Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls

Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls

by Gary Thomas

Parenting is a school for spiritual formation—and our children are our teachers. The journey of caring for, rearing, training, and loving our children will profoundly alter us forever.Sacred Parenting is unlike any other parenting book you have ever read. This is not a “how-to” book that teaches you ways to discipline your kids or help them achieve their full potential. Instead of discussing how parents can change their kids, Sacred Parenting turns the tables and demonstrates how God uses our kids to change us.You’ve read all the method books. Now take a step back and receive some much-needed inspiration. You’ll be encouraged by stories that tell how other parents handled the challenges and difficulties of being a parent—and how their children transformed their relationship with God. Sacred Parenting affirms the spiritual value of being a parent, showing you the holy potential of the parent-child relationship.

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Paperback, 240 pages

Published April 4th 2005 by Zondervan (first published February 1st 2004)

tags: spirituality, relationships, parenting, faith, christianity, religion, nonfiction, christian living, family, christian

Book Quotes

“if you remove the cross from Christianity, all that remains is some wise moral teaching not terribly different from any other religion.”

― Gary Thomas

“In this generation, we parents have gone out of our way to protect our children from pain and to see that they succeed. The problem with this approach is that the kids don’t learn wisdom, and they don’t learn decision-making skills. I believe we learn more from failure than success, but when parents keep kids from failure, our children inevitably end up lacking wisdom.”

― Gary Thomas

“When God does not supply our motivation, we tend to major in the minors and minor in the majors.”

― Gary Thomas

“Families start to break down—and marriages often break down, for that matter—when we stop enjoying each other.”

― Gary Thomas

“Repentance, contrary to popular misconception, is not a heroic first step I make toward Christ, nor is it a feeling-sorry-for my sins. It is the divine gift of being turned toward truth. William Willimon”

― Gary Thomas

“It’s like this: You can’t really appreciate how good a golfer Tiger Woods is unless you’ve tried to play golf. That’s why other professionals seem to be in even greater awe of him than the casual fan. Those professionals know how difficult the shots are that Tiger seems to consistently pull off. In the same way, if we live coddled Christian lives, never sacrificing ourselves, the cross becomes a sentimental fairy tale—a good story to tell once a year, but something that becomes so familiar we can’t wait to move on to talk about the resurrection. But if we have suffered as Paul suffered, if we have sacrificed for someone as Paul sacrificed for those under his care, we look at the cross in awe because we realize that all our suffering, multiplied by a hundred, still can’t compare with what Christ endured on our behalf. As a result we are in absolute awe of what God has done for us. The passion of the cross metamorphoses from an abstract concept to an astonishing reality. All”

― Gary Thomas

“a softer job—and maybe his body would hold out a few years longer. This physician didn’t realize the mound of debt that already had buried Billy. In the words of sportswriter Rick Reilly, Billy’s car distributorship didn’t “distribute near enough cars,” and he trusted people too much—friends took advantage of Billy and often didn’t pay him for cars they drove off the lot.12 He also had a family. They needed to eat, and since his business had failed, Billy knew only one way of putting bread on the table: Win it with his fists. So the sick man kept fighting. In fact, he entered the ring thirty more times after his fateful diagnosis. Most top heavyweights today fight maybe twice a year; Billy kept mixing it up in the ring every other month or so. And he didn’t”

― Gary Thomas

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