How Should My Relationship With My Family Affect Me? Series

How Should My Relationship

With My Family Affect Me?

Colossians 3:18-25

18 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.

20 Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.

21 Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

22 Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.

23 And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,

24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.

25 But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality.

I have only known of three perfect families:

1. Those people who have no children and could easily straighten out everyone else’s problem child if they could have them for a week.

2. Those parents whose children are grown up and gone and who now can’t remember what really happened in their families.

3. Those families who were on television in the 1950’s and 1960’s. "Father Knows Best" "Ozzie & Harriet" "Leave It To Beaver"

These families always had all the right answers and no problem was ever too difficult to solve during their 30 minute time slot.

I encourage you to be a priority family instead of a perfect one. Forget about being a perfect parent and forget about having perfect children. If you judge success by whether the child turns out perfectly or not you are setting yourself up for many disappointments.

A healthy family environment is one where you have the opportunity to experience three elements: Honour, Development and Love

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The Lord is building a family among us. What are some elements that must be in a healthy spiritual family?

11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,

12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

Honour the Roles of Leadership

In our family, Parents

Role: Wife submit

Attitude that comes out of respect or trust

Role: Husband love

unconditional love

Josh McDowell wisely stated, “The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” And the greatest thing a mother can do for her children is to love their father

Role: Child obey

Do you know what’s involved in being a pastor? You might assume that my job is just to preach a sermon each week and then sit in my office waiting for crisis calls. Some of you have no idea what I do during the week. So just for fun, I thought you’d appreciate this description of what the “perfect pastor” is like:

“After hundreds of years of searching, the perfect pastor has finally been found who can suit everyone. He preaches exactly twenty-five minutes and then sits down. He condemns sin, but never hurts anyone’s feeling. He works from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in every type of work, from preaching to custodial service. He is twenty-six years old and has been preaching for thirty years. He is tall and short, thin and stocky, plain looking and handsome, with one brown eye and one blue. He parts his hair in the middle, with the left side dark and straight, above the ears, and the right side brown and wavy, over the ears.

This perfect pastor has a burning desire to work with new believers, and spends all of his time with the senior adults. He smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his work. He makes ten calls a day on church members, spends all his time evangelizing the unchurched, and is never out of his office.”