Give Them Grace: Dazzling Our Kids with the Love of Jesus is a book I never thought I’d pick up and read let alone now be rethinking and undoing what I’ve done to my 3 children. Elyse Fitzpatrick and her daughter, Jessica Thompson didn’t just write a good Christian parenting book that every parent should have on their bookshelf. This book is different. It is book that WILL change us, our parenting, and eventually our children’s understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a gospel of Grace. 

Yes, it is important to teach our children to respect and to have social, civic, and religious obedience, but the genesis of this book  “if there’s anything God hates it’s moralism!” stops us in our tracks. When we truly don’t understand grace, “we violate the gospel advancement in the lives of our children”, Tullian Tchividjian notes.

The dichotomy between the dangerous form of religious obedience and the conformity to God’s law is to be searched out and modeled by grace in our parenting, lest we raise shallow, self-righteous, Pharisees that are enslaved to the opinions of others or worse  - children who reject the gospel completely because of our hypocrisy. How is that done without losing control or our minds as parents? What does grace look like in the meltdown or in moments of idolatry or coveting? It's here in this book. 

On a personal note, even though our family motto has always been, “spend time with us for just a few hours and you will know why we need a savior!” it is deficient to the totality and richness of the gospel.  It is so much so, that I decided to read this book alongside my 16 year old daughter, one chapter every two weeks, with hopes of undoing some of our “raising good kids syndrome” and to help her grasp the true gospel of Jesus Christ.  It’s very humbling. 

Give Them Grace challenges us to the core of our Christianity and even cuts each of us at points. It’s such a transforming book that 15 parents in our Church decided to walk through it together, chapter by chapter, and build community together in the process (something you may want to consider doing with others).  If I had to say only one thing about it, it would be  - don’t let this become a book you almost read.