Families: They’re something we tend to take for granted. They just exist. I mean, most of us were born into a family; most of us grew up in a family, and many of us have started our own families, and yet this thing we call family doesn’t always turn out to be what we’d hoped, does it?

God’s Grand Design

For a long time, I had a series of messages bubbling around inside me, and unusually it’s taken me quite a while to crystallise my thinking. Now that’s really unusual. Each year I present over five hundred radio and television messages like this one, and so as you can imagine, I have to churn them out pretty quickly. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but the reality is that the ideas have to come together and the words have to come together in a short time, otherwise I just fall behind, but this one about family … well, it’s taken a while to come together because it just ain’t easy. What constituted a normal, common family when I was growing up isn’t necessarily what families look like today, and whilst we all have hopes and dreams about what our families should be, they don’t always turn out that way.

Over the years, I’ve talked a lot about families on the programme, and the response has always amazed me. More often than not, people write to me about the sad things that have happened in their families. They’ve pleaded with me to deal with this issue and that issue, and it’s out of those anguished cries that this series of messages has been born. I’ve called it ‘Family – When Things Don’t Turn out the Way You’d Hoped’. Today and over the next few weeks, we’re going to chat about the realities of this thing we call family right here and now, in the twenty-first century because whilst the ideal model of family is a happy and loving husband and wife mum-and-dad combo, with a clutch of happy healthy well-adjusted children (that’s the rosy ideal we each have in our heads, right?), the reality for many families – may I suggest, for most families – is vastly different.

So many people, young and old, are hurting and aching because of their family relationships or lack of family relationships. It seems to me it’s time to talk about that reality, and discover what God has to say into those situations, because no matter how good, bad or ugly your family situation happens to be, God loves you beyond anything that you and I could put into words. God is in that place with you, and He wants to heal when you need healing, comfort and console when you need that, and He wants to give you (I believe this with all my heart) … He wants to give you hope for the future: His hope, because His plan from the very beginning was and remains that we should not be alone. He hasn’t made us to be alone; He’s made us to be part of a loving family. Now let me pre-empt something here, for those who are living life as singles, and by the way, being treated by other people sometimes as though there must be something wrong with you: We’re going to be talking about singleness in this series as well, because it’s God’s plan for some people.

Now let’s step out and look at God’s grand design for us to live in family relationships: A grand design that He set out right from the beginning. Let’s get a handle here on what God had in mind when He created this whole idea of family. Genesis 1:26-28:

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: Cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” It was so, and God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in His image; in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

It’s an amazing plan. In the image of God we were created, male and female. Even though God reveals Himself in the Bible through Jesus and through the masculine gender, women are every bit as much created in the image of God as men are, and He tells them to go and be fruitful and multiply. That whole thing right there tumbles right out of God’s image, the trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one. Man and woman, husband and wife, who become two in one, and just a little further on, God explains exactly what that means. Genesis 2:7-25:

Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living thing. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He put the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground, the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food: The Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make for him a helper as his pastor.” So out of the ground, the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. But for the man, there was not found a helper as his pastor, so the LORD caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept. Then He took one of his ribs, and closed up the place with flesh, and the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man, He made into a woman and brought her to the man. 

The man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman, for out of a man she was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.

You see, out of that grand design, families came into being. Out of God’s design for us not to be alone, and out of His plan for us to be fruitful and multiply, and bring children into a healthy safe loving environment, families came into being. Now there’s a way to go to develop the sort of understanding that we have of families today, but there’s the beginning of it, dare I say the genesis of it. Families are as much a part of God’s grand design for this world as every other part of creation.

Through science, we marvel at the magnificence of God’s creation: The trillions upon trillions of stars, spread across distances so vast that we simply can’t comprehend them, collectively producing so much energy that we couldn’t even begin to imagine; the intricacy of atoms, of molecules and living cells, let alone animals and people. It’s truly amazing, and it’s as part of that incredible creation narrative that families were born: Just as amazing, just as wondrous, just as powerful, just as incomprehensible as any other part of creation. Let’s never forget that. Let’s never ditch God’s grand plan for family, just because we come up with something that we think is better or more convenient.

Now, yes, sin entered the world. Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and there have been terrible consequences to that. That’s what we’re going to be looking at after the break, and it’s for that very reason that I’ve called this series of messages ‘Family – When Things Don’t Turn out the Way You’d Hoped’ – because it’s that sin that causes the pain and the devastation that’s going on in so many families today. But the starting point of families, the starting-point of this series, has to be with God’s grand design for family. Let’s never lose sight of that. Nothing that humanity can come up with, none of the alternative options that people are living and advocating today, no matter how passionately or how strongly, can come anywhere close to God’s plan of one man and one woman falling in love, leaving their parents, and becoming one flesh as the starting point for providing a safe, loving environment into which children can be born and raised. It’s an incredibly grand design. Don’t you think?

It’s not an Easy Road

Boy meets girl, they fall in love and with stars in their eyes, they walk down the aisle and commit their lives to one another. What a rosy picture, and it’s a picture that’s reinforced and represented to us over and over again. You’d be amazed how many of the ads on television dangle a happy, loving, intimate marriage under your nose as the brand promise, if you buy whatever they happen to be selling today. From orange juice to luxury homes, the picture of the ideal family is presented to us over and over again, and so we start believing that that’s how ninety-nine point nine percent of all families are. Now we kind of know they’re not, but we still swallow this lie; hook, line and sinker ‘cos we want to believe it.

My wife Jacqui and I were on holidays a few months back, and we met another lovely couple who live not far from us, so we’ve kept in touch. They’re retired, reasonably well-off, it would seem, a beautiful home with a few acres out of town happily-married; they seem to have it all. We caught up with them for lunch recently and came to know them a little bit better. Interesting. Behind their apparently ideal lives lie some significant issues with their adult children. They didn’t go into a lot of detail, but it just made me realise how there’s no such thing as the absolutely perfect family. In fact, I can’t think of one family that we know in our lives who has it all sorted: Where everyone loves everyone else; where there aren’t any hurts or divisions; where the children have all grown up to fit with what their parents had hoped for them; where … You’re getting the picture, right?

You see, God’s master-plan for our families was a perfect one. He created Adam; He created Eve so that Adam wouldn’t be alone; He blessed them with a beautiful garden, where they had complete safety and everything they would possibly ever need. Then, Adam and Eve do the one thing that God tells them not to do. Tempted by the serpent, they eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and so, this is what happens to them. Genesis 3:16-22:

To the woman God said, “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

 And to the man he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you: You shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living, and the LORD made garments of skin for the man and for his wife, and clothed them. Then the LORD said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now he might reach out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat and live for ever.’ Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden, He placed a cherubim and sword flaming, and turned to guard the way to the Tree of Life.

