Parenting With Grace Sample

Teaching Grace to Your Kids

Author Randy Alcorn wrote that “parents’ greatest heritage… to their children…is the ability to perceive…God’s daily blessings and to respond with…gratitude”1 (Colossians 2:7). Grace is at the center of God’s blessings; being thankful is a natural response to that.

The best way to teach your children to have an attitude of gratitude is to cultivate that mindset yourself.The exhaustion and discouragement that may come from parenting and work can easily turn into a martyr complex. When our commitment to family becomes a labor of resentment rather than of love, our home will lack peace and joy. But when we intentionally model a grateful mindset, our children will learn to do the same, and the resulting healthier, more peaceful home environment will carry over into those complex teen years and help them avoid the pitfalls of entitlement and selfishness.

A child trained to thank God for blessings great and small will progressively understand the vastness of God’s grace. An environment of thanksgiving to God teaches some vital truths.

First, you didn’t earn this. The whole universe and our life were made by God for us. Everything we have has been received (1 Corinthians 4:7).

Second, you don’t deserve this. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. Life doesn’t owe us anything. Regularly giving thanks to God confronts our entitled, me-first attitude by reminding us that it is all from Him and by His grace.

Third, joy comes through giving, not receiving. As we cultivate an attitude of gratitude, the joy of giving becomes part of our response. We have received grace, and we show grace (Matthew 10:8b).

When mom and dad serve each other and express their thankfulness, it reminds their children to be thankful for all they receive and encourages them to serve one another. A child will discern that acts of service are not earned, or even deserved, but are sourced in genuine kindness without the expectation of anything in return. This is a pure reflection of God’s grace toward us.

As children grow and begin to see the contrast between theirs and other families, they will see the destructive results of taking each other and their blessings for granted. Grace is the antidote that will safeguard the hearts of our teens and young adults from the discontent, selfishness, entitlement, and self-righteousness they see in the world.

Randy Alcorn,The Grace and Truth Paradox(Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2003), 46.