Readability: 1
Length: 167 pp
Author: Elyse Fitzpatrick & Jessica Thompson
I was deeply convicted while I read Give them Grace, but I also was freshly reminded of the grace that is in Christ. I expected to find great ways to shepherd my children to Jesus from so highly a commended book (Tullian Tchividjian says it is the best book on parenting he has read), I wasn’t disappointed, but I didn’t expect to be so powerfully reminded of the gospel myself. But this is the ways it must be. You must know grace to preach grace. I concur with Tullian, Give them Grace is now my first book recommendation on parenting.
One of the reasons we don’t share this story [the gospel] with our children is that it doesn’t resonate deeply in our own hearts.
We need much less of Veggie Tales and Barney and tons more of the radical, bloody, scandalous message of God made man and crushed by his Father for our sin.
If a Mormon can parent the same way you do, your parenting isn’t Christian.
We long to be told, “You are good!” but only Jesus Christ and those clothed in his goodness deserve to hear it. And if we really embrace this truth, our parenting will be transformed from wishful deception to powerful grace. It will make our parenting Christian. Our children aren’t innately good, and we shouldn’t tell them that they are. But they are loved and if they truly believe that, his love will transform them.
Yes, a new day when everything will be put to rights will come, but in the meantime, while we’re living in the not yet, we need grace. And we don’t need it just a tiny bit; no, the truth is we are desperate for buckets of it. We need it every hour of every day. We need it when we remember that we need it and we need it when all we can see before us is futility and trouble and disappointment.
So, when you have that morning to top all mornings, when everything that could possibly go wrong does, when grace doesn’t mean anything to you, it is his grace that will sustain you. What mornings like these teach us is that we’re just like our children. They forget, and so do we. They need grace, and so do we. We are partners in grace with them.
No Other Boast 