So as a result of their sin, as a result of their rebellion against God, a few things happened. Firstly, the woman would experience pain in childbirth, and though she desires her husband, now he will rule over her. That’s a punishment. Strife and enmity between husband and wife is a consequence of their sin, and for the man, instead of this idyllic life he’s been living tilling the garden and living in perfect harmony with his wife, now all of a sudden, things are going to get hard. He’s going to have pressures and work, and things won’t always go the way he expects them to go, and that’s going to put even more strain on the husband-wife relationship, and on top of it all, God boots them out of the garden. Out of the ideal life that He had for them, and lets them go and fend for themselves in the harshness of a fallen, sinful world.

That’s what happened. That’s why you and I are now in the same fallen, sinful world, living out the consequences of our sin. That’s why your marriage and your family aren’t all that you expected them to be and by the way, no, there aren’t any one hundred percent perfect families and marriages out there. Sure; some are better than others, and the more we live for God, the more we love Him and obey Him, the better our marriages are going to be, and the better our kids are going to grow up. Ah … Oh, the kids. Did I forget to mention Adam and Eve’s boys? Cain and Abel? Genesis 4:8-11:

Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out into the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And the LORD said, “What have you done? Listen. Your brother’s blood is crying out to Me from the ground, and now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.”

See, there it is. There are the consequences of sin, and they’re playing themselves out in every family on this planet, to some greater or lesser extent. So, why am I rambling on about all this stuff today? Simply to make this point: There is no such thing as the perfect ideal family. There hasn’t been since Adam and Eve were booted out of the garden of Eden by God, so stop whipping yourself, imagining that yours is the only family with problems. That’s the first point that I want to make, and the second one is equally important. Doing family, being family in this lost and hurting world, was never going to be easy and it never will be. Family’s a tough road. When a bunch of imperfect people set about loving one another, they’re going to hurt one another, and so a lot of love and acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness is required, over and over and over again. Matthew 18:21-22:

Peter the apostle came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”

Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

See, it’s going to be hard. It just is. That’s the message today, and just because it’s going to be hard, don’t give up on it, because you and I have been made in God’s image. The whole idea of male and female, husband and wife, close loving family, tumbles straight out of the very nature of God Himself. Yes it’s marred by our sin, but the more we let God into this family, the more each one of us chooses to live our lives for Christ, the closer our families become to God’s ideal: God’s grand plan for a loving, Godly family.

Now I know that there are some people tuned in today whose families have completely fallen apart, and it’s simply not possible to go back and patch it all up and make it all sweet and happy and rosy. I get that, and God’s healing love is available to you – something we’re going to talk about next week on the programme, when we’re chatting about marriage breakdown and divorce. But if you’re still in a family, imperfect as it may be, hang in there! Live it for Christ; humble yourself; forgive; be who Jesus made you to be, because I know that you will discover good in that. I know that God will work in you and through you as you honour Him, and as you honour His plan for your marriage and for your family.

Listen. Do yourself a favour: When you get to the point of giving up and walking away, don’t.

Boys and Girls

As men and women, we each have different roles to play in our marriages and in our families as a whole and in fact, next week on the programme, we’re going to be taking a look at the most common mistakes that men make and yeah, hard as it is to imagine, the most common mistakes that women make in the family situation. If you’re a man, you might be sitting there listening to this thinking to yourself, “Man, I know I’m far from perfect”, all the while squirming in your seat because you know that this stuff we’re talking about is cutting … well, just a little too close to the bone.

I’ve been there, and trust me; I often still have to challenge myself about the balance between Berni the guy that fronts ChristianityWorks and produces these messages and gets out there and does a whole bunch of stuff for God, and Berni the husband and the father, and how I divide up my time and my energies and my emotional capacity between the two.

I love what God lets me do for Him; I just love it, and I need to work hard to be able to contribute my share to this ministry that I lead, but over recent years, I’ve also been changing my behaviour to keep my weekends free, by and large for my family. To have a regular date night with my wife, to go on holidays with her, stop what I’m doing and have breakfast with my daughter when she comes home from her overseas adventure.

See, those things haven’t been easy because I (like most men) am hard wired to work hard. It’s not that I don’t love my wife and children; I do, hugely, but I guess the thing that God’s been leading me through is to get my behaviours in line with my priorities and so, if you’re a guy and you know what I’m talking about here today, and you know that the hat fits, don’t feel guilty. Don’t squirm. Just decide today that God’s blessed you, and He loves you, and He wants you to make some changes so that He can bless your family more.

Decide today that you’re going to make some changes, so that your actions reflect the love that you have for your wife and your children, and may God bless you as you become the husband and the father that He wants you to be.

It’s hard, isn’t it, when someone goes and puts their finger on what are potentially faults of ours. It’s a bit uncomfortable, isn’t it? And yet none of what we’ve chatted about today is meant to criticise or to condemn. I know that God wants so many good things for your family. He wants to bless your family, and for Him to be able to do that to its fullest effect, we each need to own our part of the problem; to step up, to admit our faults under God’s mighty hand, to set about doing something about them. Husbands love their wives more than words can say. I love this proverb. This is for you, women. Proverbs 31:10-13:

A capable wife, who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life.

What a precious wife such a woman is to her husband and mother to her children, and what incredible power she has to build up her family or indeed, in the converse, to tear it down. Proverbs 14:1:

The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.

So if you’re a wife and you’re a mother, let me encourage you to take those two Scripture verses to heart; Proverbs 14:1 and Proverbs 31:10-13. Your husband will never, ever be perfect, he can’t be, but chances are that he loves you beyond what words can say, and as you bless him with wisdom, with respect, he will in turn bless you more than words can say. As your children grow up seeing how Mum and Dad live, how they honour each other, how they respect each other, how they bless each other, that’ll have such a huge impact on them for the rest of your lives – not just them, but your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, and that … That’s the way that God always planned it to be.

We know this whole idea of family was God’s plan from the very beginning. We know that. But I tell you, doing family, being family, can be so incredibly tough … because families – yours and mine – are made up of imperfect people … well … like you and me.

Imperfect People

This week on the program we’re getting down into the muck, into the reality of what we have to deal with in our families. Hopefully you’ve pretty much figured out by now that there’s no such thing as the perfect family. Yours isn’t the only family with issues and problems.

It’s just the way things are, because we are all imperfect people. You are, I am, and our various family members are as well. Last week on the program, we saw how these imperfections crept in.

