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.”
Developed to do faith work
Millionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie said, “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”
Working together in love
Relationships are honest
Relationships are not perfect
The best leaders understand the important role of relationships when it comes to success. For example, Lee Iacocca once asked legendary Green Bay Packer coach Vince Lombardi what it took to make a winning team. Here’s what Lombardi answered:
There are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but still don’t win the game. Then you come to the third ingredient: if you’re going to play together as a team, you’ve got to care for one another. You’ve got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself: “If I don’t block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I have to do my job well in order that he can do his.”
The difference between mediocrity and greatness is the feeling these guys have for each other.
A healthy community to difficult to maintain
Why? Selfishness
A common missing ingredient in many marriages is dedication to make things work. Marriages may start because of love, but they finish because of commitment.
Many just Stop loving
Many set up expectations that are unreal
How do we really live in a way to affect our families?
Do all to the glory of the Lord
Remember you will be rewarded
