Family of God

Each one is developing.

Each one is in relationship to the others.

Each one is developing socially, intellectually, physically, and spiritually.

Every person in the family has an effect upon the other members in all these areas.

Over a period of years these fragile strings strengthen into strong, invisible steel that holds great weight but is also capable of an enormous amount of freedom.Families can be dysfunctional.

Many are. In fact, I am convinced that all of us, to one extent or another, are dysfunctional persons coming from dysfunctional families who, in turn, will create some degree of dysfunction in the families we establish.

I’ll have more to say about this later.In its most positive form, the family can be a place of increased individual and corporate wholeness.

Whether it is a nuclear family or an extended family, it is individuals, created with unique potential in the image of God, living in relationship with each other.

There is a place for you no matter how old you are or how young you are, no matter what is your status of life.

The New King James Version of the Bible translates Psalm 68:6a in this way: ‘God sets the solitary in families.’ This means that God is the security of all. He is the protector of the defenseless. He gives you a home. He offers you a family. You don’t have to go it alone!

The family has three specific functions.

The Family You Want: How to Build an Authentic, Loving Home (Chapter 1: Just What is Family?)

1. First, the family has a coping function.

It is protective.

We see this most particularly in relationship to children.

A family shelters, teaches, and launches a person.

A family helps the individual, both child and adult, become more competent to deal with social realities.

The very way we are held, fed by bottle or breast, talked to, prayed for, nurtured or not nurtured has a profound future impact on how we view ourselves and others.

Healthy parenting provides a secure base of acceptance.

It provides a secure base of acceptance from which an individual can move out into the world.

We achieve competence.

We become better able to reach out.

Look at the most basic coping functions a family provides in relationship to a little baby. Look at how we protect that baby.

The family hovers around the infant.

It tries to meet that child’s every need.

It does for a one-year-old what it wouldn’t consider doing for an eight-year-old.

The same is true in the church.

A new-born person in Jesus Christ must be protected by the family.

We help that person grow.

We urge that one on in his or her development.

We change the dirty diapers.

We teach them how to eat the Bread of Life.

All this is done within this caring community called the family of God.

We protect each other.

That is why God sets the lonely in families.

We need to protect each other.

In the healthy, nuclear family, the physical provisions of food, shelter, and clothing are made.

These are undergirded by the additional emotional and spiritual encouragements that help us survive as social persons.

A healthy church becomes the family of God to us, supplementing and complementing contributions of a good home and helping us to make good the deficiencies of a poor home. They help us cope with life, enabling us to live in community.

2. There is a second function called modeling.

You cannot simply be protective, sheltering a person forever.

We learn from watching other persons as well as there are things we inherit.

Therefore, both in the nuclear and extended families, those who are more mature serve as models to help the younger ones learn how to live.

Give a person the wrong model, and you are in trouble. An indolent mother or alcoholic father sets a pattern for a young person that is difficult to break.

A church filled with bickering people teaches young Christians how to be brittle, offensive, defensive, hard in their Christian life.

If your role model is hostile, you may pick up some of those hostility patterns yourself.

If your role model is loving, you will see that as an ideal to be emulated.

However, there is one big problem.

If we see family relationships built primarily on the basis of modeling, we can end up being the carbon copy of someone else.

Unfortunately, I have seen this happen in too many situations. We as ministers can be the most guilty of trying to mold others into exact replicas of ourselves. Instead of producing maturity in others within the family relationship, we can actually destroy a person’s ability to stand on his own two feet. Carry a baby everywhere, never encouraging that baby to exercise and to begin to get a sense of balance, and you will delay the child’s ability to walk.

3. This brings us to a third function, the developmental function.

The family must protect the coping function.

The family must model. However, the family must move beyond being the protective cocoon and the arbitrary inculcation that tells another person what to do in all situations.

We need to encourage people in their own developmental maturity.

How sad it is to see a person who has been programmed to think and respond in particular ways that might work in some settings.

However, place that person in a different environment and their mechanically learned ways of doing things can backfire.

The mother, the father, the pastor, the teacher is no longer there to help them process the many options and even temptations. They’ve not been encouraged to understand their own individuality and appreciate their own unique gifts. They’ve been programmed to respond in memorised ways that, in some settings, work very well. In other settings, some of these memorised routines might backfire.A mature person is someone who understands why they are acting in certain ways, understanding the negative or positive long-range consequences of behaviours or attitudes.

God, in some family of origin, was portrayed as an arbitrary, judgmental, unloving parental figure who wanted to squeeze all the fun and joy out of life.

As hard as we try, some members will never be able to recover from this negative approach to the Christian faith.

Some will never be able to see Jesus Christ in a context larger than the harshly defined negativity so awesomely inflicted upon them by an overbearing parent who wanted to be in control at all times.

Instead of leading our children to a God bigger than us, we can inadvertently become the personification of that God in frightening ways.

Some families fail to render this developmental function. In such situations, it might take years of therapy, emotional and spiritual, to undo the damage of a well-meaning family that has provided adequate coping and modeling mechanisms

Failing to teach a growing child of God how to function without the arbitrary, artificial support of mother and father and other parental figures in the church (poorly differentiated) .

What I am trying to say is this: whether it is in the nuclear family or the extended family, we can produce automatons.

We can create mechanical men and women who live their lives in protective wombs.

We can tell people what to do, making their decisions for them and failing to encourage them into mature lifestyles.

There are rules.

The Bible specifies certain conduct that is appropriate and inappropriate for the believer. Moses outlines specifically how we are to live a life in relationship with God, modeling it for our families.

Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 6:6–9:These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.

God’s plan

When God originally called out Israel as a people, He established that they be His witnesses.

The nation of Israel was not an end in itself; it was a means to an end. God did not call Israel to be a bucket to receive all of His blessings, but a channel through which He could pass His blessings to the world. Israel was to communicate the truth about God to the world.

The Fulfilled Family The Source of the Attack on the Family

“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4). This was the standard message, the basic heart of God’s truth—the great statement that there is only one God. And it was to be passed on to the world.

The Fulfilled Family The Source of the Attack on the Family

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (v. 5). That is to be the human response to the reality of God.

The Fulfilled Family The Source of the Attack on the Family

(1) Personal commitment

“These words, which I command thee this day, Shall be in thine heart” (v. 6). The first key to passing on God’s message to the world was that they had to make a personal commitment to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and might. Once they made that commitment, there was a second step.

The Fulfilled Family The Source of the Attack on the Family

(2) Parental communication

“Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children” (v. 7). That is God’s plan for passing on the truth about Himself—from parent to child. As a child matures, he becomes a parent to the next generation, and so on. How are God’s truths to be communicated?

(a) In speech

“And shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (v. 7). Godly words were to be flowing out of their mouths. They were to be constantly speaking about the things of God.

(b) In symbols

“Thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes” (v. 8). Even when there was silence, there was to be a visible commitment to the law of God. Here it was symbolized in what they wore.

(c) In surroundings

“Thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates” (v. 9). Even when the parents weren’t home, their children were to see the law of God written all over the house

The Fulfilled Family The Source of the Attack on the Family

The children were to see God’s Word throughout the house in their parents’ absence; they were to see it symbolized in what their parents wore; and they were to hear it when their parents opened their mouths. The law of God was to be passed on so that godliness and righteousness could move from one generation to the next.