“Family” has become a loaded word. News stories, broadcast segments, reality shows, books, cultural ideologies, and personal experiences create a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. High profile families are on display through magazine covers and scrolling news feeds generating discussions of counting higher than 19 or sex change operations. It’s the 24-hour news cycle on such families that keeps a free flowing discussion of family fueled. However, it’s the personal homes, couches, and dinner tables that are struggling to define and build “Family.”
From the example of a professor during a lunch meeting, I have been asking my servers while dinning out how I might pray for them when I thank God for His provision. It has been an out-of-the-comfort-zone question for me due to the atmosphere and unpredictably of its reception, but it has been heart-opening in results. Some have been taken back by the request and others have opened up immediately. While it has first produced opportunities to share Christ, another consequence has been the subtle peering into hearts of complete strangers. To this day, every server asked has exposed a family need, problem, or heartache. From surgeries of parents to estranged children, each request has been about personal families. What would prompt these emotional and heart opening requests to a guy who they are just trying to refill his sweet tea glass?
This has been on my heart. While the media examines the Duggars, or glamorizes the Kardashians, I have heard brief personal cries for help in less publicized families. If our churches are going to see transformation through Christ come to individuals, then we should also seek to see the same transformation come to the family unit. It is the institution that was founded by God with Adam and Eve and is personal to everyone because regardless of how functional, dysfunctional, or transplanted each family may be, everyone has family ties. Here are a few reasons we should seek to build families:
The Family is a picture of the Gospel. Each family has the opportunity to display the power of the gospel. The marriage relationship is a depiction of God’s relationship to his people as Paul teaches in Ephesians 5:22-37. Love is to be given as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her, but forgiveness is also central to family relationships. Even Peter acknowledged that a tiff between a husband and wife can hinder their prayer life perhaps because a lack of forgiveness that Jesus warned about would bring a lack of forgiveness as consequence. (1 Peter 3:7; Matthew 6:14,15) Inside the family relationship imperfect people come together through love and reproduction to display how love, forgiveness, grace, and mercy work. Just as the Heavenly Father has displayed to us in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
The Family is the center of Discipleship. Education is not just textbooks and recess. The greatest teaching and influence comes from the family. Throughout the New Testament, the family imagery is used for the church to connote a community of teaching and support. Jesus even made a point to show the disciples the importance of children in the kingdom of God and to not hinder them. (Mark 9:36,37; 10:13-16) These New Testament teachings were founded in Deuteronomy 6:6,7 as it says, “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.”
Sadly, the majority has let the years of childhood and adolescence become “free-time” of entertainment instead of strategic discipleship and training. Tablets and TVs pour more into children’s lives than moms and dads. Let us find meaningful family time in teaching and discipling our children instead of filling it with entertainment driven activities in abundance.
The Family motivates selflessness. Being a family member reminds us every day that we are not alone. There are parents, siblings, and extended family members. Bathrooms are shared. Chores are divided. Conversations can teach social skills of respect and waiting instead of interrupting. When we experience being a part of something bigger, it creates a shrinking feeling to our personal image. It is a good shrinking feeling that helps us to see the importance of others over self. Is that not the Christ-likeness that was demonstrated for us? (Romans 5:8) A family experience helps to teach that selflessness through the bonds of love in a family. When it is disregarded or broken, selfishness has the opportunity to usurp power.
Granted there are many more reasons that can be added for the building families such as emotional health of children and financial stability, but these few reasons speak to something bigger. Our families can minister. The family unit can build a bigger unit – the family of God. Moms and dads can raise and train the present and next generation of spiritual giants that will touch the lives of others with the gospel. That reproduction and perpetuity are worth the fight.