By Pastor Ryan Stockstrom

Harvest Church

In a recent message during our relationship series at Harvest Church, I turned our attention to the topic of parenting. The heart behind this entire series has been simple: the closer we are to God, the healthier all of our relationships become. When we stay connected to the Lord, we receive His strength, His peace, and His wisdom—things we desperately need to love and lead our families well. I know this is true in my own home. The closer I remain with the Lord, the better things are.

If you have been a parent for more than about a minute, you already know something important: parenting is hard. It requires constant investment, patience, and grace. Humor captures the experience of parenting well—Raising kids can feel like running a marathon that never ends, while someone keeps asking for snacks. Ha! Other days it feels like running a small business where the employees cry a lot and the customers never pay, lol. Yet despite the challenges, parenting is deeply worthwhile. Children are worth every ounce of time, energy, and love we invest in them. Over the years I’ve learned that parenting requires two things above all: wisdom and strength. We need God’s wisdom to guide our decisions, and we need His strength to carry us through the long days but short years, as parenting seems to be.

Scripture gives us clear direction for raising children. In summary, Ephesians 6:4 reminds parents not to provoke their children to anger, but to bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Proverbs 22:6 encourages us: 

“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” (NIV) 

These passages remind us that parenting is not simply about managing behavior, but about shaping hearts and guiding children toward a lifelong relationship with God.

To help explain the journey of parenting, I shared what some call the “four Cs” of parenting: caretaker, cop, coach, and consultant. These stages reflect how the role of a parent naturally changes as children grow.

The earliest stage is the “Caretaker” phase, covering roughly the years from birth to age five. During this time, parents provide nearly everything for their children—food, comfort, safety, and constant care. It’s a beautiful stage, but it can also be exhausting. These are the years of late nights, early mornings, and countless messes to clean up. Yet they are also incredibly important years for a child’s development.
Jess shared some insights from our own experience raising young children. She talked about the importance of carving out even a few minutes with the Lord each day, finding joy in small moments, and learning to communicate honestly as a married couple during this demanding season.

As children grow, parents move into what some have termed the “cop” stage, usually from ages five to twelve. During this season children begin testing boundaries and asking an important question: who is really in charge here? We as parents, must lovingly but firmly establish those boundaries. Children need to learn two important truths: there is a God, and they are not Him! Scripture teaches children to honor and obey their parents, and healthy discipline helps reinforce that structure. The goal of discipline is not simply behavior modification but heart transformation. Rather than only enforcing rules, parents can help instruct children to understand why certain choices are right or wrong and guide them toward a deeper relationship with God.

As children move into the teenage years, parenting begins to shift again into the “coaching” stage. Instead of making every decision for them, parents begin coaching them toward making wise decisions themselves. Boundaries still exist, but the goal becomes helping teenagers internalize the values they have been taught. This stage requires patience, humility, and sometimes the willingness to apologize when we make mistakes as parents. This season often involves balancing structure with increasing freedom as teenagers mature. One important value in our home has always been honoring God together as a family, including prioritizing our faith and remaining connected to church.

Eventually children reach adulthood, and the parenting role changes once more. Instead of directing their lives, parents become “consultants”—trusted voices who offer advice, wisdom, and encouragement. This can become one of the most rewarding stages of parenting. If parents have invested faithfully over the years, many adult children eventually return with appreciation for the guidance they once resisted. I remember realizing in my early twenties that my parents actually knew a lot more than I once thought.

One encouraging reminder for parents is that God continues working in our children’s lives long after they leave home. There may be seasons when they wander or struggle, but God has a way of drawing people back to Himself. Our role is to continue praying, loving, and trusting that the seeds planted over the years will bear fruit in time.

Parenting requires patience, sacrifice, and perseverance. There will be difficult days and seasons when the work feels overwhelming. But the investment is worth it! When we raise children to love God and love His church, we give them something that will sustain them through every challenge life brings. And that is a legacy that lasts far beyond childhood.