A Quiver Full of Arrows - The Foundation of the Gospel-Shaped Family

Psalm 127 ESV

A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

The Foundation - The Centrality of God in the Home

First the Solomon notes

Psalm 127:1 ESV

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

Solomon makes clear that unless God builds the house, unless God builds the family our efforts are in vain.

“God’s sovereignty is seen…building a house…the sovereign intention of God is far mare crucial to the outcome than man’s efforts. Otherwise, a person’s endeavor is in vain.”

This is seen in the building of our lives and our families. The building of our families on the foundation of Christ is explicitly given here and in the New Testament. Christ is to be the center of all that we do. We do this by building Christ centered virtues into our homes.

What are some of the virtues we must build our families on?

Prayer

One of the key foundations of a Christ centered family is prayer. Our kids should hear us pray. I love to hear my kids pray because I often hear them repeat some of the phrases and themes in their prayers that I use. We are called to model prayer in our homes.

Husbands, let your family hear prayer come from your lips at meals, in family discussions, in family devotions. We need to be praying people.

Scripture

We should model a love for scripture in the lives of our kids. Our kids should see us read scripture, we should read it with our children, and we should encourage them to read it. Family devotions, bible reading and spending time in his word.

We have some resources online on our website for those interested in serving their families through the reading of God’s word.

The Psalmist also speaks of the centrality of God in our work. We tend to miss the opportunity that our work gives us to be on mission in our world around us.

The Reward - The Centrality of God in Our Children

Perhaps no greater gift is given us than our families.

A Gospel-Shaped family is grounded in a focus on God and his truths.

Deuteronomy 6:5–7 ESV

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Notice that the foundation of our relationship with God is our love for God. It is expressed in our longing to know him and his words but also in our passing those words down to the next generation.

What we love we pass down to our children.

Mothers and Fathers we are called to pass down the fear of and our love for the Lord to our children.

Proverbs 14:26 ESV

In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge.

If we build our families merely to succeed in education and business. If we focus our families on sports and athletic achievement and we make the Church and Christ secondary then we will never build our homes on the Lord.

Christ must be the center of our lives, including the decisions we make about vacations, athletics, academics, work, etc. We model Christ to our kids by the way we wrestle with these things.

God commands that parents speak of Christ at all times and in all situations. That Christ be spoken of “when we’re at home, or when we’re on a journey, when we lie down or when we get back up.” This applies to all of life’s decisions.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect academic, social or even athletic excellence from our kids, but we must treat everything we do with Christ at its center.

Mary Kassian, founder of the True Woman Movement notes that allowing our kids to see us struggle with putting Christ first in all our endeavors can instill the importance of Christ.

“Your child will sense what is most important to you. So I think it’s really valuable for a child to watch his or her parents wrestle with keeping Jesus at the forefront, making the planets of our lives revolve around the sun of Christ at the center. Let them know that whatever we decide in the end, they should see a parent wrestle with the tension, asking, ‘You know what, this team is a really great opportunity, but missing church is hard, and we must pray about the costs and the opportunities.’”

When our kids see us struggle to put Christ in the center they realize how important Christ is.

Making Christ the foundation means sacrifice. It means making our first thought, “How does this model Christ to our family”.