Adventures in La La Land

Affiliate Link Amazon Synopsis: All of us want to raise good kids.  And we want to be good parents. But what exactly do we mean by “good?” And is “being good” really the point? Mother-daughter team Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson contend that every way we try to make our kids “good” is simply an extension of Old Testament Law—a set of standards that is not only unable to save our children, but also powerless to change them. No, rules are not the answer. What they need is GRACE. We must tell our kids of the grace-giving God who freely adopts rebels and transforms them into loving sons and daughters. If this is not the message your children hear, if you are just telling them to “be good,” then the gospel needs to transform your parenting too. Grace-based parenting seems to be the parenting trend of my generation. Part of me balks at anything "new and revolutionary," but most of me thinks this is actually a really Biblical idea. This was a very complex bo...

I just read the first chapter of Give Them Grace  by Elyse Fitzpatrick and I can't wrap my mind around it. Somehow, I have a mental block when it comes to grace theology. Pastor Chris spent all summer on a grace-themed sermon series, and I didn't understand that either. My brain is so deeply entrenched in a legalistic outlook that I cannot fathom anything else. I process by writing, so I'm going to attempt to do that here. This is the part that gets me: 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 . . . Again, that doesn't mean we don't teach our children God's law. We are commanded to do so but not to make them good . We are commanded to give them the law so that they will be crushed by it and see their need for a Savior. The law won't make them good. It will make them despair of ever bei...