Find Joy Thru Family Pt 7 Series

Opening video Illustration: Mighty!

Find Joy Through Your Family! (pt. 7)

Series: Find Joy in the Journey

Thesis of series: Joy needs to be experienced in the journey of life! But Joy, like any other attitude, can come and go. It is not guaranteed simply because we are born again believers. We must put ourselves in the places where experiencing joy is a possibility. We need to go after and find joy in our journey of life.

Introduction to Series:

The world tells us to pursue happiness. They tell us there are many paths to happiness for example: getting a college degree, having a successful career, making lots of money, getting a new car, hitting your goal weight, marrying the perfect person, buying your dream house, retiring early, and now we have the following being promoted in our society as the path of happiness such as: embrace you gay side and be proud and reject scientific and biblical family values, happiness is found in abortion on demand paid by the state even at 9 months old, happiness is living together and not marrying, happiness is found in life by not adhering to any absolutes, happiness is being a full time gamer, happiness is found in legalized marijuana, happiness is found in drugs, happiness is found in parties especially wild ones. Happiness is found in sexual promiscuity. Am I correct with my observation of our current society? Do I need to add to the list? Do you think I am missing something?

So, we have the pursuit of happiness and we get it when we get whatever we want – so goes the myth of the great deception of happiness.

But I look around and happiness is fleeing many – people are angry, depressed, suicidal, unforgiving, revengeful, I see people easily disappointed and frustrated.

I really have been challenging you to look over the myth of the pursuit of happiness and live beyond this self-centered focus to instead finding joy in the journey of life – even in the unexpected corners of life – even in the trails of life!

Scripture Texts for 2019:

Phil. 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

John 15:11 “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

Sermon: Finding Joy in the Journey through Family! Pt 7

Focus: We have decided to focus on the family this month of June and July to celebrate and learn how to build healthy biblical families!

Thesis: We need to learn the keys to having a healthy biblical family if we want to fend off the attack of the enemy on our families. If we want to experience joy in the journey of life!

Summary of key building blocks to a healthy biblical family unit:

1. Build on God’s foundation and using His blueprints.

2. Commit and submit to each other and to the biblical family unit.

3. Be loyal and faithful to the family members and to each other as husband and wife.

4. Respect your spouse, your family members and others.

5. Be good godly parents.

6. Choose to forgive and be forgiven.

7. Spend time with each other – do dinner together!

In Chuck Swindoll’s book The Strong Family he asks the question, “What makes a family strong?”

He quotes a survey done by Dr. Stinnett who studied 3,000 families and discovered six main qualities of strong families:

1. They are committed to each other

2. They spend time together

3. They have good family communication

4. They express appreciation for each other

5. They have a spiritual commitment

6. They are able to solve problems in crisis

Swindoll, The Strong Family page 14.

We have talked about five of these qualities in the last few weeks with our series find joy in the journey through family. I noticed that one is left from Swindoll’s list of building strong families and that is being able to solve problems or have good coping skills in crisis moments that come upon the family.

I have been reading the book called Leadership Pain from Samuel Chand and he makes this statement about tough times in leadership and with the leadership role of parenting “yes” parenting is a leadership role – “Leadership - all leadership - is a magnet for pain…which comes in many forms…but pain isn’t the enemy. The inability or unwillingness to face pain is a far greater danger…pain is meant to wake us up…people try to hide their pain…but they are wrong…we need a fresh perspective…you’ll grow only to the threshold of your pain” (Pages 1-15)