Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families
Michelle Anthony
Top 10 Best Quotes
“While I may want to take my kids out of this world, God continually shows His power in our kids to help them stand firm in it!”
“When we start to realize how amazing God's story is, a question naturally arises: "Who am I that I should get to be a part of the greatest story ever told?”
“What you believe and where you aim your heart determines the direction and outcome of your entire life for eternity.”
“What is my end goal in raising each of the children God has entrusted to me, and then how will I parent them with that end in mind?”
“This is the vision for us as spiritual parents: We persevere in loving Christ in our hearts and by our actions, in trusting in Him for what only He can give, and then modeling this to our children. We persevere, and we don’t give up. We don’t abdicate to somebody else. We don’t make excuses for the way we were parented or the resources we didn’t have. We walk by faith, and we thank God, the one who entrusted them to us in the first place. We fight the good fight every day, knowing that we can’t model something that we don’t already possess.”
“Parenting “Aha!” Since God’s Word makes it clear that He alone is divine and He alone changes hearts, I knew I needed Him to help me parent differently. I knew I would have to parent with His goal in mind if I was going to be successful. Pleasing Him became my only focus that day. Nothing else mattered. This was the first truth I began to cling to in my desire to be a spiritual parent. This truth revealed to me that it was not my job to merely control my child’s behavior and by doing so somehow create a spiritual life for him or her. This was a real “Aha” for me. Nowhere in the Bible does God ask me to spend my days managing the deeds and actions of my child. Nowhere in Scripture am I warned that if I don’t “control” my child’s behavior, horrible things will happen. However, I have oftentimes assumed this role—and sometimes pursued it as an end in itself. After all, who doesn’t want children who behave beautifully at all times? For years I had naively assumed that as Christian parents we simply have babies, raise them in a Christian home, and then do our best as parents. We expose them to Christ and to God’s Word, we put them in the community of other believers, and then eventually … don’t they just choose to follow Him?”
“Our goal as parents should be to endeavor to pass down our faith to the next generation in such a way that they will be able to pass down their faith to the following generation in our absence.”
“Our children hunger to see the reality of who God is in the natural flow of our lives—when we’re getting up, when we’re sitting down, when we’re on a journey, when we’re putting them to bed. It’s not that the formalized methodology is bad, because it definitely has a place. It’s just that it’s not best apart from a role model. Our children need to see that faith matters, that it’s relevant to our daily situations, that it’s real. We need to model how our lives are spiritual in every decision, erasing the divide between sacred and secular.”
“How We Define Ourselves Maybe some of you are like me. Raised in a Christian home, I often felt defined by the things that I didn’t do. To not smoke, not drink, not swear, not chew, and not go with boys who do (such a helpful little rhyme) was how I defined myself for the most part. But what would it look like if we parented a generation of young people to define themselves by what they did do? What if they were defined by their actions of justice and mercy, forgiveness and love, strength and courage, generosity and humility and faithfulness? What if they were a generation who lived in the world and still proclaimed these things by their very lives?”
“Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.”
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Book Keywords:
parenting, christian-living
