Sacred Parenting Quotes

“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 L. Thomas, Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls

“if you remove the cross from Christianity, all that remains is some wise moral teaching not terribly different from any other religion.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls

“When God does not supply our motivation, we tend to major in the minors and minor in the majors.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls

“Families start to break down—and marriages often break down, for that matter—when we stop enjoying each other.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls

“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 L. Thomas, Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls

“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 L. Thomas, Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls

“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 L. Thomas, Sacred Parenting: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls