Product Description

Explore the spiritual dynamics of parenting, and why caring for children is such an effective discipline in shaping our souls and forming the character of Christ within us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25303 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From the Back Cover
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.

About the Author
Gary Thomas is a writer and speaker whose fresh approach to the spirituality of family life is changing the way Christians look at marriage and parenting. As an adjunct faculty member at Western Seminary (Portland, OR), his focus is on spiritual formation—specifically, how we can integrate Scripture, church history, and the wisdom of the Christian classics into modern experience. Gary has written over 100 published articles in most of the major Christian magazines, including Christianity Today, Decision, Moody, Marriage Partnership, New Man, Discipleship Journal, Charisma, and many others. His many books have been translated into several languages and include the Gold Medallion Award-winning Authentic Faith, Sacred Parenting, Sacred Marriage, and Sacred Pathways. He has appeared on numerous national radio and television programs, including Focus on the Family and Family Life Today. Gary’s speaking ministry has led him to speak in forty-eight of the fifty states, and in four different countries.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Sacred Parenting Copyright © 2004 by Gary L. Thomas
Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, Gary (Gary Lee) Sacred parenting : how raising children shapes our souls / Gary L. Thomas— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-310-24734-9 1. Parenting—Religious aspects—Christianity 2. Parents—Religious life. I. Title. BV4526.3.T46 2004 248.8'45—dc22 2003020213
This edition printed on acid-free paper.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.
Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Interior design by Michelle Espinoza
Printed in the United States of America
04 05 06 07 08 09 /. DC/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
“If it was going to be easy to raise kids, it never would have started with something called labor”. Anonymous
“It is in families we are broken and it is in families that we are healed”. Carl Whittaker
“Dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God”. 2 Corinthians 7:1
Papa God
One day, when our daughter Kelsey was two years old, she started pointing at every family member’s chair around the table. I was gone at the time. “Mommy,” she began, “Allison, Graham, Kelsey . . .” She then pointed to my empty seat and said, “God.”
“That’s not God, Kelsey,” Lisa, my wife, said. “That’s Papa.”
“Jesus,” Kelsey replied with a smile.
Three days later, all of us were together in a hotel room when Kelsey did it again. She started pointing to everybody and announcing his or her name. When she got to me, she said, “Jesus.”
“I’m not Jesus, Kelsey,” I said. “I’m Papa.”
“You’re Papa God,” Kelsey replied.
I was flabbergasted and earnestly tried to talk it out with her, but you parents know what a two-year-old is like. By the time I had made my point, Kelsey had found something vastly more interesting than theology—her little toe, and how it could be made to wiggle in all directions.
To me, this is one of the greatest ironies of parenting. I think about how big I seemed to my kids when I was just in my twenties, and how little I knew. Now, a bit more experienced in my forties, it’s almost laughable how much smaller I seem to my children! Graham knows he could take me in a math test (though as I write this, thankfully, he still hasn’t beaten me in a round of golf), and there’s no chance either one of my daughters would mistake me for deity.
But these early episodes of mistaken identity truly opened my eyes as a young parent. The more time I spent with my kids as they became toddlers, and then preteens, and then teens, the more open they seemed to God’s presence in their lives. The less time I spent with them, the less they seemed to pray. The observation both sobered and humbled me; somehow, in their minds, I helped shape their passion and hunger for God.
I soon discovered that my own passion and hunger for God seemed just as directly related to my duties as a parent. I’ve been at this business of parenting for less than two decades, but I think it’s fair to say I have been stretched more in these past sixteen years— spiritually, emotionally, and relationally—than perhaps in all the previous years combined.
Why does parenting offer such a potent pathway to personal growth and reflection? The process of raising children requires skills that God alone possesses, and we are decidedly not God. As much as our kids may even call us “Papa God,” parenting regularly reminds us of our absolute humanity. We do not love perfectly, as God loves. Our ability to relate, to understand, and to build intimacy comes up short in a way that God’s does not.
While I count raising children as one of the most profoundly meaningful and rewarding things I’ve ever done, it also has humbled me, frustrated me, and at times completely confounded me. I could never write a book about how to raise a toddler or a teen, because in many ways I still don’t have a clue! If you thought this book would give you five steps to help your daughter succeed in school or ten steps to prepare your son for adolescence, you’re in for a big disappointment. Instead, it approaches a much different territory—how God uses these children to shape us, spiritually speaking.
I knew the rules had changed just a few weeks after the birth of our oldest daughter. We were driving south to Oregon when we stopped at a restaurant to get a bite to eat. At one time in my life, my favorite food on earth was a Dairy Queen Blizzard. I just knew that the creator of this fine confection had to be a Christian, because I thought it would take nothing less than the Holy Spirit’s inspiration to come up with anything that tasted as good as an M & M Blizzard.
We ordered our burgers and fries, and I had my Blizzard. We took it outside on a sunny day, and at exactly that moment our daughter had her once-every-three-day diaper blowout. Our firstborn, as a baby, liked to “save it up.” She preferred to wait until we were on our way to church, had just sat down for dinner, had just given her a bath, or some other convenient moment before she expunged the previous seventy-two hours’ worth of digestive effort.
I remember the helpless feeling. Cold fries don’t taste very good, and melted Blizzards lose a lot—yet I knew I had a good ten to fifteen minutes’ worth of work ahead of me. Because this baby did it all at once, changing her meant not just a new diaper but a veritable bath and a full change of clothing. And we were on the road.
“Don’t just stand there,” Lisa said. “Help me!”
“But—” I looked at my fries, already wilting with a shelf life of about ten minutes. I stared forlornly at my Blizzard, teasing my tongue with its promise, yet already looking as though it were about to start boiling in the hot sun. I put the food bag on top of the car and went to work.
Life had changed, indeed. It may sound like a small sacrifice to you—and even now, as I look back a decade and a half later, it seems insubstantial—but it marked a major turning point for this thentwenty- five-year-old. I was learning to put someone else’s needs ahead of my own. Little did I know that I had just begun the spiritually transformative journey called parenting.
My wife and I have benefited greatly from books and seminars that teach us how to shape our children, but along the way we’ve realized that our children also have molded us. Parenting is a twoway street! Our kids have taught us how to sacrifice (chapter 12) and how to handle guilt (chapter 3); they’ve schooled us in the art of listening and forced us to our knees in prayer (chapter 4); they’ve shown us how to laugh (chapter 5), how to grieve (chapter 9), and how to live courageously (chapter 6); they’

Customer Reviews

Essential Reading for Every Christian Parent
For years my wife and I had debated whether or not we should have a child. My wife just didn't have that strong emotional drive some women have to procreate. My desire to have a child would come and go. Finally, when my desire to have a child came again, we prayerfully decided to go for it. The pregnancy was filled with painful and expensive complications, which was followed by severe postpartum depression. I felt terrible guilt for asking my wife to do this. My daughter is a year old now. She's perfect. God couldn't have made a more beautiful child. But parenting is a lot tougher than I'd imagined and I was fighting the notion that I'd made a mistake. After the first frustrating, sleep deprived year, I felt that I was clearly not cut out to be a parent. However, Sacred Parenting changed my mind. It showed me there every single parenting experience, whether good or bad, was a gift from God that would shape my soul for eternity. He also pointed out all the simple pleasures that awaited me in the future. Thanks for showing me the light, Gary. You are wise beyond your years.

Sacred Parenting Lifts Our Eyes
As a parent, it's common to get stuck in the mundane, the trivial, and the completely earthbound. Sacred Parenting lifts us above that plane for a little while and helps us to see "the other side of the tapestry," to glimpse what God may be doing in us and our children through the everyday, both good and not-so-good. Exploring parental guilt and anger, encouraging joy in parenting, and especially helping us see the work the Father has already done in us are some of the hallmarks of this book. Somehow Gary Thomas manages to walk the tightrope between practical and theoretical, neither wallowing in the "how-to's" so typical of parenting books nor neglecting the sidewalk-level realities of how hard this job can be. He plants hope, ironically, by admitting that parenting is hard and that kids don't always "turn out right," but that we know without doubt that God is teaching us unique lessons through it that we would otherwise never learn.

So that's why it's so hard!
If you are looking for a how to book this is not it. If you are looking at what God does in our lives in shaping us spiritually through parenting then this is the book for you.