Building a Grace-Filled Marriage and Raising Creative, Contented, Capable Children Without Legalism or Manipulation.

Christian parents want to do things right. They put their best efforts toward having a Christian marriage and raising Christian kids. But many end up tired, discouraged and feeling like failures. Why is that?

From both his professional and personal experience, Jeff VanVonderen shows that the primary cause comes when Christian husbands, wives and parents focus on a spouse or child's behavior, then set out to apply pressure, make rules and control attitudes and responses. When people spend their lives trying to transform or "fix" their spouses and their kids, the natural result is exhaustion, depression and the hopeless sense of wanting to bail out of it all.

Here is a message about how God's grace can transform relationships within a marriage and family. The first step is learning the simple difference between God's job and ours. God's part is to fix and change. Our responsibility is to depend on the Holy Spirit, serve our families and help to equip them to be all they can be. Healthy relationships between husband and wife, between parents and children, are possible only when the filter of God's grace is placed over the processes of marriage and parenting. The Christian family's ultimate goals of harmony, obedience and full potential can be arrived at without using legalistic and manipulative methods.