Elyse M. Fitzpatrick Quotes

#1. Live your life transparently so other women will see that Jesus loves the weak, the weary, the wounded, and the sinner, and perhaps they, too will be emboldened to stop faking it.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#2. Believe that God is strong enough to save your children, no matter how you fail.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#3. Again, the resurrection is God's "Amen" to Christ's "It is finished!

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#4. You're not just one in millions, a face lost in the crowd. In the heart of God you're unique, a distinct person with a particular name, chosen from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4).

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#5. But the Bible isn't mainly about you and what you should be doing. It's about God and what He has done.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#6. It is only within the context of the church that ongoing spiritual care, encouragement, and accountability can occur. It is only as we use the powerful word of the gospel in each other's lives that we can change.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#7. God never encourages self-reliance.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#8. At the deepest level of what we do as parents, we should hear the heartbeat of a loving, grace-giving Father who freely adopts rebels and transforms them into loving sons and daughters.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#9. Long my imprisoned spirit lay Fast bound in sin and nature's night; Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#10. We are partners with our children because we are just like them, dearly loved sinners.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#11. I assumed that they had heard it enough times and that they had believed it. Jesus and the cross? That was old news. The real action was in obeying, not in remembering.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#12. Knowing that salvation is God's work alone should also free us from fear. We no longer have to fear that everything is riding on what we say - that we might miss that "one" opportunity to speak into our children's lives and have their eternal salvation forfeited.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#13. We will find it increasingly difficult to believe that we've been set free from sin, from the law's power to condemn, and that God's smile is resting upon us if we continually give ourselves over to what we know we should avoid. Sin strips our faith, and it leads to ultimate deadness in our lives.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#14. Let's face it: most of our children believe that God is happy if they're "good for goodness' sake." We've transformed the holy, terrifying, magnificent, and loving God of the Bible into Santa and his elves.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#15. Justification is a word that simply means that our record is both "just as if we had never sinned" and also "just as if we had always obeyed.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#16. We don't need to pray to prove that we're properly pious or really serious. Instead, we pray because we are completely assured, and because the Father hears our prayers because they come to Him through the lips of His dear Son.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#17. The gospel is not good news to those who pride themselves on their hard work. It is infuriating news.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#18. The Spirit of God can change a human heart. Only God's love in Christ can make us grow in love and delight in him.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#19. Any obedience that isn't motivated by his great love is nothing more than penance.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#20. The declarations of the gospel are unavoidably tied to the obligations of the Gospel.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#21. Teaching our children to be well-behaved, good citizens is proper as far as it goes. But we must never mistake this training for Christian nurture or discipline, nor should we mistake their acquiescence to our social mores as true Christian righteousness.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#22. God is too great to be glorified only through the lives of His victorious children. He is glorified by our suffering and even by our sin. His sustaining strength is glorified when we walk through the furnace of affliction.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#23. I know this is more than I need, and that I'm harming myself by having it, but I love the pleasure of this experience more than I love the pleasure of doing what pleases the Lord, so I'm just going to go ahead and satiate myself
(iuJ/iua/ingq

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#24. Yes, I am sinful and flawed, but I am also loved and welcomed. It doesn't really matter what other people say or do. God loves me, even in my brokenness, and that's all that matters.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#25. The one encouragement we can always give our children (and one another) is that God is more powerful than our sin, and He's strong enough to make us want to do the right thing.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#26. We need to remember how what Christ has already done transforms who we are right now
not later, once we get it together but right now in all the messes we've made.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#27. Because we don't know the state of our children's souls, and because they might simply want to please us by praying to be saved, we must continue to give them the Law and encourage them to ask God for faith to believe that He is as good as He says He is.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#28. Idolatry, like all sin, is devastating to the soul. It cuts us off from the comforts of grace, the peace of conscience, and the joy that is to be our strength.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#29. Because we were made for him, any place where he isn't will never satisfy us. In

