Quotes from Elyse Fitzpatrick

Idols aren't stone statues. They are thoughts, desires, and longings that we worship in the place of the true God

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

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.

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.

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

If you wonder why you choose to worship other gods rather than wholeheartedly devote yourself to the Lord you love, examine the thought and desires that captivate your heart. That's where you'll fin the answer to every sin and failure in your life. Don't be deceived into thinking that you need to develop more willpower. We need to develop godly thoughts and desires.

Let us be so taken up with the knowledge of God's goodness and the desire to fellowship with Him that our emotions are warmed and our outer man reflects great love. Although we must not seek emotional experiences for their own sake, we must not shun them merely because others misuse them or ignore God's instructions on worship.

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

The weaknesses, failures, and sins of our family are the places where we learn that we need grace too. It is there, in those dark mercies, that God teaches us to be humbly dependent. It is there that He draws near to us and sweetly reveals His grace. Paul's suffering teaches us to reinterpret our thorn. Instead of seeing it as a curse, we are to see it as the very thing that keeps us pinned close to the Lord.

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

We forget the gospel when we neglect our adoption and think that we're still just a hired servant. The Father doesn't let us come to him on those terms. We will either come as sons or we will stay with the pigs. He won't let us earn anything from him because there will be no boasting in his sight. It will either be that Jesus and his glorious gospel has the preeminence or we will go it on our own.

Our faith works because we love, and we love because he has first loved us. Our faith is then emboldened by this responsive love; we've been loved, we've been assured of our justification; our Father speaks of our sanctification as if it had already occurred. By faith, then, we can courageously pursue growth into our true identity.