God put Adam and Eve in a perfect place with a perfect life, but their rebellion against God brought sin into this world and that sin has had some significant consequences – to them as husband and wife and subsequently upon their family, as Cain ended up murdering his brother Abel. Let’s just recap in case you missed it – this is what God tells Adam and Eve after their sin, after their rebellion. Genesis chapter 3, verses 16 to 22:

To the woman God said, ‘I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’

And to the man he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’

The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.

Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’ — therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

Serious consequences, enmity between husband and wife, pressure, toil, pain and banishment from the Garden of Eden, from the perfect lives that they’d had before their sin. And see that’s the family life that you and I are living out now – family impacted by sin.

It all starts off rosy when you get married – there’s romance in the air, the intimacy of marriage is wonderful, and so you both kind of float along on cloud nine there for a while, but eventually, you hit the ground with a thump. And that thump, ultimately is caused by sin.

It’s the same when kids come along … oh, woohoo, little baby, beautiful, goo–goo, gah–gah … okay a few sleepless nights, but all-in-all a huge blessing and joy. Until the kid learns it’s very first word, and somehow that word, more often than not is NO! By age two, this delightful little Jonnie or Mary has turned NO into an art form. And there begins the rebellion that mother and father are going to have to deal with for as long as this child lives under their roof and beyond.

We need to see this for what it is. And what it is, is a playing out of the same story of Adam and Eve – sin, rebellion against God, has consequences and those consequences can tear our families apart. In Australia they tear 40% of marriages apart – a statistic that’s pretty common across the western world. And even in countries like India, where, by the way, the divorce rate is just around 1.4% of all marriages, they are still being torn apart by that very same thing as people live separate lives under the one roof, somewhere between détente and open warfare, am I right?!

So what’s the answer? Here it is. Here is the starting point for turning things around in your family. Are you listening, are you ready? 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 7 to 9:

Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance.

Now it’s easy to read that, and hear that, and think to yourself, “That’s right!!! My wife … or my husband … or my children … or my parents … they need some serious training in godliness. They need to get their lives sorted out. They need to start behaving and loving and forgiving. They need to …”

We point the finger at them, as though we’re holier-than-thou. As though we’re somehow perfect and not to blame for any of the problems or the conflicts in our families. Come on, give me a break! Who are we trying to kid here? Matthew chapter 7, verses 3 to 5:

Why is it that you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own? Or how can you say to your neighbour, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you’ll see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

In fact, the closer we are to someone, the less they’re likely to listen to our criticism anyway, am I right? Husbands are sick to death of being hen-pecked by their wives. Wives are sick to death of being told what to do by their husbands. And children just roll their eyes into the back of their heads … or am I missing something?

Come on, let’s get a revelation today you and I. A godly family begins in our hearts. Your godly family starts in your heart when you choose to start living your life for Jesus and sacrificing and forgiving and encouraging and leading by example like you’re meant to be doing. And my godly family, my godly family begins in my heart when I choose to do the same thing.

The Mistakes Men Make

When I ask around, and talk to men young and old about the relationships they had with their fathers, I have to tell you, what emerges is a picture that’s far from pretty. Very few sons, or daughters for that matter, have had close relationships with their fathers. Some have, but they are the exceptions rather than the mainstream.

It seems that we men aren’t all that good at being fathers and husbands sometimes. Not because we’re all that bad as people, and certainly for most of us, not because we don’t love our wives or our children.

Ask any husband and father whether he loves his family, and the vast majority will tell you passionately that they do. The problem is that we’ve learned patterns of behaviour that work against being the great husbands and fathers that we want to be. And today, I’d like to share with you the top three mistakes that we make.

After the break I’m going to do the same for mothers and wives, but now it’s the turn of the men. If you’re a man, open your heart and have a listen – receive what God has for you today. If you’re a woman with a man in your life, have a listen and try to understand where he’s coming from. This isn’t fuel for you to go and throw on the fire. This isn’t ammunition that I’m giving you to fire at him. It’s a way of getting inside who he is.

So, are you ready? The top three mistakes that we as men make:

The first one, is that we seem to think that our role is the breadwinner – I know that for some that’s a pretty out-dated concept, but you know, we men are still wired that way – we think that the breadwinning part is the most important part and so we end up putting our jobs before our families.

I want to give you a case in point. As I was sitting at home in my study quite early the other morning, preparing this very message, my daughter had just landed at the airport from a three week holiday in Europe. She’s all grown up now and she’d never travelled much before, so she and a friend went on this great whirlwind adventure.

My wife had gone to the airport to pick her up and they were on their way home. Now, I have a choice to make. What I really want to do as a man, is keep on ploughing through my work. Another message to write and the week will be done and dusted.

Everything in me wanted to finish the week off. But my little girl has just come home from an adventure and she wants to tell us about it over breakfast. Right there, I had a conscious decision to make. Am I going to put my work first, or my family first? Now to a woman, that’s pretty much a no-brainer. Of course you’d put your family first! But to us men, it’s not always that clear cut.

And to our detriment, we end up trading diamonds for stones, by immersing ourselves so much in our work, becoming so isolated from our families, that we end up losing those relationships. I think that’s the biggest and most common mistake that we make.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re wondering, I decided to leave my study and have breakfast with my wife and daughter, to share in the excitement.

The second mistake I see us making, over and over again, is being emotionally unavailable. It happens for two reasons. One is because of the first mistake. We immerse ourselves so much in our work that we are either physically absent – spending long hours in the office or wherever – or, by the time we do get home, we’re emotionally and physically absent. We just don’t have anything left in the emotional tank.

And so we withdraw into our man cave – something that men do to recharge their batteries, sure – but we withdraw and never come out. And so as a result, we’re not really a part of the ebb and flow of the family life anymore.

I know more than anyone, that I need some time on my own each day to recharge my batteries. The way I best wind down after work is to shut down, watch the news or something on TV for half an hour or so, not talk to anyone, process the problems of the day and lay them to rest. And then I’m ready to interact again. Women often don’t understand that, but it’s important to most of us as men.

The mistake we make, is that we don’t come out of the man cave and become part of the family again and that leads to the third most common mistake we make…

We stop leading. We stop being men. We stop doing the things expected of us as men. Disciplining the children, encouraging our teenage daughters, being a tower of strength and wisdom when the family is going through a tough time.

Sounds a bit old–fashioned doesn’t it? But if I asked, nine out of ten wives will complain that their husband has stopped leading and dealing with difficult issues in the family. Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1 to 4:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honour your father and mother’ – this is the first commandment with a promise attached: ‘so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’ And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.

See that requires leadership. The father has a huge role to play in teaching children to honour their parents – a skill that is so necessary and so sadly absent these days, for when they grow up and they have to learn to be subject to authority at work and elsewhere.

You know, it takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of emotional input to play that role. And yet too many fathers, too many husbands have just given up on it, as though it’s not important anymore in the society in which we live. Listen, it is important. Dads have to lead. Husbands have to lead. It’s part of their role.

So, let’s just summarise it again, the top three mistakes that we men make in our families. Firstly, we think that our work is more important than our family. It is a lie that so many men fall for, and it’s a lie that destroys so many families. Secondly, we make ourselves emotionally unavailable, so we are not part of the family anymore emotionally. And thirdly, we abdicate our leadership role in the family. And those mistakes … those mistakes contribute to many a dysfunctional family, and many a family that is torn apart. Come on guys – you have a job to do.

The Mistakes Women Make

We live in a world that celebrates diversity. I’ve been blessed to grow up in a city with so much ethnic diversity – that means different cultures, different foods – it’s awesome. And yet for some reason, the diversity that we have in families often ends up being a source of tension and division. No more so, than in the differences between men and women.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that men and women are profoundly different. Of course that’s why we fall in love, because we’re different. But it doesn’t take too long in a marriage for those differences to start to become a source of tension and division.

Before the break, we talked about the top three mistakes that men typically make in a family situation. Pursuing work first, being emotionally withdrawn or completely unavailable, and abdicating their roles as husbands and fathers, as leaders.

Today, we’re going to chat about the top three mistakes that women make in marriage and family. I make the point that we dealt with men earlier, in case you’ve just tuned in and for some reason you come to the conclusion that I’m only knocking women – I’m not knocking anyone.

What this series is about is dealing with the real life issues that we all confront in our families. That’s why it’s called: “Family: When Things Don’t Turn Out the Way You’d Hoped”. And, as I’ve said a few times so far in this series, there aren’t any perfect families out there. We all have issues to deal with.

So … let’s get into it. The top three mistakes that women make in marriage and family. Because if you’re a woman, if you can see some of these in how you behave in your family, then it’s a great opportunity to make a few changes, to get things back on the rails and to see the positive impact that it’s going to have in your family.

Here’s the first one, the one at the top of my list, is making your children more important than your husband. Now, mothers have an incredibly special role in bringing up their kids. They obviously carry them physically for nine months, they give birth to them and all that involves, in most cases they breast feed them and do much of the day-to-day bringing up, particularly when the kids are young. Little wonder that mothers have such a close attachment to their children – and that’s as it should be, right?

Of course through much of those younger years, mum spends countless hours investing in the little ones – fathers do too of course, and some families share that equally, but in most families, truth be known, the traditional roles still apply.

But things get thrown out of kilter when at some point, the children become more important to the woman than her husband. It manifests itself in all kinds of ways, the husband begins to resent the fact. He can see how his wife lights up around the children and how she has that bored or even cranky demeanour when she’s around him.

This is such a tragedy. One day those children will be grown up and off on their way, living out their lives, and at that point, many couples discover that there is nothing left between them. One of the root causes of that – not the only cause by any means, but one of the biggies – is this syndrome where women become more emotionally attached to their children and less emotionally connected with their husband.

Of course it was never meant to be an either/or situation, it just wasn’t. Wives and mothers have more than enough love in their hearts to go around. But if you check back to your wedding vows, it’s most likely that you said something like this:

I take you to be my husband and in doing this, I set myself apart from the rest of the world for you and you alone. Everything that I am and everything that I have, I give to you. In the heights of our joy and in the depths of our sorrow, I promise to be by your side – to hold you, to encourage you, to honour you and to cherish you. All of these things are yours until we are parted in death.

That means promising to put him first. And that leads me to the second mistake that seems to be so prevalent. Putting him first, doesn’t mean putting him down, especially in front of others and especially in front of the children. Whether it’s politically correct to say it or not, most men are wired to lead, they just are. That doesn’t mean dominate and control, no, not that. But some women seem to think that their husband is their own, personal home improvement project. And so they nag and nag and complain and nag. They disagree with him in front of their children rather than in private.

And that one thing can tear a family apart. Proverbs chapter 21, verse 19 says this:

It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.

As a man, let me say Amen to that one.

And finally, I think the third most prevalent mistake that women make in family situations, is not allowing the husband to perform his role when it comes to disciplining the children. In my view, all discipline should come from love, and it shouldn’t be harsh. That’s exactly what the Bible says. Ephesians chapter 6, verse 4:

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.

But note here that the father does have a role to discipline the children, to set boundaries, to make sure that there are consequences for stepping over those boundaries. Mothers often undermine that process because they love their children so much. They want to make it easy for their kids, they want to kind of wrap them in cottonwool. And they do it to the detriment of their children and the detriment of their marriage.

Kids need to learn these lessons when they are at home, they need to be prepared for the lives that they are going to lead out in that harsh, cruel world out there. And that requires some leadership and some discipline and most often it’s the father’s role to make that happen.

So, let’s sum them up. The first most common mistake is making your children more important than your husband. The second is putting him down with constant nagging and complaining. And the third is undermining the husband and the father’s role in disciplining the children. If you recognise any of those in your marriage, if you recognise any of those in your behaviour, as a wife and a mother, then it’s time to do something about them. Really.

It’s hard isn’t it when someone goes and puts their finger on what potentially are faults of ours, it’s a bit uncomfortable isn’t it? And yet none of what we’ve chatted about today is meant to criticise or condemn.

I know that God wants so many good things for your family, and He wants to bless your family, and for Him to be able to do that to its fullest effect, for you to experience the blessing of God in your family, we each need to own our part of the problem, to step up, to admit our faults and under God’s mighty hand to set about doing something about them.

Husbands love their wives more than words can say. I love this proverb – Proverbs chapter 31, verses 10 to 13:

A capable wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.

What a precious wife such a woman is to her husband and to her children. And what incredible power she has to either build up her family … or to tear it down. Proverbs chapter 14, verse 1:

The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.

If you’re a wife and/or a mother, let me encourage you to take those two scriptures to heart – Proverbs chapter 14, verse 1 and Proverbs chapter 31, verses 10 to 13 – your husband will never, ever, ever be perfect. He cannot be. But chances are that he loves you beyond words, and as you bless him with wisdom and respect, he will in turn bless you more than words can say.

And when your children grow up seeing how mum and dad live, how they honour each other, how they respect each other, how they bless each other … that will have such a huge impact on them for the rest of their lives. And that … that’s the way God always planned it to be.

In many countries including my own, about forty percent of marriages end in divorce. Forty percent! How does that happen? I mean, have you ever wondered, “How does this couple, this man and this woman, go from the courting and romance stage, through to the marriage commitment and honeymoon stage, on to the divorce stage”? Have you ever wondered that?

Drifting Apart

It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? How do two people who were once madly, head-over-heels in love with one another end up in the divorce court? When a man and a woman are standing at the altar as it were being married, the last thing on their minds is divorce. Right? And yet in the west, at least forty percent of all marriages are ending in divorce, and in countries where divorce is culturally unacceptable, places like India for instance where there’s a very low divorce rate (just one point three percent I think), in those countries, many couples are technically married; they’re living under the same roof, but their relationship if you could call it that, is strongly reminiscent of the mutually assured destruction between America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War when I grew up.

Well, you know the cycle. It starts with romance; head-over-heels, madly in love, you can’t get enough of one another. You marry; you go on a honeymoon, you become one flesh as the Bible says, and everything’s great, until the kids come along. Until the day-to-day pressures of life tear away at the Achilles heel of your marriage, until your soulmate’s weaknesses start driving you crazy, until the grass looks greener on the other side.

There’s a book in the Old Testament in the Bible called the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs as it’s sometimes called. It’s about the relationship between a man and a woman, and this is what it says; Song of Songs 2:15:

Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.

In other words, it’s the little foxes that nibble away at the base of the vine, that kill it off and rob it of its fruit. That’s what happens. It’s like Chinese water torture, where they used to tie you down and drip little drops of water on your forehead. Well, a drop of water’s nothing, but keep doing it to someone for day after day after day without a stop, and each droplet of water starts to feel like a brick being dropped on your head. There’s a sense of accumulation; a build-up of frustration and disappointment and pain, that will eventually harden your heart.

It’s like when you’re out in the garden, digging a hole or putting up a fence or laying bricks. Your hands develop calluses to protect your flesh. That’s exactly what your heart ends up doing. It hardens itself to protect you from a world of pain, and that’s how many people feel about their marriages. A world of pain, something that Jesus spoke about when He was questioned about divorce; Matthew 19:1-9:

When Jesus had finished saying these things, He left Galilee and He went to a region of Judea beyond the Jordan. Large crowds followed Him and He cured them there. Some Pharisees came to Him, and to test Him they asked: ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?’

Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read that the One who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother to be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So there are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?’

And Jesus said to them, ‘It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery.’

Why was there a concession through Moses all those years before to allow a man to divorce his wife? Why? Because of their hardness of heart. God’s plan is that marriage is a lifelong relationship of two imperfect people who never give up on one another, but if we allow our hearts to harden, eventually, we do give up on one another. Think about it. Your heart doesn’t harden to something overnight, not normally. Sure, there are exceptions. If someone were to punch you in the face, or hurt one of your children, or steal something from you, sure, your heart would harden pretty much instantly, and for those women who’ve suffered abuse and are suffering abuse, I totally get that.

We’re going to talk more about that after the break, but for most of us, this hardening of heart is this accumulation effect. A combination of the stresses and strains of life in general – work, finances, the mortgage, the kids, the commute, tiredness, exhaustion, sickness, just putting food on the table, and on-top of all that, putting up with your marriage partner’s weaknesses and failures, and let’s face it, we all have those. So somewhere, as we swim through that toxic cocktail of life, we decide that this isn’t fair.

A few years ago, there was a really popular song on the top of the charts called “What About Me”. Here’s how the chorus goes; What about me? It isn’t fair. I’ve had enough, now I want my share. Can’t you see I want to live? But you just take more than you give. There’s the anthem of a person whose marriage is headed for the divorce courts. People say that they’ve drifted apart; yeah, maybe, but the bigger problem is that their hearts have hardened, as they decide that they’re not getting their fair share. You see, we make the mistake of thinking that marriage is fifty-fifty. No, divorce is fifty-fifty, marriage is a hundred-hundred.

So that’s the problem. This hardening of hearts. The question is, what do you do about it? How do you combat it? How do you stop it happening in the first place? Well, there’s a simple answer to those questions, although while the answer is simple, living it out isn’t. The answer is forgiveness. Forgiving your wife, forgiving your husband, every time they do something that annoys you or frustrates you or hurts you. Every time, as quickly as possible. Peter the apostle had a question about forgiveness and here’s how Jesus dealt with it; Matthew 18:21-22:

Peter came to Jesus and said, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’

Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.’

Ok. The question was in the context of church relationships, but if he’d asked it in terms of marriage relationships, I’m sure Jesus would have said, “Not seven times, but seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven times”! Here’s how that’s supposed to play itself out.

I’m married to a wonderful woman, Jacqui. Now she’s not perfect any more than I’m perfect, but she is the most wonderful wife, so here’s the decision I’ve made; whenever she says or does something that frustrates me or angers me or even sometimes hurts me, I’ve decided that I am going to forgive her, here and now. Completely forgive her, completely wipe the slate clean, just as quickly as I can. Like within ten minutes or worst case, maybe half an hour. Forgiveness, quickly and completely.

No, it’s not always easy, but that’s what Jesus told me to do, and would you like to know the impact of that on me? Every morning I wake up with a new love for her in my heart. Just as God’s mercies are new for me every morning, so my mercies towards her are new every morning because I didn’t let the sun go down on my anger. Ephesians 4:26:

Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

I don’t execute that perfectly every time, and sometimes it involves prayer for God to help me forgive, but I believe that whilst she is not perfect any more than I am, she is God’s perfect provision for me and so help me God, I’m going to love her until we’re old and grey and potty and dotty, so help me God.

Forgiveness stops your heart from hardening. It stops your relationship from falling apart. Forgiveness is the antidote to a decaying marriage, so in your marriage, what are you going to decide to do?

Separation and Divorce

There’s an interesting statistic that measures a country’s divorce rate. It’s called the divorce to marriage ratio. Here’s what it measures. In any given country, there are X number of divorces in a year, and Y number of marriages in that same year. The divorce to marriage ratio is X divided by Y. It measures the relationship between new divorces and new marriages in any given year. Now according to Wikipedia, the country that’s worst-off with the highest ratio of seventy-one percent is Belgium, so in Belgium, for every one hundred couples who tie the knot and get married this year, there will be seventy-one other couples who will get divorced. Now that’s staggering. The USA has a divorce to marriage ratio of fifty-three percent, Germany forty-nine percent, Canada forty-eight percent, the United Kingdom forty-seven percent, Australia forty-three, and New Zealand forty-two percent.

Now those aren’t just statistics; they’re tragedies. Every marriage that comes apart causes untold hurt and harm. I should know. Over twenty years ago, I went through divorce. The woman who was my wife left me for one of my best friends. It was in the middle of that that I came close to taking my own life. It was in the middle of that that I encountered Jesus for the very first time, and gave my life to Him. Today I’m happily, very happily, married to a beautiful Christian woman. Back then, the pit seemed so deep and so dark, I couldn’t see how I could possibly even make it through the next day.

I hold a Biblical belief about marriage to this day. A belief that I hold to be absolutely true, because it’s what Jesus said. Let’s have a look; Matthew 19:3-9:

Some Pharisees came to Him, and to test Him they asked Him: ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?’

And Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read that the One who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So there are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?’

But Jesus said to them, ‘It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery.’

Now despite what I’ve been through, I believe that marriage is meant to be for life, and what God has joined together is not meant to be torn apart because when it is, it causes untold pain. That’s why I always counsel couples to do whatever it takes to heal their broken marriage. If they will put God in the middle, if they will take to heart what Jesus teaches about forgiveness, they’ll discover that God can and will heal their marriage. Absolutely He will, but that’s not always possible.

In my case, the woman who was once my wife moved from my house and my bed into another man’s house and another man’s bed. That is sexual immorality. That’s something I didn’t have any control over, although for two years, I prayed and I waited to see if God would act. I was prepared to take her back, just as Hosea did with his immoral wife in the Old Testament. It didn’t happen; she divorced me.

I know that there are women listening today who are suffering abuse; mental, physical, sexual, who feel trapped as abused women often do in their marriages, and you’re sitting there right now thinking, “God, what do You have to say to me?”

So often, Christians bandy around the quote from the Old Testament that God hates divorce. Yes He does, but it’s only half of what that verse says. Let’s listen to the whole thing. Malachi 2:13-16:

‘And this you do as well: You cover the LORD’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning. Because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favour at your hand, you ask, “Why does He not?” Because the LORD was a witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she has been your companion and your wife by covenant. Did not one God make her? Both flesh and spirit are His, and what does the one God desire? Godly offspring, so look to yourselves, and do not let anyone be faithless to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce,’ says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘And covering one’s garment with violence,’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘So take heed to yourselves, and do not be faithless.’

So as it turns out, God hates three things when it comes to marriage: Unfaithfulness, divorce, and violence. So to any abused women out there, know this; God does not want you to stay in a violent relationship, He doesn’t, He just doesn’t. Clinically, psychologists will tell you that abuse is rooted in control, and often a man who’s abusive will not be able to break that cycle until the woman being abused gets herself out of that situation.

So as far as I understand what God’s Word says, it’s this; marriage is meant to be for ever, unless there is unfaithfulness or abuse. In those circumstances and in those circumstances alone, He permits divorce. No, it is not, as people today would have you believe, a valid lifestyle choice. No, God does not want you to divorce your wife or your husband because you’ve grown tired of each other or sick of each other, or you just want to move on. Marriage is a call for two imperfect people never to give up on one another, and just because other people tell you it’s ok to divorce doesn’t mean that it’s right. In the very next verse, following that passage we just read from Malachi, God says this; Malachi 2:17:

You have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet you say, ‘How have we wearied Him?’ By saying all who do evil are good in the sight of the LORD and He delights in them or by asking, ‘Where is the God of justice?’

In other words, just because other people say that something is right doesn’t make it right if God says it’s wrong. So if you’re in a marriage and thinking of divorce, don’t, unless you’re being abused, or unless your spouse is consistently being unfaithful. The world of pain that you are about to bring down on yourself, on your children, on your wider family, on your friends, simply isn’t worth it. Commit yourself to God. Commit yourself to your marriage. Forgive, and do everything that you can possibly do not just to keep your marriage together, but to make your marriage prosper and become a mighty witness to God’s miracle-working power. Amen?

And maybe if you’re in the middle of a messy divorce or you divorced someone other than for the reasons of violence and unfaithfulness, know this, God is prepared to forgive the sin, just as He’s prepared to forgive every other sin in your life, past, present and future, ‘cos Jesus died for you. His grace is sufficient for you, and if you know someone who’s going through divorce or who’s been through divorce, be there as a help, as a comfort, as an encouragement. Sometimes Christians treat other Christians who’ve been through divorce like lepers, as though the divorce thing is the only unforgiveable sin under the sun.

Well, that’s not what the Bible says, and they need you. The Christians who walked into my life twenty years ago, people whom I’d universally been rude and obnoxious to in the past because they were Christians, those people are the people through whom God saved me. They shared their lives, their faith, their homes with me, and they are the reason that I am with you today and every other day, right here on this programme. You can have such a mighty impact for good in the life of someone who’s suffering from divorce, in the lives of their wider children and family. Sure, God hates divorce, but divorce happens, and when it does, it devastates lives, but God’s grace is sufficient for all of us, in every circumstance.

A Personal Take on Divorce

As I mentioned earlier, I am one of the forty percent of married people in Australia who has been through divorce, and so today’s message for me isn’t a theory lesson it comes from deep in my heart. Today, I am so happily married to my wife Jacqui, I can’t begin to tell you, but back then, when my first wife left me, I thought that my world had come to an end. I truly came this close to taking my own life, and that was before I found out that she was running off with one of my best friends – a man whom I’d known since we were little children. The devastation of that sort of rejection and infidelity, from two people who were supposed to stand by me, is simply beyond words. I mean, I’m a wordsmith, that’s what I do. Words are the brushstrokes of the pictures that I paint, but despite it, I cannot find the words to describe the terrible inky blackness of that hole that I found myself in just over twenty years ago. The reason I’m telling you this, the reason that I’m being so transparent with you about this, is because I know that there are some people listening in today who are in that same hole.

There’s a guy walking down the road and he falls into a deep hole. Try as he might, he can’t get out, so he shouts and screams and eventually, a banker passes by and looks down into the hole. The man says, “Look. I’m in this hole and I can’t get out. Can you help me?” so the banker writes out a cheque for a lot of money and throws it down into the hole, and goes his way.

A few minutes later, a priest happens by, and the man shouts up and says to him, “Father, father, I’m in this hole and I can’t get out. Can you help me?” so the priest writes out a prayer on a piece of paper and throws it down to the man in the hole, and goes on his way.

Then a friend of this man happens along, and with some relief, the man shouts up to him, “I’ve fallen into this hole and I can’t get out. Can you help me?” In that instant, the friend jumps down into the hole with a bang, and the guy in the hole says, “What did you do that for? Now we’re both stuck down in the hole!”

But the friend says to the man, “Yeah, but I’ve been in this hole before, and I know a way out.”

If you’re down in that hole of a marriage coming apart or perhaps you’re going through the aftermath of a divorce, today, I am your friend. I have been in that hole before, and I know the way out. In fact, really, there’s only one way out. In the inky blackness of those days, I met Jesus, and His light shone evermore the brighter with the depth of the darkness that surrounded me. In those days, people tried to say things and to do things that’d help, but nothing seemed to help. Nothing they could say or do could take away the hurt, and you know, I believe that that’s how it’s meant to be. The only person who could make a difference was Jesus. I spent hours with Him, praying alone, reading the Bible alone, weeping in His presence, alone, and it was in that terrible place that my faith began. My relationship with Jesus began. The joy of the LORD, the peace of Christ, the hope in Him, began.

Those days were so terrible that I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy and yet, in a strange sort of a way, they were so wonderful that I wouldn’t swap them for the world. Jesus. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. So to anyone who is in that dark hole today, I say, turn to Him. He is the only One who can and will make a difference, and I leave you with this Scripture verse to cling to in faith – a word from God for you; Isaiah 41:9-10:

You are My servant; I have chosen you, I have not cast you off. Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you; I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

May you be blessed as you encounter Jesus Christ, your Saviour.

So, de facto relationships are becoming more and more common. Hey! Let’s hitch up, let’s live together, let’s see how it goes, it makes sense, sure, why not? And yet that’s not God’s perfect plan for you, for me, or for anyone else for that matter. So if it isn’t, you have to ask yourself … why not?

De Facto Relationships

Back when I was young, we’re talking the 1960’s and 70’s here, a man and a woman living together without being married was an absolute scandal. A woman falling pregnant outside marriage – well, that was pretty much unthinkable.

Today, both those things, in most societies, represent a perfectly valid lifestyle choice. The question is … is it progress? Or is it a retrograde step that’s decaying the very fabric of our society? Right there, you have the divide between liberalism and conservatism, a divide that seems to dominate the politics of many a country.

I’m going to tell you right up front what I think and why. I believe that God’s plan is for a man and a woman – and only a man and a woman – to be joined together in a lifelong relationship of marriage. A permanent, intimate relationship – emotional, spiritual, physical, financial – the whole kit and caboodle. The whole nine yards. The whole cottin’-pickin’ lot. All in, boots and all.

At this point, some people might want to brand me a conservative, a fundamentalist and anything else they can think of, maybe a bigot. It seems these days, when we disagree with someone, what we do, is we hurl a label at them that has derogatory connotations, as a way of marginalising their perspective.

This happens particularly when Christians express views which go against popular opinion and the ‘wisdom of the day’. It seems to me, that when we’re talking about what constitutes a family, people have very short memories. It’s only 30 or 40 years ago, well within my lifetime, that both the extended and the nuclear families were the norm.

Where marriage was the appropriate way to express love between a man and a woman. Where marriage was the only place in which to bring children into this world. All of that was based largely on the Judeo-Christian beliefs that come from, yes, you guessed it … the Bible. Well, today many have rejected those, considering marriage to be an anachronistic. And let’s face it, sex drives a lot of things.

We don’t like to talk too much about it, but we’re all sexual beings and sex drive is an incredibly powerful drive – and rightly so. It’s part of God’s plan and God’s design, to make sure that we continue to be abundant and multiply and fill the earth. Well, that bit seems to be working just fine.

But God’s plan for sex is to bind two people together – a man and a woman – together in a lifelong relationship. Jesus, quoting the book of Genesis, puts it this way; Matthew chapter 19, verse 5:

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

God’s good and perfect will is for a lifelong relationship of commitment and intimacy. Intimacy is more than sex, it’s a deep emotional connection that finds its fulfilment in a man and a woman exclusively sharing their lives and their bodies with one another. Hey, it’s a beautiful plan! It’s God’s very best for us.

And so I look at this whole living together, de facto relationships thing without commitment … and I ask myself, why would you possibly want to do that? Why would you want to settle for second best?

I’ve spoken to women who have decided to live with men. And their biggest complaint is the lack of commitment. There’s an old saying that women give sex in order to get love and men give love in order to get sex. Maybe that’s a bit cynical, but I think there’s some truth in that.

I remember one woman, living with a man, saying to me – My mother told me never to live with a man, because if you do, he won’t want to marry you. I think she was right.

We live in an era where values of courage, of persistence, of sacrifice, of discipline, of commitment are being undermined, eroded through the self-centredness of a consumer society in which we have so much choice as to how we can entertain ourselves and fulfil ourselves. Although let’s be honest, filling ourselves never delivers the fulfilment we’re looking for.

How much of not making the commitment of marriage, falls into this self-centredness that we’ve bred into ourselves, I wonder? Well, what I’ll do is that I’ll try before I buy. I’ll live with her, or him as the case may be, and we’ll see if it works. If we’re compatible. That’s the mentality.

Well let me tell you – no man and woman are completely compatible. They are going to drive each other nuts sometimes. They are going to hurt each other sometimes, they are going to tread on each other’s toes and get in each other’s spaces sometimes.

And when your partner is driving you completely bonkers, the one thing that keeps you together isn’t the great sex I have to tell you, or all the romantic notions that you had when you set out on this journey.

What keeps you together is the commitment that you made to one another when you took your marriage vows. It’s the sense of inviolable commitment that causes you to forgive. It’s that sense of commitment that causes you to cover up the faults of the other and to compensate for them.

By definition, love cannot be love unless it’s based on commitment. So-called love without commitment is just a form of manipulation, getting what you want out of the relationship. And when you’re done, hey, just walk away.

That is not God’s plan. That is not God’s best. And I have to tell you I have never met a couple who abstained from sexual intimacy until they were married, who regretted that. But I have met plenty of people who have had multiple sexual partners and are now in a marriage, who regret their sleeping around.

Protracted Singleness

In the UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand, Australia, in fact, across the western world, 28% of households contain only one person. That’s staggering! Between one quarter and one third of all households contain only one person. And 28% seems to be a pretty standard figure across the so-called developed world.

Now, you might think that in much more family-oriented societies like Asia the picture would be different, and to some extent it is, but things are changing. Take India for instance, this is what the Hindustan Times has to say:

Since the dawn of time, human societies have structured themselves around the family group held together by bonds of affinity. In India, typically, families were large, including several generations and tightly knit. There was safety in numbers in an unpredictable world with meager resources. Only those who didn’t have a choice, victims of some terrible calamity, were compelled to live alone. But things are changing.

Indeed, they are changing so fast that India will have 17.4 million single person households by 2020. According to the projections of London based marketing firm Euromonitor, only the US, China and Japan, in that order, will have more single person households. This is a big shift — culturally and economically — for a society that generally celebrates the idea of family.

And see that’s the transition that’s been going on around the world over the last fifty or so years. As levels of affluence have risen, the extended family has given way to the nuclear family, which in many respects, is giving way to the single person household. Why is it related to affluence?

Well, the more affluent we become, the less we need ‘safety in numbers’, or so we think. But not withstanding this trend, so many people who are married, who are living in family relationships look down on singleness. And that is particularly true, let me say, of Christians.

The activities of many churches revolve around families and couples, leaving singles out in the cold. People head off after church on Sundays in groups, to have lunch or whatever. The young families with the kids tend to go out together, and the older people without kids form clusters and go somewhere else for a quieter lunch. And the singles – and I remember this happening to me when I was single – seem to be just … forgotten.

We don’t quite say it out loud, but singleness in the thoughts of many, is a lesser state. There must be something wrong with you if you’re single. But that’s simply not what the Bible teaches. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. According to God’s Word, and therefore, according to God, singleness is a much higher calling than being married. 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 1 to 8:

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman.’ But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. But this I say by way of concession, not of a command. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and one having a different kind.

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if you are not practicing self- control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

Now the thing that I love about God’s Word is that it’s plain and direct about things. And here, God is saying through Paul … well, He’s stating the blindingly glimpsingly obvious. We both, men and women, have a sex drive. It’s been put there by God for a very good reason, to procreate the species and as a great blessing of intimacy between husband and wife. But the only appropriate place where that should be exercised is in the context of a lifelong, exclusive relationship between one man and one woman.

And despite the strong assertions to the contrary these days when it comes to same–sex relationships, or casual heterosexual relationships, or just living together – as much as those sins are being promoted as valid lifestyle choice, you don’t have to be a psychologist or a biologist to figure out the wisdom of God’s plan of the expression of intimacy in marriage between a man and a woman alone.

But pick up now what the apostle Paul says about all this … I say this by way of concession not of a command. I wish that all were as I myself am (which is single). But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind of gift, and another having another kind of gift. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am.

Now why does Paul say that? Well, frankly, Paul simply couldn’t have done what he did if he’d been married. In fact in this very same chapter, he goes on to say that; 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 28 and 32 to 38:

Those who marry will experience distress in this life and I would spare you from that. … I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, and how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.

…So then, he who marries his fiancée does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better. A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, only in the Lord. But in my judgment she is more blessed if she remains as she is.

Do you see what he’s saying here – singleness is a higher calling than marriage, because when you’re single you can be singularly focussed on God and getting about the business of doing what He’s called you to do.

So, to those who are single, let me say this: recognise that this may be God’s calling on your life. If it isn’t, if in your heart of hearts you know it isn’t, don’t rush out there and get hitched to the first wife or husband that comes along. As someone once said to me when I was single and keen to find a wife, the only thing worse than being single, is being married to the wrong person.

But if you know in your heart of hearts, that God has called you to a single life to serve Him, then I want you to be encouraged today to recognise the high calling that He has put on you and to get on with being who He made you to be. Don’t let the trashy opinions of others who seem to stare down their noses at your singleness, distract you from what God has called you to do. The one who marries will do well, but the one who refrains from marriage will do better.

And to all those who are living in families, and who enjoy that, I pray that this message about singleness will be a bit of a wakeup call of the special single people that you have in your life.

Churches … wake up to these special people whom God has called and placed in your midst. They are free agents, free agents to work as soldiers of the Lord in the spiritual battle for souls that is playing itself out around the globe. They are capable of giving time that married people aren’t capable of giving. They are capable of getting up and going, wherever God calls them on the globe to serve Him, in a way that we married people are not.

The single life is a much higher calling than married life, a calling that, as Jesus said, not all are able to follow.

God’s Family

Well, over the last few weeks we’ve been talking about all different aspects of our families, in this series that I’ve called: ‘Family – When Things Don’t Turn Out the Way You’d Hoped.’

We all sometimes look at our own family situations and wonder what we have gotten ourselves into, and why is it so hard, and some days, why are our family members so difficult, on and on and on, right? No matter how blessed you are through your family, there are times when your thinking heads down that path. We look at all those other apparently perfect families ‘out there’ and wonder to ourselves, why am I having so many problems, why is this so hard?

We think at this point that we’re Robinson Crusoe, that we’re the only person on the planet that’s going through what we’re going through. “Why is my husband so difficult? Why doesn’t he get it?!” Or … “Why is she so emotional? Can’t she just think through it logically for once in her life?! Or when it comes to our children … Is he ever going to grow out of this? Is she ever going to turn out alright? Why can’t they just do as they’re told for once?”

And for those who are single, for those whom we talked about before the break who are part of the mounting statistics of single person households across the globe, “If only I had some more people around me who I could talk to, who understand.”

Those pressures mount up and mount up and unless we have people to share them with, people who’ve been there, people who aren’t directly involved and yet understand and care, the pressures can become unbearable.

One of the things that God’s Word talks a lot about is His family, the church. Now, I know that many people have had bad experiences at church. We all have in fact, truth be known. And the reason is that there aren’t any perfect families on the planet – and God’s family is no different. In fact, because it’s so much bigger than our immediate family, there are many more imperfect people in it to frustrate us and to annoy us and some days to hurt us.

People often look at the church and they imagine that it’s like Noah’s ark, two perfect specimens of each type. But that’s not it. It’s not like walking into a zoo and seeing a perfect family of lions in this enclosure and the perfect family of monkeys in that enclosure and the perfect family of deer in that enclosure.

Think more … train wreck. Think more hospital emergency ward with people being patched up. Think rehabilitation ward, as people learn to walk again and to talk again. God’s family, the church, is jam packed full of sinners saved by grace. People, frankly, who look very much like you and me. They’re all different, they all have different strengths and weaknesses. Here’s the picture that the apostle Paul paints of this large and very imperfect family; 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 12 to 27:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of the one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less part of the body. And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, just as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need for you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with great respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually you are members of it.

That’s a really powerful picture – people with different abilities and different attributes and different weaknesses. See, my weakness is probably your strength. I don’t have a pastoral bone in my body, but you’re able to visit people in hospital and sit with them for hours as they recover … or perhaps as they die. You may not be much of a public speaker, whereas I’m able to stand up in front of a group of 5 people or 50,000 people and open the scriptures in a way that changes people’s lives.

Does it make sense for my inability to do what you can do, to get you upset or vice versa? No!

And in that family, in God’s family, there are people who’ve been through what you are going through in your life. There are older women there for the younger wives, who have seen their difficult teenagers grow up into apparently normal, effective adults – older women who can encourage you and share some wisdom with you if you are a young mother struggling, juggling work and family.

There are older men, for you young guys who don’t know where your life is headed, who have enough grey hair and life experience to sit with you and share with you.

There are people who have been through marriage breakdown and divorce and come out the other side, who can hold and comfort those who are struggling through that terrible time right now.

That’s why the Bible says this; Hebrews chapter 10, verses 23 to 25:

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and to good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.