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#30. The world feeds us a steady diet of it's-okay-if-you-are-a-nice-person sprinkled with a bit of if-you-try-your-hardest and topped with a strong drink of you-meant-well.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#31. Since the fall of the human race, we've been alternately telling ourselves that we are good, that if we try hard enough we'll be good enough, or that being or that being good is an impossibility, so we should just give up and have fun.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#32. It would be against God's character to give us a promise that our children will be saved if we raise them in a certain way. That would mean that he was telling us to trust in something other than Christ and his grace and mercy.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#33. Given the conflicting messages we receive about what it takes to be "good enough," it's not surprising that Christians are as plagued by depression and anxiety as the general population.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#34. The only way that we can avoid the sin of idolatry is by immersing ourselves in Spirit-enlightened study of God through the Scripture.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#35. The obvious difference between Paul and us is that Paul bragged about his weakness, and we try to hide it.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#36. Our goal as parents should not be to create a bunch of good kids, but rather to have them see how dead they are and that there is only life in the work of Jesus Christ.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#37. The sinful heart is never transformed by conformity to the imperatives but only by relationship with the One who cleanses hearts.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#38. Our beliefs about the sources of joy are frequently experienced as colored imaginations that captivate our hearts.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#39. The world tells us that our children's success depends upon our success. The world knows nothing of God's ability to use our failures as means to bless. "What is impossible with men is possible with God" (Luke 18:27).

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#40. For it is only an appreciation of his love that can motivate genuine obedience.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#41. Perhaps one of the reasons why God chooses to leave us in this terribly broken world with its various disappointments is to create in our souls a certain dissatisfaction, an insatiable hunger for home.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#42. Do you love me with an all-consuming devotion that rules out all other loves?

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#43. We're very comfortable thinking, good parenting in, good children out.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#44. I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#45. Like us, our children crave the blessed benediction: "You are good!" But the Bible says that because we are not good, those words no longer apply to us. We're not good.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#46. Love is the first cause of all the graces we desire; it warms the heart, and sweetly and powerfully influences our affections to delight in, and to walk in love with such an exceedingly gracious and merciful God.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#47. True Christianity is not a program of self-improvement; it's an acknowledgment that something more than self-improvement is needed.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#48. God doesn't smile at us one day and frown when we blow it the next. When our children have been given the gift of Christian righteousness, God is always smiling at them because he sees them in his Son.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#49. One can be addicted to either lawlessness or lawfulness. Theologically there is no difference since both break relationship with God, the giver. ~ GERHARD O. FORDE

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#50. Idolatry is always subject to the law of diminishing returns.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#51. But that's not all. The resurrection is also God's "Amen" to our "It is finished, for I believe that when he died, I died, and when he rose, I arose; I believe that you have forgiven me and made me righteous and will raise me up on the last day.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#52. Every faithful parent must give their children guidance, direction, rules, and commands. What we are saying is that these things are not to be the primary theme of our teaching. The primary theme is to be Jesus Christ and the work he's already done.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#53. Jesus is the Master Gardener. He's the Second Adam, the true and obedient Son of God, tasked with caring for God's garden and protecting it from evil, fulfilling the mandates God had given in the beginning, mandates Adam failed to complete (Genesis 1:28).11

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#54. Never pay attention to the favors or smiles of man; if [God] smiles on you, neither the smile or frown of men can affect you."5

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#55. God loves us so much that he crushed his Son so that we might be his and that this love isn't based on our worthiness or performance. His love doesn't fluctuate from day-to-day. It was settled the moment he set it upon you before the foundation of the world.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#56. I thought parenting was going to reveal my strengths, never realizing that God had ordained it to reveal my weaknesses.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#57. We need the encouragement, correction, and loving involvement of others who are willing to risk everything for the sake of the beauty of his bride.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#58. The gospel frees us from demanding our own way, because nothing we desire to obtain is worth sinning against such love and kindness.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#59. Some parents live more like reclusive monks than like first-century Christians who were famous for their love for and service within their cities, cities that in many cases were more overtly wicked than cities found in modern-day America.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#60. In my heart is rooted in lovelessness and thanklessness ... By contrast, every truly holy act, including even the inner desire to be holy, springs out of the love and worship that He has placed in my heart.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#61. When we fail to believe the truth about who Jesus is and miss the impact of His astounding work in suffering and dying for our sin, it will be impossible to resist the allurement of the gods of this earth as they whisper their promised pleasures to us.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#62. Our obedience has its origin in God's prior action, and forgetting that truth results in self-righteousness, pride, and despair.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#63. We need days of failure because they help humble us, and through them we can see how God's grace is poured out on the humble.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#64. I admit that at times my prayer for my children is nothing more than vocalized unbelief aimed at God.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#65. God created us to be worshipers because it is right that he be known, loved and worshiped. This isn't because he is needy and wishes someone would tell him how special he is. No, it's because he is perfect and the worship of his perfection is holiness in action.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#66. Our children's salvation is not dependent on the strength of our faith or the shrewdness of our answers.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

#67. We need assurance that there is a God who is sovereignly ruling over our journeys and will one day put everything right.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick