7 Keys To A Healthy Family Series

Keys To A Healthy Family?

Thesis: We need to learn the keys to having a healthy family if we want to fend off the attack of the enemy on our families.

Texts: Ephesians 5: 1-33; I Corinthians 13

Introduction:

Good News for the family shared by Gary Collins in Family Shock:

Ø Despite all the change and turmoil that disrupts family life. God is still aware of what is going on and is still in control.

Ø If most people had to do it over, they would marry the same spouse they have now.

Ø Even though divorce rates are high, most marriages stay intact.

Ø While 3 percent of women living with men in America suffer at least one violent domestic incident during a given year, the good news is 97 percent do not.

Ø The majority of families are not seriously dysfunctional. Most kids do not become “adult children of dysfunctional family backgrounds, “ and most of us are not in need of recovery.

Ø No family is perfect and without problems and periodic crisis.

Ø All parents make mistakes, but most of their kids survive very well, even without therapy and twelve –step programs.

Ø When families and marriages have problems, counselors can often help.

Ø It is possible (but admittedly more difficult) to have good marriages, healthy families, and stable kids even when we live in bad environments or in chaotic, immoral, God-rejecting society.

Ø We can raise kids successfully even if we don’t have all the answers.

Ø We can raise kids successfully even if we haven’t read parenting and marriage books and even if we aren’t perfect.

Ø Even good parents sometimes have rebellious kids.

Ø Even bad parents sometimes have healthy, adjusted kids.

Ø When things are not going well in your family, that does not mean that all is hopeless. Often ”this too will pass.”

Ø We won’t understand everything that happens to us.

Ø God cares about each of our families.

But the key we need to lean is we need to build families that are strong and flexible and able to stand firm in the storms and changes this society is bringing against it. Building strong family units takes work and sweat but it’s possible. God promises to give us the desires of our heart if we place him first in our lives. The family is his design and plan for every person on the face of the earth. We are all part of a family.

I want you to say the word “Family” with me. What rushes through your mind? Often we think of examples of families and shows that portray them, the Waltons, Huxtebals, Leave it to Beaver, Partridge Family,7th Heaven, the Brady Bunch, Andy Griffith show and the thoughts go on. So what is a family?

The Family was and is designed by God. It was designed to be a place of safety from the world. It’s a environment were the art of nurturing takes place. It’s a location were children are born and raised. It’s were love takes place on a daily basis. It’s were encouragement is dished out in large doses. Were discipline is found and respect is taught. It’s a place that changes and adapts with time. It goes from taking care of the infants - to the toddlers - to the pre-teens - to the teenager and eventually to sending them off as adults into the world to build their own family units. Know you now why I say, “The family takes a lot of work!”

A family will go through several stages.

Stage One – The family begins at the, “I do’s” and a couple is birthed. It’s the stage were dying to self takes place.

Stage Two- The couple’s life is dramatically changed at the arrival of the first child. Now comes heaps of responsibility and stress.

Stage Three – The children grow up out of the toddler years and start school. The family is apart more and life becomes more hectic with school age children. Families can drift apart if they are not careful here.

Stage Four – Now the children reach adolescence and life changes quickly. Turmoil enters the family unit. Hormones invade the home. Expenses go up for couples in this stage. There are more activities and more separation of the family individuals. There are more choices to make and peer pressures. The family helps here in guidance and direction while allowing the child now teen to become and individual and to move to individuation. This is a hard time for the family and can tear it apart if it is not healthy.

Step Five- the empty nest is another difficult passage were the couple finds themselves a couple again with their children gone. Children no longer are the focus of their family unit. Now mom and dad look to each other for companionship.