Biblical Parenting Quotes

I also saw that theologically speaking the whole idea of a smacking is not congruent with the teaching revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. God sent His Son into the world to save the world so they would not have to suffer for their own sins, but parents today punish their children and make them undergo the horrors of punishment for even the most minor of infractions. The idea of mercy is seemingly not applied at all. When parents' sin, they ask God to forgive them, repent and know they are forgiven. When children sin, they are judged, tried, condemned and punished. ~ Samuel Martin

Sadly, the goal of many Christian parents is merely "to raise a good kid." Through moral training and consistent discipline, they might even rear a child of whom they are proud. He may never cause them any real heartache but still not be useful to Christ. His materialism, impatience, impulsiveness, anxiety, stubbornness, or any other fleshly attitudes and actions can disqualify him from usefulness to Christ. In that case, the biblical parenting goal has not been reached, even though the child never got into serious trouble or never seriously embarrassed his parents. ~ Jim Berg

Dear Lord Almighty, May we acknowledge You as the creator and sustainer of all things. May we seek to glorify Your name in all that we do and say. Please give us Your wisdom and power as we seek to act in the stewardship of the precious gifts of our children. Please help us in the delivery of Your Word that they may be truly adopted as Your children. Help us to use Your Word to discern truth from lies in this deceiving world. Please help us to be consistent in our approach to biblical parenting. Please save our children. We love You, our mighty God. Thank You for the heritage You have given us in our children. Please help us not to let You down but to honor You in all we do. Amen ~ Steve Ham

Our lives are our stories,
each day a fresh new page,
each season a whole new chapter.
Our parenting chapters become
the beginning of our children's stories
in glorious, dog-eared, mud-stained,
daisy-chain pages of sunshine-filled
days and wish-on-a-star nights and
shared struggles and triumphs
and tears and laughter.
Where their stories go from
there is up to them,
but where they begin is up to us. ~ L.R. Knost

I'll never understand how the rest of you expect brand-new adults to be able to teach kids how to be people. ~ Becky Chambers

My husband's a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can't raise children who have more shame resilience than you do. ~ Brene Brown

Don't even think about it."
"Well, when can I walk by myself?"
"When you get your driver's license."
"You always, always say that." Dillie scowled at him. "That's when everything happens."
"It's going to be a busy day," Phin agreed. ~ Jennifer Crusie

Trust is the action of faith. ~ Gerard De Marigny

Do not give up when touching the Door of Awareness, you meet its Mindfulness Magic, but let it open wide giving your family a possibility to Create Reality of Your Dreams. ~ Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Parents don't come full bloom at the birth of the first baby. In fact parenting is about growing. It's about our own growing as much as it is about our children's growing and that kind of growing happens little by little. ~ Fred Rogers

Even Mary had to let her child go…You have to wonder, as Mary watched Jesus on the cross, did she look back and ask herself if she had made a mistake? God had told her she would be the mother of the Savior. You can't get more devastated than Mary, watching her Son - the Savior - die…But Jesus' path wasn't for Mary to determine. Her greatest ability as a mother was to be His mother. To love Him, nurture Him, care for Him. She embraced her destiny, then let Him go to embrace His. You have to let your children embrace theirs. ~ Susan May Warren

My heart broke not only for the daughter who already was forced to become her mother's alarmingly narrow ideal, but also for the middle daughter who knew that her in mother's mind she had already failed. ~ Alexandra Robbins

He'd learned in the past few months that telling a girl what to wear
even one the size of a golf club
was a bad idea. Histrionics often followed. ~ Kristin Hannah

Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love ... But if you push her too much, you will push her away. A child is not yours to own but to raise. She may not be what you will have her to be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that 'Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish. ~ Jane Yolen

Child give me your hand so that I may walk in the light of your faith in me. ~ Hannah Kahn

Why did parenting change from preparing our kids for life to protecting them from life, which means they're not prepared to live life on their own? ~ Julie Lythcott-Haims

Time, as we see it framing biblical narrative, is neither linear nor cyclical but perhaps more like a helix, and what it spirals around is the risen Christ. ~ Ellen F. Davis

While I agree with Wright's claim that covenant theology is more crucial for understanding justification than Piper suggests, I argue that it is Wright's version of covenant theology (viz., reducing different types to "covenant nomism") that generates false choices...At least as defined by its confessions and dogmatic consensus, Reformed theology is synonymous with covenant theology...This federal theology gathers various biblical covenants under two broad types: law and promise, or the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. P.12 ~ Michael S. Horton

Maybe that was the answer to good parenting - pretending the first child was the second. ~ Emma Straub

Since most houses today have running water, the ease with which most Americans can give water to a guest obscures the point that everyone in the biblical culture understood: "cold water" came only from the town well or cistern because water in jars at home warmed up very quickly in the heat. Giving a cup of cold water meant inconveniencing yourself and walking to the town well carrying a container, perhaps waiting in line to draw the water, lifting the water up out of the ground, and then carrying the water back to the house - all so someone could quench his thirst. The fact that Christ connects giving cold water with rewards to be received in the future is a powerful testimony to the value of even the most seemingly mundane good works in the eyes of God. ~ John W. Schoenheit

Remember that you are not called to produce successful, upwardly mobile, highly educated, athletically talented machines ... Givi ng your children great opportunities is good; it is not, however, the goal of parenting. Christlikeness is. Above all, seek to raise children who look and act a lot like Jesus. ~ Chip Ingram

We have to learn to remind the other parents who think we're being careless when we loosen our grip that we are actually trying to teach our children how to get along in the world, and that we believe this is our job. A child who can fend for himself is a lot safer than one forever coddled, because the coddled child will not have Mom or Dad around all the time, even though they act as if he will. ~ Lenore Skenazy

The difference between Christian thinking and the non-Christian philosopher has always been at this point. The non-Christian philosopher has always said that man is normal now, but biblical Christianity says he is abnormal now. ~ Francis Schaeffer

To use the biblical imagery, Christian theology must acknowledge itself an impoverished earthen vessel while daring not to diminish the value of the treasure it confesses. ~ Kevin Diller

These children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not, - that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

As Redleaf sees it, the biggest problem is that individuals, the people who called the police on Debra Harrell, are trusting a system that is inherently biased (as most systems are in this country) against poor people and people of color.

"There's an assumption," Redleaf told me, "among the general public, that it's always better to make a call, even if you're not sure what you're seeing, because these people are professionals and if there was no real neglect, then the system will sort it out. Well, what we find is, they often get it wrong when they try to sort it out. The caseworkers at protection agencies aren't licensed social workers. They often have minimal training. Police certainly aren't experts on parenting or childcare. So basically we as a society have entrusted people who have no real training or serious knowledge about children and families with critical issues involving children. And they are making decisions about who gets to be a parent and who gets to raise their children and whether you'll be labeled a child-abuser and unable to work. ~ Kim Brooks

It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless. ~ L.R. Knost

The well-being and welfare of children should always be our focus. ~ Todd Tiahrt

By exempting your child from all chores, as many affluent American families now do, you are sending the message, "Your time is too valuable to be spent on menial tasks," which easily morphs into the unintended message "You are too important to do menial tasks." And that unintended message puffs up the bloated self-esteem that now characterizes many American kids. ~ Leonard Sax

Looking back on his adolescence from the vantage point of his mid-eighties, George H.W. Bush candidly admitted, "I might have been obsessed with bodies – boobs they are now called. But what seventeen-year-old kid was not? Guilty am I. ~ H.W. Brands

I think a dad has to make his daughter feel that he's genuinely interested in what she's going through. ~ Harry Connick, Jr.

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk. ~ Carl Jung

Biblical literacy and theological expertise are not, therefore, the end of the Word but a God-ordained means to an end, and the end is a radically transformed life because the worship at the center of that life has been reclaimed. ~ Paul David Tripp

… when Michel came home from school, for example, and everything was as it should be. My own voice, above all, asking him what he wanted in his sandwich, also sounded as it should have. The larder was full, I had done all of the shopping that morning. I took care of myself as well, I looked in the mirror before leaving the house: I made sure my clothes were clean, that I had shaved, that my hair didn't look like the hair of someone who never looks in a mirror - the people in the supermarket would have noticed nothing unusual, I was no divorced father reeking of alcohol, no father who couldn't handle things. I clearly remembered the goal I had set for myself: I wanted to keep up the appearance of normality. As far as possible, everything had to remain the same for Michel as long as his mother wasn't around. A hot meal every day, for a start. But also in other aspects of our temporary single-parent family, there shouldn't be too many visible changes. Normally, it wasn't my habit to shave every day; I didn't mind walking around with stubble. Claire had never made a big deal out of that either, but during those weeks I shaved every morning. I felt that my son had a right to sit at the table with a clean-smelling, freshly shaven father. A freshly shaven and clean-smelling father would not prompt him to think the wrong things, would in any case not cause him to doubt the temporary character of our single-parent family. ~ Herman Koch

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. ~ Desmond Tutu

Nick turned out to be a shy boy, uncertain in groups and in new situations, but also very brave, determined to overcome his fear. - Will, as a parent describing his son ~ Lisa Goldstein

They did the best they could with the knowledge they had." How the fuck did people know that? They didn't have no way of knowing that. Even if they did the best they could with the knowledge they had, why the hell didn't they have better knowledge? I mean, then nobody should ever fail an exam because everyone who Wright's an exam is doing the best they can with the knowledge they have. If I don't study for geography exam then I flunk out. Can I then say wait, just like the people who get a "A" I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I had. That's not an excuse for a 6 year old with a goddamn spelling B. How the hell is it an excuse for parents in full control of a developing human mind?

If you don't study for the exam you fucking fail and if you don't study for parenting you fucking fail. You don't get to say that you did the best you could with the knowledge you had. Fuck that. That's a bullshit cop-out. You goddamn will study. It's a little more important raising a child than passing a spelling B when you're 6 goddamn years old. You goddamn will study and if you don't study youre more culpable. ~ Stefan Molyneux

With 70,000 thoughts a day and 95% of our activity controlled by the subconscious mind, no wonder that it feels as though we are asleep most of the time. To awake, we need to train Self-Remembering and Mindfulness. ~ Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Parenting is not for everybody. It changes your life. Especially when they're little. ~ Tori Amos

And what a tree took away a tree shall restore ~ William Langland