Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

I just began the book Give Them Grace:  Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus by Elyse Fitzpatrick.  I am only in the first chapter, and I already feel a definite change in my own heart towards parenting, but also in my life and attitude towards everything and everyone.

I appreciate this book because I am naturally a very pharisaical person, meaning I like rules.  I like to be obedient because a.)  It makes me feel like people like me.  b.)  It makes me feel good about myself.  c.)  I feel reassured about my salvation and my worthiness before God.  All these reasons are ridiculous, immature and false.  I know this deep inside, but I so often fall off the track, you could say, back into my rule-following, not because I love Jesus, but because I love myself.

I just completed another book called Womanly Dominion by Mark Chanski, which is a good book at its core, I believe...but not the sort of book a pharisaical person such as myself needs.  Chanski writes in one chapter that a mother of young children can expect to have a messy, chaotic house, for example.  But in another chapter he writes that as a housewife, I should create a tranquil environment for my husband to come home to after work, that I should make manly breakfasts for him and not "let myself go."  I know Chanski wrote some of these as suggestions or examples and he certainly understands that there are days and seasons of life where things just don't go very smoothly, but I would not suggest the book Womanly Dominion to any mother of young children.  Perhaps before children or long after they are grown.  ;-)

Nancy Leigh DeMoss writes much better books for women, I find, because she gives it to you straight yet she is usually very practical and realistic.  For example, in the book Lies Women Believe, she says a wife needs to find out what is important to her husband.  John doesn't want manly breakfasts, and even if he did, it just isn't going to happen for him more than once a month because he wakes up at 3:30 am.  Or he runs early in the morning and can't tolerate pancakes for breakfast.  I do try to make our home tranquil around the time of his arrival, but he doesn't typically have a meltdown if things are insane and so why would I stress myself and resent him for a little standard someone made up?  Sigh.

Anyway, back to Elyse Fitzpatrick's book, Give Them Grace.  It's just so good.  The title is a little goofy (Dazzle your kids?  What?), but I'm literally highlighting almost every word of it so far.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes.

"At the deepest level of what we do as parents, we should hear the heartbeat of a loving, grace-giving Father who freely adopts rebels and transforms them into loving sons and daughters.  If this is not the message that your children hear from you, if the message you send them on a daily basis is about being good so that you won't be disappointed, then the gospel needs to transform your parenting, too."

"Yes, we are commanded to teach the Word, prayer, and worship to our children, but their acquiescence to these things won't save them.  Only the righteous life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ saves them."

"The law of God, although beneficial and beautiful, cannot advance us on our way to righteousness because we cannot obey it.  Although the law demands perfection in only two areas (love God with all your heart, soul and might and love your neighbor, Matthew 22:36-40), none of us, no, none of us fully complies.

We can never fully obey these commands.  We always love ourselves more than we love God or others.  We are always erecting idols in our hearts and worshiping and serving them.  We are always focused on what we want and how we might get it than we are on loving him and laying down our life for others.  The law does show us the right way to live, but none of us obeys it.  Not for one millisecond.

"Even though our children cannot and will not obey God's law, we need to teach it to them again and again.  And when they tell us that they can't love God or others in this way, we are not to argue with them.  We are to agree with them and tell them of their need for a Savior.

The law of God also hinders our advance toward righteousness because, in our pride, we think that if we just try hard enough, we'll be able to obey it.  We read the promises of life for obedience and thing that means that we can do it.  The promises of life for obedience are not meant to build our self-confidence.  They're meant to make us long for obedience and then, when we fail again, they're meant to crush us and drive us to Christ."

Please go get the book for yourself before I get sued for copyright infringement!  I bought it for our Kindle for 7.99.  It's well worth it, if you have kids or not.