Elyse M. Fitzpatrick > Quotes

“Believe that God is strong enough to save your children, no matter how you fail.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“The one encouragement we can always give our children (and one another) is that God is more powerful than our sin, and He's strong enough to make us want to do the right thing.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“Everything that isn't gospel is law. Let us say it again: Everything that isn't gospel is law. Every way we try to make our kids good that isn't rooted in the good news of the life, death, ressurection, and assension of Jesus Christ is damnable, crushing, despair-breeding, Pharisee-producing law. We won't get the results we want from the law. We'll get either shallow self-righteousness or blazing rebellion or both (frequently from the same kid on the same day!). We'll get moralistic kids who are cold and hypocritical and who look down on others (and could easily become Mormons), or you'll get teens who are rebellious and self-indulgent and who can't wait to get out of the house. We have to remember that in the life of our unregenerate children, the law is given for one reason only: to crush their self-confidence and drive them to Christ.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“We need days of failure because they help humble us, and through them we can see how God's grace is poured out on the humble.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“Most of us are painfully aware that we’re not perfect parents. We’re also deeply grieved that we don’t have perfect kids. But the remedy to our mutual imperfections isn’t more law, even if it seems to produce tidy or polite children. Christian children (and their parents) don’t need to learn to be “nice.” They need death and resurrection and a Savior who has gone before them as a faithful high priest, who was a child himself, and who lived and died perfectly in their place. They need a Savior who extends the offer of complete forgiveness, total righteousness, and indissoluble adoption to all who will believe. This is the message we all need. We need the gospel of grace and the grace of the gospel. Children can’t use the law any more than we can, because they will respond to it the same way we do. They’ll ignore it or bend it or obey it outwardly for selfish purposes, but this one thing is certain: they won’t obey it from the heart, because they can’t. That’s why Jesus had to die.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“And we neglect the glorious gospel when we fail to recognize his preeminence. How frequently we forget that everything is for him and about him. We forget that he is to be first, in our honor and in our worship. Whenever the gospel slips from our conscious thought, our religion becomes all about our performance, and then we think everything that happens or will ever happen isa bout us. When I forget the incarnation, sinless life, death, resurrection, and ascension, I quickly believe that I'm supposed to be the unrivaled supreme, and matchless one. It's at this point that I'm particularly in need of an intravenous dose of gospel truth. He is preeminent.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“The gospel frees us from demanding our own way, because nothing we desire to obtain is worth sinning against such love and kindness.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“If you wonder why you choose to worship other gods rather than wholeheartedly devote yourself to the Lord you love, examine the thought and desires that captivate your heart. That’s where you’ll fin the answer to every sin and failure in your life. Don’t be deceived into thinking that you need to develop more willpower. We need to develop godly thoughts and desires.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long for God Alone

“God loves us so much that he crushed his Son so that we might be his and that this love isn't based on our worthiness or performance. His love doesn't fluctuate from day-to-day. It was settled the moment he set it upon you before the foundation of the world.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“Pure, unadulterated, consistent love for God and pure, unadulterated, consistent love for others is the summation of all the law God has given us in both the Old and New Testaments. Of course, the problem is that we never obey these simple commands. We always love ourselves more than we love God or others. We are always erecting idols in our hearts and worshipping and serving them. We are always more 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.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“The sinful heart is never transformed by conformity to the imperatives but only by relationship with the One who cleanses hearts.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick

“Let us be so taken up with the knowledge of God's goodness and the desire to fellowship with Him that our emotions are warmed and our outer man reflects great love. Although we must not seek emotional experiences for their own sake, we must not shun them merely because others misuse them or ignore God's instructions on worship.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long for God Alone

“The weaknesses, failures, and sins of our family are the places where we learn that we need grace too. It is there, in those dark mercies, that God teaches us to be humbly dependent. It is there that He draws near to us and sweetly reveals His grace. Paul's suffering teaches us to reinterpret our thorn. Instead of seeing it as a curse, we are to see it as the very thing that keeps us "pinned close to the Lord.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“When we fail to respond in Christlikeness to the disappointments of life, it's usually because we've forgotten all he has accomplished for us.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“The only way that we can avoid the sin of idolatry is by immersing ourselves in Spirit-enlightened study of God through the Scripture.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long for God Alone

“I thought parenting was going to reveal my strengths, never realizing that God had ordained it to reveal my weaknesses.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“Idols aren't just stone statues. No, idols are the thoughts, desires, longings, and expectations that we worship in the place of the true God. Idols cause us to ignore the true God in search of what we think we need.
Covenantal Gods”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long for God Alone

“Real progress in the Christian life is not gauged by our knowledge of scripture, our church attendance, time in prayer, or even our witnessing (although it isn't less than these things) Maturity in the Christian life is measured by only one test: how much closer to his character have we become? the result of the Spirit's work is more not more activity. No, the results of his work are in in our quality of life, they are "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“Faith, then, is simply a believing that there is a God who loves us, in spite of the poison of sin coursing through our soul.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“We're women and men who are so sinful and flawed that we deserve hell, but we've been so loved and welcomed that every spiritual blessing, adoption, tender fellowship with our Father and each other, forgiveness, reconciliation, and eternal life is ours. Christ's accomplishments and perfections are ours now. Everything about us is different.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“But the Bible isn't mainly about you and what you should be doing. It's about God and what He has done.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“When I neglect the gospel, I'll want nice vacations and nice compliments and nice things to make my life nicer. I'll long to be able to compare myself favorably with others and to know that I am successful. I'll look down on those who don't meet my standards, and I'll idolize those who excel. I'll forget that he is preeminent.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“Our problem is not that we desire happiness. No, our problem is that we continue to foolishly believe that we can attain it apart from him. We think that if we just try hard enough, the next time we'll get it right (whatever it is) and we'll be happy. Instead of pushing through to the true source of all joy and happiness, we sinfully believe the false promises of lesser gods.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“Give grace to your children today by speaking of sin and mercy. Tell Susan that she can relax into God’s loving embrace and stop thinking that she has to perform in order to get her welcoming Father to love her. Tell David that he can have hope that even though he really struggles, he’s the very sort of person Jesus loved being around. Dazzle them with his love.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“Our obedience has its origin in God's prior action, and forgetting that truth results in self-righteousness, pride, and despair.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“One can be addicted to either lawlessness or lawfulness. Theologically there is no difference since both break relationship with God, the giver. ~ GERHARD O. FORDE”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“We forget the gospel when we neglect our adoption and think that we're still just a hired servant. The Father doesn't let us come to him on those terms. We will either come as sons or we will stay with the pigs. He won't let us earn anything from him because there will be no boasting in his sight. It will either be that Jesus and his glorious gospel has the preeminence or we will go it on our own.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life

“God is too great to be glorified only through the lives of His victorious children. He is glorified by our suffering and even by our sin. His sustaining strength is glorified when we walk through the furnace of affliction.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“Man and woman are designed to rule together. Exclusion of women is the opposite of God’s design. To exclude women is to exclude half of God’s creation means of ruling the earth. This means that we must include and celebrate the influence and presence of women in all realms of life. Women should be sought after and encouraged, educated and equipped, taught, learned with and learned from, celebrated and needed as essential partners in a shared task.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eic Schumacher, Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women