiding your kids through suffering) includes fantastic discussion questions, a brief article on the subject, and thought-provoking exercises that challenge you as the parent to evaluate your own heart and family culture.
April 12, 2019
I did a quick read-through ... Would really love to use this as implied: for group study.
December 29, 2022
After reading Show Them Jesus, one of my favorite Christian books of all time, I searched on Goodreads to see if Jack Klumpenhower had written anything else I could snatch for myself. He's a contributor to this book, and once again, he proves to write about the Gospel in a way I personally find immediately heart-piercing. The Millers are also great Christian writers.
This is a workbook, made for groups, but my husband and I did it just the pair of us. Because it was a small group discussion format, each chapter, though short, would take about an hour to discuss our way through. For that reason, we were often unmotivated to do it after the kids went down for bed. After getting four small people down, we were too tired to be alert for an hour! This is the book's greatest problem, and as you can see, it was more our problem than the book's.
The discussions were very fruitful. The book is a great course correction for any parent who has slipped into behavior modification instead of faith in the Gospel for hoping for heart change in our children. (I think that's pretty much every parent, if I understand anything about the human heart!) The chapters on prayer and on parenting from faith not fear were my favorites. I think my husband enjoyed the early chapters laying the basis for a Gospel-centered (rather than rule-centered) family the most.
This is a workbook, made for groups, but my husband and I did it just the pair of us. Because it was a small group discussion format, each chapter, though short, would take about an hour to discuss our way through. For that reason, we were often unmotivated to do it after the kids went down for bed. After getting four small people down, we were too tired to be alert for an hour! This is the book's greatest problem, and as you can see, it was more our problem than the book's.
The discussions were very fruitful. The book is a great course correction for any parent who has slipped into behavior modification instead of faith in the Gospel for hoping for heart change in our children. (I think that's pretty much every parent, if I understand anything about the human heart!) The chapters on prayer and on parenting from faith not fear were my favorites. I think my husband enjoyed the early chapters laying the basis for a Gospel-centered (rather than rule-centered) family the most.
August 27, 2019
I read this book over the summer with a few other mothers and it was a really helpful and encouraging read. Perfect for a book study setting!
March 31, 2022
We started this book for a 9 week study with our church. It has deep rich truths that made me think and also made me dig deeper. Hopeful we can use these solid truths in raising our kiddos.
December 9, 2022
Practical and insightful, this book provides a helpful course correction for parents lost in the weeds of their daily responsibilities.
August 31, 2015
Continuing their Gospel-Centered series, New Growth Press, in conjunction with Serge (formerly World Harvest Mission) has recently published The Gospel-Centered Parent. The Gospel-Centered series seeks to apply the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ to various aspects of the life of the Church and the Christian. These studies are created for use in a small group setting with leader and participant guides.
The Gospel-Centered Parent is grounded in the gospel and seeks to help moms and dads parent from a position of faith and not fear. As any parent will attest to, it is so easy to try to control how our children will turn out by weighing them down with rules and demands. We are afraid to lose them to Satan and the world. Our fear drives us to trust ourselves to determine our children’s futures, rather than trusting God. While we may be exercising faith in God for our own salvation, we can forget to put our faith in God when it comes to our parenting. When we trust God to lead our children, then it lightens our burden as parents, and frees us to parent our children the way God wants us to. In turn, our children are freed from the weights we put on them. When we put our faith in God for our parenting, we lighten our load and that of our children.
To get a taste of the gospel saturated nature of this resource, here are the fifteen reasons why it is better to parent with the gospel rather than rules as outline at the back of the book:
1. Unless their hearts are in it, your kids won’t be obeying God’s most important law no matter what else they might manage to do.
2.Unless good works spring from belief in Jesus, they aren’t even actually good.
3.Obedience that’s grounded in love will help your kids overcome how they feel at the moment.
4.The worry that God’s people might use grace as an excuse to sin reflects a too-small view of salvation and grace.
5.The idea that grace might let us get away with sin is not how reborn people should think.
6.A strategy that starts with believing the gospel looks beyond surface sins to whole-self obedience.
7.You kids can’t be consistent about godly living without love for God.
8.Your kids can’t really obey God if they’re unsure of his pleasure toward them.
9.A focus on Jesus and his grace does not make God’s commands seem unnecessary; instead it shows how they’re both urgent and beautiful.
10.Only the confidence that comes from knowing they surely belong to Jesus will let your kids dare to face the full demands of God’s law.
11.Knowing grace lets your kids get serious about God’s commands without falling into despair.
12.Knowing grace makes your kids humble.
13.Knowing grace makes your kids confident.
14.Knowing grace lads your kids to worship.
15.God means for his kindness to motivate obedience.
This is a solid parenting resource that I recommend for every parent to use. It will help you to understand the gospel message better and how it shapes your parenting. The gospel is not something we just believe to get saved. It is something we believe day by day as we grow into it more and more. The Gospel-Centered Parent shows parents how to grow into the gospel in their parenting.
I received this book for free from New Growth Press for this review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
The Gospel-Centered Parent is grounded in the gospel and seeks to help moms and dads parent from a position of faith and not fear. As any parent will attest to, it is so easy to try to control how our children will turn out by weighing them down with rules and demands. We are afraid to lose them to Satan and the world. Our fear drives us to trust ourselves to determine our children’s futures, rather than trusting God. While we may be exercising faith in God for our own salvation, we can forget to put our faith in God when it comes to our parenting. When we trust God to lead our children, then it lightens our burden as parents, and frees us to parent our children the way God wants us to. In turn, our children are freed from the weights we put on them. When we put our faith in God for our parenting, we lighten our load and that of our children.
To get a taste of the gospel saturated nature of this resource, here are the fifteen reasons why it is better to parent with the gospel rather than rules as outline at the back of the book:
1. Unless their hearts are in it, your kids won’t be obeying God’s most important law no matter what else they might manage to do.
2.Unless good works spring from belief in Jesus, they aren’t even actually good.
3.Obedience that’s grounded in love will help your kids overcome how they feel at the moment.
4.The worry that God’s people might use grace as an excuse to sin reflects a too-small view of salvation and grace.
5.The idea that grace might let us get away with sin is not how reborn people should think.
6.A strategy that starts with believing the gospel looks beyond surface sins to whole-self obedience.
7.You kids can’t be consistent about godly living without love for God.
8.Your kids can’t really obey God if they’re unsure of his pleasure toward them.
9.A focus on Jesus and his grace does not make God’s commands seem unnecessary; instead it shows how they’re both urgent and beautiful.
10.Only the confidence that comes from knowing they surely belong to Jesus will let your kids dare to face the full demands of God’s law.
11.Knowing grace lets your kids get serious about God’s commands without falling into despair.
12.Knowing grace makes your kids humble.
13.Knowing grace makes your kids confident.
14.Knowing grace lads your kids to worship.
15.God means for his kindness to motivate obedience.
This is a solid parenting resource that I recommend for every parent to use. It will help you to understand the gospel message better and how it shapes your parenting. The gospel is not something we just believe to get saved. It is something we believe day by day as we grow into it more and more. The Gospel-Centered Parent shows parents how to grow into the gospel in their parenting.
I received this book for free from New Growth Press for this review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews