Of course, families are and always were, God’s idea. Yet so often these days, families seem to be, well, let’s be honest, just a tad dysfunctional. And as we each grapple with the realities of family life, all too often, we look around at all those apparently normal, balanced, near-perfect families out there and wonder to ourselves – what’s wrong with my family? What’s going on here?

The Dysfunctional Family

Well, here we are, a new week! And today we are going to start a discussion, you and I, about something completely different. Over these next few weeks on the programme we are going to be taking a look at what it means to build a godly family. I’ll tell you why.

Recently here at the ministry of Christianityworks we asked our friends and supporters to write in to us to share their prayer requests and here’s what struck me: at least eighty percent of the prayer requests we received – and there were a lot of them, I have to tell you – at least eighty percent were asking us to pray for people’s families: for my son or my wife, for my daughter, my husband, my auntie, my cousins. You know something? We actually care about our families. As difficult and as strife torn as many families are, blood is thicker than water and our families really do matter to us

And we don’t have to look very far, you know, in society to see todays families are becoming more and more dysfunctional. But here’s the thing: we kind of know that but somehow we imagine that, well, there’s this perfect family out there. In fact, the perfect family is the norm and the dysfunction we see in our own families, well, we are just the only ones.

“It’s my fault. I’ve botched it up. We’re just stuck with this – it’s the way it is. The teenagers who don’t respect their parents; the adults in our extended families who are having feuds and they haven’t talked to each other for ages because they argued over distributing the assets of their parents when they died eight years ago. No, you see, it’s just my family that’s a mess. And that’s the thing, it’s what I’ve been handed; it’s the hand I’ve been dealt and there’s just nothing I can do about it – there’s just nothing. What’s the point?”

It’s true, isn’t? Living out families is sometimes like living out a gorilla war. It’s so in your face; every time you come home; every time you walk in the door – the whole “family thing” greets you. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that every family is a basket-case – hopefully yours isn’t but sometimes we are so close to it all, it kind of feels like it is a basket-case. We get it out of perspective.

And in the middle of this constant relational tension you can get to feeling like, “Aw, God, what’s going on here? Why can’t I have a normal family like everybody else – like those people next door?” And let me tell you, I’m not talking about this whole “family thing” from some perfect place, I can tell you.

Before I gave my life over to Jesus a decade and a half ago, I’ve got to tell you I made some huge blunders that changed the very course of my life and I am still far from perfect. But since that time God’s been teaching me a new way – I’m still learning.

So I’m at a certain place in my journey and you are at a certain place in your journey and let’s get over this comparing and judging, “Other people have better families than me.” There’s only one issue: “Where do we go from here?” And I for one, I am about building a godly family because there is such reward in that; such harvest and not just one day in the future but along the way, here and now – the joy of investing and sacrificing to make a difference in the lives of those whom we love.

We will talk about that over the coming weeks but today I just want to give us some comfort that God knows all about dysfunctional families. You can take the very first human family, if you like – Adam and Eve – and their two sons Cain and Abel. You probably know the story of Adam and Eve – you know, the Garden of Eden, then they sinned; they ate the apple and God kicked them out and they had a couple of sons.

But I want to show you something about this family – the interactions between the people – that’s a real stark reminder about the dysfunction in family. You often hear people talking about Adam and Eve and the snake and all that stuff from a theological perspective – and that’s great – but what about from a family perspective? Okay, Adam and Eve, they’ve sinned; they ate from that one tree that God told them not to. God comes looking for them – they are hiding in the garden. I have always thought that was incredibly smart to be hiding from God! And God brings Adam to account:

He says to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” And the man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit from the tree and then I ate it.” And then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me. I ate.”

And the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures. Upon your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat for all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers and he will strike your head and you will strike his heel.

Comes from Genesis chapter 3, verses 11 to 15

So there it is: they rebelled against God and God – well, Adam blames Eve. The very first thing he does when he does something wrong Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake and I guess, the snake didn’t have a leg to stand on! You see what happens? We go from perfect harmony to dysfunction.

God tells them that that is going to be the norm from now on there’s going to be enmity between the man and the woman, there’s going to be enmity amongst the children and that’s exactly what happens. Listen to what Cain and Abel … what their relationship ends up like:

Abel was the keeper of sheep and Cain the tiller of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel, for his part, brought the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering but for Cain and his offering, God had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted and if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you but you must master it. 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.

Genesis Chapter 4.

So there you have it – the very first family. They rebel against God; husband turns against wife, brother kills brother. It’s the absolute natural state of affairs for a family that has turned its back on God. But here’s the good new, there’s a flip side to this coin for the family that turns back to God. A family that honours God; a family that has God as the head of its household – that family can expect God to bless it. Have another listen. Deuteronomy Chapter 5, beginning at verse 8:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven or above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

In other words, when we put God at the head of our lives and the head of our families, He will show us His steadfast, unwavering love, not just to us but to a thousand generations. And you know what that means? It doesn’t matter how bad things have become in our families, when we honour God, He in turn will honour us.

Breaking with the Past

One of the things that bring so much dysfunction into families are the things of the past – things that have been handed down genetically, emotionally and spiritually. Our parents hand so many things down to us – their genes, their strengths and their weaknesses. People say that I look like my dad, I even walk like him but it wasn’t till I saw myself in a TV interview that I was shocked to realise that my very mannerisms are so much like my fathers.

It’s pretty scary! And so alcohol addictions and bad tempers and a tendency to whinge and complain; all sorts of things end up being handed down from generation to generation.

Dysfunctional families are much more likely to produce children that grow up to have their own dysfunctional families. Where does it end? Well, I have a simple answer to that – it ends today, right here and now, this very minute – that’s when it ends. Let me explain. See, it’s really easy to blame our parents for things … for the bad things that happen. If abuse happened in your childhood or you had a father with a bad temper or your parents smoked; whatever it is and they handed those things down to you.

I don’t know about your parents but mine, I had good parents. They weren’t perfect, they just worked hard and I am sure they can look back at their lives and go, “Well, I could have done this better or I could have done that better,” but there is no point in just sitting here and blaming them and blaming the past. Things do get handed down from generation to generation, some of them are good things but others aren’t.

When you go and see your doctor, one of the first things he’ll ask you about is your family history. Is there a history of high blood pressure or diabetes or heart disease or mental health issues or breast cancer? Family history has a lot to do with our physical well-being.

Now my dad had Type ll Diabetes and in the end it took his life. My mother has high blood pressure and so I can sit here without exercising, eating whatever I want and whinge and complain about the fact that they could give me diabetes and high blood pressure, or I can get off my backside and do something about it. There’s a pretty clear alternative.

Most illnesses, you can work against them and reduce the risk and it’s the same with emotional and spiritual things that get handed down to us. Maybe you had parents who were into the occult, maybe you had parents who fought like cat and dog, maybe you had parents who knew about God but simply didn’t honour God with their lives. Well, you’ve got two choices – you can sit there and complain about it or you can do something about it.

Have a listen to what happens when we put other things before God. We looked at it earlier. God say

I am a jealous God and I will punish children for the iniquity of their parents to the third and fourth generation. But those who show steadfast love, I will bless to the thousandth generation.

It’s pretty straight forward! When parents turn away from God and chase after other things, it’s going to have an impact – not just on them – but on their children and their children’s children.

It’s obvious. We’ve seen how it works. A child brought up by an alcoholic father is likely to suffer the consequences of that in adulthood. There’s every chance that it will impact not just them but it will be passed down to their kids. It’s not rocket science – we’ve all seen it but look at the alternative that God talks about:

Showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

A thousand generations – a new generation every twenty five years, that’s twenty five thousand years! We are only a fraction of the way into that since this was written (Deuteronomy) a few thousand years BC. Do you get it? God’s blessing to us and our families when we honour Him is just massive, and you see that in a lot of godly families. This dynasty of blessing flows down from one generation to the next.

Maybe there are things from your past – emotional, spiritual – that are impacting your life. Today is the day that we can choose to break that chain. Today is the day that we can choose to break free from the power of the past. Listen to the prayer that Nehemiah prayed:

O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps the covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you, day and night, for your servants the people of Israel. Confessing the sins of the people of Israel which we have sinned against you, both I and my family have sinned.

And Nehemiah then goes on to ask for forgiveness; he turns away from that and he moves on. It’s a simple prayer; it’s a prayer of repentance. It breaks the linkage to the sin of previous generations – Nehemiah, his ancestors and his family.

We have all sinned! God is a God who forgives and God is a God who makes all things new again. He breaks the power of the past over us because His heart is to bless to a thousand generations. The Apostle Paul writes in Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17:

If anyone is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and all things are new.

Let me take you back to some of the things that maybe you’ve had handed down to you – addictions or anger or bad behaviour or whatever it is – we can receive freedom from those things simply by praying and believing. God will work out His answer to our prayer in our lives in His good time

Meanwhile we can take stock of those things and decide to start doing something about them. Not in our own fancy strength but through a relationship with Jesus which transforms us. It is time to end the cycle of sin in our families – to stop it dead here. The buck stops with you and me. How about it?

Setting the Course

Now it doesn’t matter how dysfunctional a family is at the moment, all it takes is one member of that family to turn back to God; to honour God and God can and will make an awesome and mighty difference. It may take time, it may take longer than you and I would prefer but God is a God of grace – His heart is to bless our family to a thousand generations and He’s looking for some godly men, godly women, godly children to take a stand and say, “Enough is enough! It is time for me to build a godly family.” First Corinthians chapter 4, verse 20 in the Message translation says this:

God’s way is not a matter of mere talk, it’s an empowered life.

That’s why this ministry I’m involved in is called Christianityworks because it actually does. So let’s talk about making it happen – an empowered life that sets about building a godly family. But you know what I have noticed? We can talk about a lot of stuff but most times nothing changes unless we actually do something.

It’s true at work; it’s true at home! How often have you been to a meeting at work and people talk about a whole bunch of stuff: “We’ll do this, we’ll do that”, but after the meeting no one does anything. And guess what? Nothing changes; nothing!

We come home at the end of the day; we need a rest; we ignore things – the badly behaved children for example. There’s a great proverb: Proverbs chapter 29, verse 17 that says:

Discipline your children and they will give you rest; they will give you the delight of your heart.

I have seen this down at the local supermarket. The mother’s is with the child and the child just grinds her down through bad behaviour and she’s tired … she’s too tired to do anything about it so she lets this kid run riot, causing her grief and causing everybody else grief as well.

Why does it happen? I’ll tell you why – probably because dad is too tired to discipline the child when he comes home. Does he enjoy their behaviour? No! But this kid walks all over his mother, she’s exhausted and … and mind you the kid is only seven – wait till the little terror becomes a teenager!

You see, there’s fruit in building a godly family – tremendous fruit. Discipline your children and what do you get? Peace and a delighted heart! What you sow is what you reap. The problem is sowing is hard work sometimes and reaping seems … well, such a long way off, doesn’t it?

Let me tell you something – we have been talking about building a godly family but it ain’t going to happen unless we step out in faith and start making it happen. Yes, it’s about God blessing our efforts but if He’s got nothing to bless then, He got nothing to bless. I mean, if I am twenty kilos overweight, forty pounds, and I want to be trim, taut and terrific and I pray and pray and believe God for a breakthrough but I keep eating and drinking the same old rubbish and I don’t exercise.

Let me ask you something – is God going to zap me while I am lying on the sofa and miraculously remove the excess weight? Well, He could, and with God I never rule anything out but I have never quite seen it happen that way, have you?

Why would we think it is any different building a godly family? We behave ourselves into a bad place by what we say, what we do, what we fail to do – we behave our families into that bad place and yes, we should pray. But God expects us to start behaving ourselves out of that place. And that’s what we are going to be talking about over the next three weeks.

He is going to bless that but we have to do our part. So let me ask you something – do you want to have a godly family because if you do you are going to have to decide; that is what we want, plan it and start living it? We are going to have to decide that some changes have to be made. This easy, comfortable, lazy existence has to change. Discipline is painful; kids don’t like it much. It takes strength and perseverance but it pays dividends in their lives and in ours.

Let me ask you, how much do you want to have a godly family? And if the answer is, “Yes, I do. I do!”, then some tough decisions have to be made. If your family is one with a husband and a wife, then it is up to the both of you. If it is a single parent family then it is up to you alone. But husband and wife have to talk and dream and decide what is important and set priorities and figure out how to do this – what steps to take first, and so on.

Mum and dad, you are the leaders and I happen to believe that ultimately, the father is responsible for the spiritual growth and nourishment and development of his family. The buck stops with you, dad! And that’s not a sexist thing because I have to tell you, so many women would give their eyeteeth if their husbands would just step up to the plate and take on a leadership role. So many kids would love to have parents who were interested in them, who spend time and efforts setting boundaries, enforcing those boundaries, nurturing them within those boundaries.

I have to tell you, as a person, I am a natural isolationist. I like my own company, oft times over the company of others. I really enjoy retreating to my own space after a hard day at the office, so for me, given who I am, getting involved with the family and kids and listening to what happened to them at school and at work – it’s not a natural gig, you know?

But we have to start somewhere. We can’t build a godly family if there is no relationship; if there is no interaction; if we are not involved in planning and making it happen. We are going to talk about some of that over the next few weeks. In fact, I have been speaking to one of the godliest families I know; some friends of mine who live in the USA – mum, dad and their NINE children. They have given me some of their pointers, both the parents and the children. This massive tribe, I have to tell you, they have got their act so well together.

I know it’s not perfect, but I ask them and I ask the kids, “Tell me what this godly family thing is about.” I’m going to talk about that in the next few weeks but right now, we have to decide, each one of us, do we really want to have a godly family? Well, do we? And if we do, what are we going to do about it.

Maybe that’s something you can pray about and think about and talk about over this next week. We will look at it some more when we get together again at the same time next week, this whole thing of building a godly family.

But I have to tell you, when I read about this God who says, “Look, I don’t care what has happened in the past. You turn back and you honour Me in your lives, in your family and I tell you what, I won’t just bless you, I’ll bless your children and I’ll bless your children’s children and I’ll bless their children and the next generation.”

In fact, the blessing when you break the curses that have been handed down to you, simply by praying and honouring God and turning back to Him, the blessing that flows is a blessing that flows for a thousand generations. That’s who God is!

Peace is one of those things – well, who doesn’t want peace in their lives. Freedom from conflict. But imagine, imagine what a blessing it must be, to have peace at home.  A family that thrives on peace instead of being lost in conflict.

What a Blessing

If God offered you anything you wanted in this world, anything at all, what would you ask for? Tough question. It takes a bit of thinking about – a new car; a bigger house; good health; a long life. There are so many things to choose from. What would you choose? Can I tell you something, after the basic provisions of enough air to breath, water to drink and food to eat and a roof over my head, do you know what’s right up there for me? Peace, just being able to live life in peace.

If you have a Bible, open it up at 1 Kings in the Old Testament, chapter 22 and verse 17. This is what it says:

Then Micaiah said, ‘I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep that have no shepherd’. And the Lord said, ‘These have no master, let each one go home in peace’.

There’s something … something about being able to go home in peace. To kind of walk in the front the door, close it behind you, be in this sanctuary called “home” and to be able to withdraw from the world with our families and have peace.

In fact my hunch is, if you and I did a survey and a peaceful home was one of the things on that list, many a person would choose that because there is such a blessing in a peaceful home. Many a home is torn by strife – discord, disrespect, dissension – and many a family is disintegrating. What if we could have a peaceful home? What a blessing that would be.

When you look around this world there are many homes that are far from being peaceful. They’re a long way from that. And depending on where you live, either divorce is running at almost one in every two marriages or – if divorce isn’t quite the cultural norm – many of the so called families are no more than warring adults and a bunch of angry, ill-disciplined children.

There’s no peace in those places. You can’t have peace when the people aren’t living a peaceful life. There’s an interesting statement at the beginning of the Old Testament book of Proverbs. Proverbs is Wisdom Literature. Have a look at Proverbs chapter 1 verse 7:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

When it comes to peace, I had an interesting email from a rebel fighter in a war-torn part of Africa last year. He listened to a program of ours on the radio about the fear of God. Have a listen to what he said:

“Recently I was attending a peace conference. While I was in my hotel room I turned on the radio. As I was listening to your program, I realized that with no fear of God in our hearts there will be no peace. No peace at all.

This eight minutes were enough to take me to a turning point in my life as well as in my peace effort in this region. I left the room as a changed man. I’d been on the battlefield for 13 years now. I don’t know how many people have died because of my gun but what I know is that I decided to lay down my arms.”

Isn’t that an amazing testimony? But do you get it? Peace comes when we fear God. Peace comes when we decide to do it His way. Peace comes when we lay down our guns and stop shooting because deep in our hearts the fear of God has taken root – a right fear; a good fear – when we decide to start living our lives His way, the right way.

There’s a name for that. It’s called righteousness and righteousness has a real impact on our home lives. Again listen to the prophet Isaiah. I’m reading from Isaiah chapter 2 beginning at verse 7. Listen to how he puts it:

The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, a secure dwelling and in quiet resting places.

Man, what an incredible blessing. Peaceful habitation, a secure dwelling and quiet resting places. Let me ask you something. Is that something that you want for your home, for your family? When you walk in the front door and close it and shut out the rest of the world out there, is that the sort of home that you want to have.

I believe that it is time for us to start building a godly home; to take seriously our responsibility to play our part in making our homes godly. I don’t mean being perfect. We are imperfect people and so are going to have an imperfect home. Sure. But you know something, as we start to get the fear of God happening in our hearts as we honour God, as we start to decide to live our lives His way, something happens.

It’s a bit like that rebel fighter. Peace breaks out. It won’t happen over night. It may take months or even years to sort through some of the messes we’ve created and I know that we can’t change the past but we can change from this moment forward.

What a blessing a peaceful home is. I’ve lived in both. A house of conflict and a house of peace and let me tell you, peace is so much better. There’s a price to pay. I can’t have all my own way any more. You know something, that’s good, that’s something I had to learn and I’m still learning but I’m absolutely determined to do the best I can to make the home I live in peaceful. Not just for me, but for my wife, Jacqui and my beautiful daughter Melissa. They’re entitled to peace too, you know.

Now there are going to be times when the three of us rub one another the wrong way, when it just doesn’t quite work. But today on the program we’re going to be taking a look at some really practical things we can do to have a godly family and peaceful home.

I was talking recently to a real estate agent who was selling a house for a couple that had just separated. Every week they have the sales meeting with the real estate agent to see how the sale’s progressing. He was telling me how difficult those meetings were. He said you can cut the air with a knife. These two detest each other. They couldn’t see eye to eye on anything. Why is that? How did that happen? How did things get to such a low point?

Let me tell you, that’s the inevitable outcome if we live in our families for ourselves, selfishly. What I can get out of it. It starts not long enough after a couple’s married, tiny cracks appear, battles start that turn into raging wars and it tears families apart. Life wasn’t meant to be lived that way. We weren’t meant to live in a war zone called family. And part of what needs to happen in our homes is that each one of us needs to bring ourselves under the authority of God Himself. Godly people have the opportunity to build a godly home.

It’s no slam dunk by the way. It’s no certainty but at least we have the opportunity. Ungodly people have got no show. Let me ask you again, what do you want? Do you want what the prophet Isaiah was talking about?

The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places.

Is that what you want? Or do you want a home of discord and dissension.

Husband and Father

Now I truly believe that the husband, the father, the man, has such a great role to play in bringing peace. We men are a funny breed. There is something deep inside us that makes us the protectors and the providers for our families. Most men, not all, but most men are programmed, hard-wired, to provide and protect. Okay, these days women often go to work and bring income into the house (and that’s great), but it tends to be the man – the husband, the father – who carries the burden of protection and provision around in his heart.

It’s kind of how we blokes are. And even though we can get it wrong (we can become dominating, and reclusive and uncommunicative and in fact, downright abusive) you know there’s something special about the way God’s made us. There’s something inside us that’s wants to lead … and that, that is a real asset to our families. I don’t know about you, but I want a peaceful habitation, secure dwelling, peaceful resting place just like Isaiah spoke when we looked before the break.

And funnily enough it fits so well with the thing we men carry around inside us somewhere – to be the protector and the provider. Because if we really thought about it, that’s the sort of home we’d like to provide for our families, I certainly would. And that snug fit, that kind of hand in glove thing that’s happening here between God’s promise of a peaceful home and the man’s desire to provide and protect, you know what that tells me? It tells me that we men – husbands and fathers – have a big role to play in bringing this blessing to pass

That’s something I’d like to unpack right now, because if the truth be known there is more than one man listening today, for whom it’s time to step up to the plate and be a man. To be the man God made him to be; to protect, to provide, to bring peace and blessing to our homes.

The notion these days of the man being the head of the household, well, it’s not very politically correct. It’s not particularly popular. But the reality is the man’s protector/provider kind of strength fits in well for that role. Not to dominate people, not to abuse power, but to be a godly leader in the home.

And there’s the key – it’s in that adjective, “godly”, because an ungodly husband and father can be such a destructive force in the home. He’s so strong, his anger is so fierce it’s a part of who he is as a man. A father can be destructive. Have a listen to this piece of godly advice from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4:

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

You see, there the two sides of the coin in that verse. There’s a strength and you can either use that, Dad, to bring your kids up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord or you can misuse it to provoke anger in your children. Godly strength wrongly applied becomes a harsh reality and where there is a harsh judgement and treatment from an ungodly man in the home there can be no peace.

The other mistake we make in the 21st century is the mistake of abdication. Many a husband and father walk away from his role as the leader in the home. And that’s sad, because as a godly leader he can bring such an incredible peace and stability and safety and order in this chaotic thing we call family. There are a few different reasons why men walk away sometimes.

The first is that they are just plain exhausted. They are working long hours to pay off the mortgage.

The second is that it doesn’t seem politically correct anymore for him to exercise leadership. We mistake equality between men and women by thinking they’re the same. We get it all wrong. We think somehow that it means that our roles in the home are the same. They’re not because we’re different and God planned it that way. The template men have in their heads of the relationship with their mother and father well it doesn’t work anymore so they give up.

Kids have been taught to disrespect their parents. That’s the third thing. In the TV program, “The Simpsons”, dad, Homer is this stupid old slob who can never get it right. Society’s teaching our kids to defy their parents and so many a man will abdicate for these reasons. And on top of all that, he’s too busy to have a close walk with God. He, himself, therefore isn’t godly. So if you’re a man listen up and if you’re a woman listen up too because this is important.

Men, God made us in a certain way. Strong with that protector/provider for a purpose and the greatest thing that you can do for your family is to get close to God; to start praying and reading the Bible and getting close to God so that you can hear His heartbeat. It’s a beautiful strong beat, the father’s heart – a constant rhythm.

And the closer we get to God, men, the more we rediscover who God made us to be. Actually being a leader and loving and cherishing our wives and nurturing our children. It ends up coming kind of naturally. It comes naturally to cherish our wives and to nurture and discipline our children and to protect our families from the things that will upset their peace.

There are probably so men have slipped into bad habits because they’re tired, because godly ways aren’t trendy anymore. Perhaps they’re not that trendy but if we surveyed women if they wanted their husbands to step up to the plate and take up the mantle of leadership – godly leadership – you know what we’d get? A resounding, “Oh, yes, please!”

It’s great for us men to be passionate about our work. There is something my wife’s been teaching me, I have to have something left over for my family too. Not the dregs, not the leftovers but something of my best. So if you’re a man, if some of this rings true for you and is driving a bit closer to home than you wished it was, here is my encouragement to you today.

You my friend are God’s gift to your wife and to your children. He expects you to lead, he expects you to protect and provide and when we figure out what that means in our particular family – what we discover is that who we are brings such peace to our homes and that, that’s an incredible blessing.

Wife and Mother

Before the break we talked about the man, the husband, the father. What an incredible asset his strength can be in building a godly family and bringing peace to the home. Now it’s time to talk about the wife and the mother and the incredible asset that she can be in being the glue that binds the family together into a working unit; the one who makes the home a nurturing environment.

But so often the women feels used and abused. No wonder! In many places and cultures she’s expected to go out and earn income as well. In Australia at least, the lion’s share of housework is still done by women and not men.

Now the Christian view of male/female relationships can seem, well, old fashioned. But the more I delve into what the Bible has to say about male/female relationships, the more I realise that whilst maybe we wouldn’t quite use the same language today if we were writing it, what God has to say about families and husbands and wives, when you dig beneath the language that offends our 21st century sensibilities and go to the heart of what He is saying, it’s as true today as it was when it was written. Have a listen to this. 1 Peter in the New Testament, chapter 3 verse 7:

Husbands, in the same way show consideration for your wives in your life together paying honour to the woman as the weaker sex since they too are heirs of the gracious gift of life so that nothing may hinder your prayers.

That weaker sex thing makes me smile. Women after all are the ones who have the babies and the very thought of having a baby is enough to send me into a cold sweat. I mean, I go weak at the knees at the thought of what it must be like for a woman to give birth. And then the Bible calls them the weaker sex. Bit chauvinistic don’t you think. Actually what the original Greek that sits behind our English translation says, is that they are the weaker vessel.

This is how I picture this. You know, the big metal vats that they use when they milk cows, you know, those big sort of aluminium cans – that’s the bloke and the woman is this small, delicate, exquisite vase on the mantel piece of infinitely more worth, infinitely greater beauty than that big hard can. That kind of does it for me, that picture.

Men have this knock-about strength and robustness about them. They play the game of rugby or football or whatever your code of football is, the bone crunching thing that they do. Not very much a girl thing is it?

Women on the other hand are delicate, they’re much more emotional creatures and for the most part we men don’t get that often. And see what Peter’s writing here to us blokes is this: just because you appear stronger; just because you’ve got it in your heads that you’re bigger, better, stronger, faster (and this was particularly relevant to the patriarchal society he was writing to) just because you’ve got this macho picture in your head, don’t you for one minute even begin to think you are somehow better in God’s sight.

In fact you’d better honour her. Do you know what that means? Do you know what it means to honour someone? It means firstly and foremost to value her. That’s why the old marriage vows say love, honour and cherish because she needs to be cherished and she has this incredible strength, men, that we don’t have. So God’s calling us here, through His word, to value her, to honour her, to pay deference and reverence to her. This is very strong language and there’s a sting in the end of this last bit for men. Have another listen.

Husband’s in the same way show considering for your wives. (Boy, if only we could show consideration for our wives). Husbands show consideration for your wives in your life together paying honour to the woman as the weaker sex, (that beautiful vase on the mantel piece) since they too are heirs of the gracious gift of life, (now here’s the sting) so that nothing, nothing may hinder your prayers.

Look at how seriously God takes this. People, women play such an amazing role in the building of the Godly family and the bringing of peace to the home. But to those of you who are woman, I’m going to say this. I want you to hear the sting in the tale that God puts in his advice to men about how they treat you.

I want you to hear how seriously God takes you. How much He cares for you, how much He doesn’t mince His words when He’s standing up for you. It’s time for some women in this world to realise how incredibly important your gentleness and your commitment to your children and your commitment to your husband and your commitment to your home really is in building a godly home.

See, in my heart, I think of my wife as the pillar of our family. She’s the one that binds us all together and while I’m out there being a hunter/gatherer she is binding the family together. She’s knocking off some of my rough edges. She’s softening who I am. She’s helping me to see the children. She is a wonderful asset in our home.

I want to come back to what we were talking about today. It’s about the blessing of a peaceful home. Remember we talked at the beginning of the program about Isaiah chapter 32 beginning at verse 17 where God says this:

The effect of righteousness, that is living our lives the right way through Jesus Christ, the effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. (What a beautiful home that would be. God goes on to say), People will abide in a peaceful habitation in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places.

Can I encourage you today, it is so worth it to decide as husband and wife, as the leaders of the home, that you are going to have a peaceful home and then to set about using the different gifts, the different skills, the different ways that God has made each of you, to be a blessing and to bring that to pass.

Doesn’t matter how dysfunctional our homes may be, doesn’t matter what mistakes we’ve made in the past, doesn’t matter how bad things are, God wants his people to live righteously and the blessing that comes from that is peace and security and a quiet resting place. And that is so worth doing.

You know something – that old saying that blood is thicker than water, it’s true. There’s a special bond between members of a family. Our family really does matter.  And that … that’s why it’s time to start looking at what it means to build a godly family.

Family Matters

It’s great! Here we are again, another week continuing our series called, “Building a Godly Family”. And the reason we are doing that is because families really matter. We all imagine that out there somewhere there is a typical family – a mum, a dad, two point four well-adjusted children and that perfect family is living out a perfect life. In fact, not just one of them, lots of them, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of them – all these perfect families.

I mean, look at them! They all look so perfect but not me, not my family: blended or dysfunctional, arguments or strife; people who haven’t talked to each other for years; parents who drive their children nuts: children who just don’t get it, they go off and do their own thing and leave their parents shaking their heads.

You get what I’m saying, right? It feels like sometimes it’s just our family that’s in a mess and everyone else’s has got it together. You know why? It’s those happy ads on TV: selling the four wheel drives with happy, smiling kids in the back seat; selling the breakfast cereal, the ad where the sun is shining in the kitchen window and mum’s pouring orange juice while the kids are sitting there smiling and eating healthy cereal. I mean, come on!

Life’s not like that! It’s just not you, it’s just not me. We all have issues in our family – ninety nine point nine percent of the people do and those who don’t are kidding themselves. It varies of course. I mean, not everyone’s kids are doing drugs; not every husband is beating his wife but there is no such thing as the perfect family out there … there just isn’t. So let’s stop carrying around this burden that we’ve plonked on our heads that somehow my family doesn’t measure up to what everyone else’s family is doing.

It’s not about measuring up. In my book it’s about what can I do from this day forward to build a godly family? What seeds can I sow? What plants can I water so that the fruit of a godly family will grow for all to enjoy? That’s what it’s about because our families matter. Let me ask you this: how much does your family matter to you? Just stop and sit back and think about that for a moment – chew it over. How much does my family mean to me?

I don’t know what your family looks like but it doesn’t matter who we are, where we’re at, how we were brought up, somehow we are all part of a family. My hunch is that it’s God’s plan for it to be that way – it’s more than a hunch. I mean, God is three persons in one – Father, Son and Holy Spirit living in perfect community.

I’m not sure that I have ever even thought of it this way, but there we have it, the first family, God Himself. The first verse in the Bible says, “In the beginning, God …” “In the beginning, Elohim …” literally “God’s” plural. And the very first person He creates, Adam, well, have a listen to what God says about Adam.

It is not good that a man should be alone. I will make a helper as his partner. (Genesis chapter 2, verse 18)

And right throughout the Old Testament, what you see is that God’s blessing for His people, the Israelites, is all about having two things – their own land and lots of children. We know that family is meant to be a blessing. It’s a God thing, I mean, right from the beginning, God isn’t just one person; He’s three.

Family really matters! And I know that for some people, just hearing that is going to hurt … hurt an awful lot. Almost half of all marriages in the wealthy West end in divorce. I have friends who have lost loved ones in the ravages of war. Every day twenty five/thirty thousand children die of poverty and starvation and disease and Aids and … so thinking about family, depending on your particular circumstances, well, you know it can hurt but the reason it hurts so much; the reason divorce is such a scourge and losing someone we love tears our insides out, the reason is this: because family truly matters.

We want our family to stay intact; we want our kids to grow up strong and healthy and have a listen to what the Psalmist writes in Psalm 37, beginning at verse 35. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it up here, Psalm 37, verse 25:

I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor their children begging bread. They are ever giving liberally and lending and their children become a blessing.

See, that’s God’s perfect plan for our families – for us to live a good life; a righteous life and for us to be a blessing to our children and for them, then to go on and become a blessing to others. It’s a story … well it’s a story that’s written in our DNA. It’s a story that plays itself out in our hopes and our dreams but it’s a plot that we so easily loose in the busyness of a consumer oriented, entertainment oriented, credit card oriented world in which we live.

Let me ask you again – out of everything in your life, everything you have, every hope, every dream, every possession, every desire – out of everything, how much does your family matter? My hunch is for most of us, the answer is a lot. Family matters an awful lot, doesn’t it? And if it does, if it really does, then surely … surely we need to invest in this thing.

We need to not just talk about having a godly family but get on a build a godly family. These relationships; these people who matter more to us than any other thing on this earth – that’s what we are going to be talking about this week on the programme – making that investment – getting beyond talking, getting beyond thinking, getting beyond dreaming and actually getting on and building a godly family because there is so much blessing in that – so much.

Setting the Course

Now so many families are in a mess – tension, strife – but all it takes is one member of that family to turn back to God; to honour God and God can and will make some awesome and mighty changes. It might take time; it might take longer than you or I would prefer, but God is a God of grace; His heart is to bless our families to a thousand generations. All He is looking for is some godly men, women and children to take a stand and say, “Enough of this. It is time for me to build a godly family.” First Corinthians chapter 4, verse 20 in the Message translation says this:

God’s way is not a matter of mere talk, it’s an empowered life.

You know what I’ve noticed? We can talk a lot about stuff but most times nothing changes unless we actually do something and yet because we come home tired and we need a rest and we just ignore things; we just let things run – the badly behaved children, for example. There is a great proverb, it’s in Proverbs chapter 29, verse 17. It says:

Discipline your children and they will give you rest; they will give delight to your heart.

Now you’ve seen it down the local supermarket, so have I – the mother with the child. The child is just grinding her down; bad behaviour; throwing tantrums and mum, she’s just tired … she’s too tired to do anything. She lets this kid run riot, it causes her grief, causing everyone else around the place grief too, I might add. Why does that happen? I’ll tell you why: probably because dad is too tired to discipline the child when he comes home at night so this kid walks all over his mother; she’s exhausted and the kid’s only seven! Wait until this little terror becomes a teenager, I mean, just wait!

There is fruit in building a godly family; tremendous fruit! And what Proverbs said is: “When you discipline your children they will give you rest; they will give delight to your heart.” Peace and a delighted heart – see, what you sow, you actually reap. The problem is that sowing … well, it’s such hard work sometimes and reaping seems to be such a long way off, doesn’t it?

Well, let me tell you something, we have been talking about building a godly family but it ain’t going to happen unless we step out in faith and start making it happen. Yes, it’s about God blessing our efforts but if He’s got nothing to bless, then He’s got nothing to bless. We behave ourselves in to a bad place. Bad habits in families happen because we just fail to do things and we do things that are wrong that we shouldn’t be doing.

It’s what we say, what we do, what we fail to do. We behave ourselves into that bad place and yes, we should pray, but God expects us to start behaving ourselves out of that place. He’s going to bless that but we have to do our part, so Christians, do you want a godly family? A family where each family member is living out a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ; where each one is living that out in their lives? Husband and wife have this warm and intimate relationship, children are by and large honouring their parents, each family member respects, honours, understands the other.

There’s real blessing; God’s blessing that flows into our families and out through our families when we build a godly family, but we’re going to have to decide that’s what we want, plan it and start living it. We are going to have to decide that some changes have to be made. This easy, comfortable, lazy existence has to change. Discipline is painful; kids don’t like it much; it takes hard work and strength and perseverance but it pays dividends.

So let me ask you, how much do you want to have a godly family? And if the answer is: “Absolutely, yes! I do!” then some decisions have to be made. If your family is one with a husband and a wife then it is up to the both of you. Talk and dream and decide what’s important. Set priorities. Figure out “how are we going to do this together? What steps do we need to take first?” Mum and dad, you are the leaders, don’t expect the kids to figure this out.

And I happen to believe, actually, that ultimately, the father is responsible for the spiritual growth and nourishment and development of his family; the buck stops with you, dad. This isn’t a sexist thing! So many women would give their eye teeth for their husbands to step up to the plate and take on that leadership role. So many kids would love to have parents who were not only interested in them, who spend time with them and effort, setting boundaries, enforcing the boundaries, nurturing them within the boundaries.

I have to tell you, as a person, humph, I’m a natural isolationist. You know something? I so much prefer my own company, often times, to the company of other people – it’s just who I am. Now, I really enjoy retreating to my own space after a hard day at the office so for me, given whom I am, getting involved with the family and the kids and listening to what happened to them at school or at work, it’s just not a natural gift. But we have to start somewhere. You can’t build a godly family if there’s no relationship, if there is no interaction – something my wife has taught me.

We are going to talk about some of the “how” a little bit later in today’s programme and again next week. In fact, one of the godliest families I know; friends who live in the U.S. with mum, dad and nine kids! They have given me some of their pointers – both the parents and the kids. So we are going to have a look at those next week on the programme but right now we have to decide, each one of us, do we actually want to have a godly family?

Well, do we? And if we do, what are we going to do about it? Maybe that’s something you can pray about and think about and talk about at home over this coming week and we can talk some more next week on the programme, this whole thing of building a godly family.

Children and Honour

You know, we were talking earlier about the fact that if we want to build a godly family we have to do more than talk about it, we have to act. And I just want to talk about our children right now because one of the biggest things that rob the peace out of our homes is children who haven’t learned to honour their parents and one another.

Now honour is something that today’s generations don’t talk too much about. “Aw, we want other people to honour us”, but honour, as it turns out, is a two way street and without it we simply can’t have a godly family. In fact, God thinks that it is so important that in the Ten Commandments, the first four are about God and us and the very next one, the fifth Commandment is about honour in the family.

Pretty amazing this whole “Ten Commandments” thing, when you think about it! Let’s have a quick look – the First Commandment is in Exodus chapter 20, verse 2 and 3:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

The Second Commandment – Exodus chapter 20, verse 4:

You shall not make for yourself an idol; you shall not bow down to worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

Commandment number three begins in Exodus chapter 20, verse 7:

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God for your Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

The fourth Commandment, Exodus chapter 20:8, 9 and 10:

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work but the seventh day is a Sabbath day unto the Lord your God and you shall not do any work.

So the first four Commandments are: don’t make any idols, don’t worship anything else other than God, don’t use His name badly and have a day of rest which you give to Him. So those first four Commandments are all about – in a nutshell, executive summary – honouring God.

Now I’m wondering if you or I were God what would we have put down as the very next Commandment? Well, if it were me, I think murder would have been number five – I mean, you shouldn’t murder people – that’s really important. What could be more important than that? Don’t steal; don’t commit adultery, what should have been number five? What does God choose as number five? Exodus chapter 20, verse 12:

Honour your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Ahead of murder, ahead of adultery, stealing, lying and jealousy, “honour your mum and dad”! I don’t think I would have put that in the top ten – maybe in the top twenty, but certainly not in the top ten – certainly not as the very next Commandment after those that are about honouring God. Yet, where does God put it? Number five! Not only that, it is the very first Commandment to which there is a blessing attached:

So that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God has given you.

You know, when you become a parent you start thinking what that means is that if the kids honour the parents, the parents won’t kill ‘em. Yea, well, you know, those teenage years? But that’s not what it means – what it means is that God will bless someone who honours their father and their mother! Figure that out? This is really important to God.

See, Israel was going in to possess the Promised Land. They would have to take it by force one day and all the Nations they took it off would try and take it back again. All the other Nations around them would try to defeat them but the blessing attached to honouring your father and mother is this: that you will own your land and you will have peace. Isn’t there a message in that for a few families?

Now many families are in a mess because the children have never been taught to honour their parents. I know young adult children in their twenties who live with their parents, they don’t pay any board. This particular woman I know, this child is a drain on the parents’ finances in their old age. They leave a mess behind, they cause pain. Why? Because these children were not taught to honour their father and their mother.

You know, as a teenager, the most natural thing in the world is to treat your parents like slaves – you expect your father to be a taxi driver, you expect your mother to wash your clothes and clean up after you but there comes a point in those teenage years when the children are old enough to be taught to do some of these things, not just for themselves, but actually to do some things back for their parents. To clean up messes that they don’t create, to clean toilets that not just they use so that they learn to honour the other people.

We parents try to do all the things we can to help our children to grow up. We advise. We admonish. We even end up preaching at them sometimes. But it’s not what we say, it’s what we do, how we live – what they see our life to be, that has the greatest impact in shaping them as they grow up.

A Godly Example

Well, this is the last message in a series that I have called, “Building a Godly Family” and what I’ve decided to do; I talked to a friend of mine in the U.S., his name is Mark. He has nine children of his own and I thought I’d ask him for his top three or four tips. Now if you want to find out what they are, stick with me today on the programme because we are going to explore what a father of nine had to say.

Now I don’t know how things are in your neck of the woods but one of the really hot topics around where I live is binge drinking amongst teenagers. I mean, blind Freddy can see that alcohol abuse is so incredibly destructive. I was listening to a doctor at the head of the Emergency Ward in our local hospital and he was saying that something like eighty percent of the young people under thirty, who get admitted to the Emergency Ward of the hospital on a weekend, are there because of alcohol related issues.

Now that’s amazing – violence, injury, illness – it’s pretty scary and it kind of begs the question: “How does that happen?” I mean how does a kid go from being this beautiful little baby to a drunken teenager in the gutter? And to combat this teenage binge drinking they have been running an ad on television – a bunch of Australian men in the back yard drinking beer and one of the dads send his young son to the fridge to get him another bottle of beer. And the punch line is about making the point that our children are taking in our habits. They’re watching us, they are taking it all in, they pick up things by what rubs off from us.

Do you know something? That kind of makes sense. Where there is drinking, child abuse, all those things are so negative, so destructive and yet this powerful imprinting thing happens to children in a family. And parents … we as parents, we’re right up there; we are the authority figures and when a child is growing up the only reality that it has is the family that it’s living in. That’s all that child knows; you grow up in the family and that’s it. You don’t know any different whether it’s anger, violence, alcohol abuse, whatever it is, if that’s a powerful part of your reality growing up, it’s going to leave an imprint.

Now, our DNA determines who we naturally are but our personalities; our characters, our view of ourselves and others, our morals, our values, our patterns of behaviour – all of those things are hugely … hugely shaped by our environment. God’s plan is for a loving family, not just a nuclear family, the way we are used to in the West, I guess but the wider family. If you have a Bible, I want you to grab it, open it up with me. We are going to the New Testament, the Book of Titus chapter 2, beginning at verse 2. This is what it says:

Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, prudent, and sound in faith, in love and endurance.

Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behaviour, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be self controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands so that the word of God may not be discredited.

Likewise, urge the younger men to be self controlled. Show yourself in all respects a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say.

You see what’s happening here? Paul is writing to Titus and he’s saying, “Look, Titus, look, here’s how it is: older men should set an example; older women should set an example so that the younger men and the younger women will learn from the older ones, so that needs to be handed down from the older men and women to the younger men and women and then, from the younger men and women, to their children.”

See, so much of our behaviour comes from the behaviour we learn from older people, both as children and as adults. That’s why mentorship is so important. You may have heard me talk about a man, Graham, my business partner for twenty years. Now Graham is about seventeen or eighteen years my senior and he taught me so many things – I watched his behaviour. He was good and descent and effective in so many ways and I learned from him. I became all that I am by watching him and learning from him, like … like a life’s apprentice.

We have been talking these last few weeks about building a godly family and today I want to get really down to earth with some practical things. I believe … I truly believe that the most powerful thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life. Let me say that again; this is important. The most powerful thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life.

Are you an older man or woman? Some societies respect their elders, other like mine, well; we’re not quite as good at this as we should be. Anything old is out of date; it’s beyond its use-by date; it’s old fashioned. We take older people and we stick them in nursing homes. I don’t generalise, but as a society, mine doesn’t value older people as much as some other societies do. But you older people can be such a godly influence in your family.

You’ve been around, you know something. You should have godly wisdom that comes from a life-long faith in and walk with Jesus Christ. You are not involved any more, by and large, in the daily cut and thrust and pressures of bringing up children. What a godly influence you can be on your grandchildren! You can be gentle, yet powerful. The glow, the radiance of God that shines through your eyes and your mouth can be such an influence.

And you parents! What a godly influence you can be on one another and on your children, husband and wife, by your behaviour and your countenance and your attitude and deeds and encouragement, how you can support one another. Maybe one of you is behaving badly – under pressure, you’re tired – the other one draws alongside and in love, steers things down the right path. And then the kids, instead of seeing their mother and father arguing and pulling in different directions, they see them trusting in God and supporting one another. What sort of lifelong imprint do we think that is going to leave on our children?

Each of us have bad habits – sin, anger, selfishness, low self-esteem, pride, dishonesty, whatever it is, those things can be handed down – in fact, they will be handed down to our children. But when we choose to deal with them; when we sacrifice them to God; when we let Him into that space, to change us, the fruit will be to our children and to their children and to a thousand generations. When the simple daily habits of our lives are godly, Christ honouring, humble, this is a powerful blessing on our children. This is the most powerful thing that we can do to build a godly family, to be godly.

Now I mentioned earlier on, Mark, my friend in the U.S., he kind of lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. I asked him to tell me what was one of the most important things that he knew about building godly family? Listen to what he says:

Everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. (Luke chapter 6, verse 40)

While not usually thought of as a verse on parenting, the implications are clear. “We cannot hope to produce that in our children which we ourselves, do not possess”, writes Mark. “Our children, after all of our teaching, creative or not, intentional or not, verbal or not, will be like us. So, watch your own heart for it is the wellspring of life and don’t forget that the first things that must be dealt with, should be dealt with first, including keeping our marriage the priority in our family.”

Um, them’s wise words, don’t you think?

Faith Comes by Hearing

This “building a godly” family thing, you know what I think? I think it is about realising that we all, each one of us, in our families, need to see things through a fresh set of eyes. Every time I look up at the stars and the moon, I’m gob-smacked. The whole Milky Way thing, it’s almost like a cloud, like countless specks of stardust strewn across the sky, and then like clockwork every morning, this amazing ball of fire and light and warmth comes over the horizon – the sun, it never fails.

Now I’m wondering, if you or I had never been taught anything about the earth and the solar system and the sun and the moon and the universe, if we knew nothing about any of that, what would we make of it? If we stood here on planet Earth and watched this whole heavenly light show go on, day by day, what would we make of it without the knowledge scientists have given us?

Well, actually, we don’t have to look too far. There were so many theories down through the ages: the earth is flat, the earth’s at the centre – everything else revolves around it, the stars are little holes in the firmament – the skin that is stretched up where the sky is somewhere.

See, what happens is we look at this incredible cosmic light show that rolls past every day from our miniscule perspective, not realising how small and how narrow our view is and we get a distorted picture. We think the earth is the centre of the universe; we think that we’re the biggest most important thing in this cosmos and this whole light show revolves around us.

You see what happens? And it’s exactly what’s happened down through the ages but once we got the facts we started looking at things completely differently – at least a trillion, trillion stars in the known universe and how the sun is just one of them. I mean, even our galaxy of billions of stars is such a small pinprick on the map of the universe – it’s just so infinitesimally small even though it takes light, travelling at 5.88 trillion miles per year, over a hundred thousand years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. You see how radically the facts transform our understanding of reality? It’s mind blowing stuff!

Well, what, if anything, does this have to do with the subject that we have been talking about these last few weeks on the programme, ‘Building a Godly Family’? Well, as it turns – everything! I talked earlier about Mark, my friend. I shared that he has nine children and I shared with you what he had to say about setting a godly example because ultimately our children will end up being like us and so how we live our lives ends up being the most important sermon we’ll ever preach.

Well, here’s the next thing he said, in his top three – his second tip for building a godly family. Have a listen:

Faith, he says, comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

What do we mean by this? The written Word of God is absolutely central to everything we do in parenting and to birthing faith in the hearts of our children. My wife and I, we can talk, lecture, admonish, discipline, correct, nag … whatever we want to do until we are blue in the face and it will be no good at all unless the Spirit of God takes His own Word and does a work in the hearts of our children.

Therefore, we believe we must expose and challenge our kids with God’s Word as often as possible. In our home, that has taken the form over the years, of bedtime stories, Scripture readings at the dinner table, family devotion times, Scripture memory, using real life experiences to show how God’s Word speaks into every situation.

To someone who hasn’t grown up in this environment, well, that may seem a little odd, but it makes so much sense. See, we started out by talking about the different perspectives we can have on the cosmic light show, depending on whether or not we know the truth about how it works. If we know the truth we understand the earth is a tiny little speck of dust, if we don’t we imagine that it’s the centre of the universe. We only learn the difference when we hear the truth.

And it’s exactly the same for us as people. If we don’t know the truth about God – who He is, what He did for us through Jesus, His Son, who we are when we believe in Jesus, how we can respond to His incredible love that God has lavished upon us – unless we know those things then we are going to live out our lives in complete ignorance; completely from the wrong perspective. It’s when we teach our children the Word of God that they develop a godly perspective that bears so much fruit.

It’s exactly what God taught His people, Israel, just before they crossed into the Promised Land. If you have a Bible, open it up at Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 to 9:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, will all your soul, with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise up and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

So in other words, if you want to build a godly family, tell the kids about Jesus. Here’s the amazing thing: I actually ask Mark’s children for their comments. What do they like about being in their family? Do you know what they said, the kids? Reading the Bible together, the creative teaching, the family prayer time; these were some of the things the KIDS said they liked about their family. Well, go figure!!

The Olive Trees Around the Table

I want to share with you a story that blew me away, that Mark, my friend, shared with me. And my prayer is that it will blow you away too. It’s all about fruit, in fact, it’s about olives – the fruit of investing in and building a godly family.

Now you and I both know that whenever we invest in anything, what the word “investment” really means is sacrifice now to reap a harvest later because investing is about putting something that we have in hand now; something that we could use or spend in another way. Investing is about taking that thing and planting it somewhere else to reap a reward down the track.

If we save for our retirement, we take money that we could blow on things that we’d enjoy today, we set it aside in some form of investment plan, so that the seed grows into a tree that will feed us when we are retired. If we decide to lose weight and get fit, we sacrifice today’s ‘eat whatever I want’ plan – we sacrifice that in order to reap the reward of a healthier body. We give up time that we would rather spend watching television to exercise to reap the reward. As it turns out, exactly the same principle applies when we invest the time and the effort and the emotional energy that’s required to build a godly family.

This friend of mine, Mark, with nine children, which I still shake my head at – Mark’s final take when I ask him the top three things; tips that he had on building a godly family, well, it comes from Psalm 128. Now grab your Bible, open it up – Psalm 128 is written to the father in the family – it’s a message specifically to dads. Have a listen; it’s actually a very short Psalm:

Happy is everyone who fears the Lord and who walks in his ways. 

You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands; you shall be happy and it shall go well with you.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around the table.
Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.

The Lord bless you from Zion.
May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.
May you see your children’s children.
Peace upon Israel.

Now, I guess to our twenty first century ears maybe that take on family might seem a tad patriarchal. Remember it was written to a people who lived very much in a patriarchal society, so let’s go with it.

Verse 1:

Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

We are blessed; “happy”, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. That’s what we have been talking about over these last few weeks – putting God first in everything … every part of our lives, including the way we do family – that brings blessings.

Verse 2 describes that blessing:

You shall eat the fruit of your labour; you shall be happy and it will go well with you.

You know, that’s the natural consequence of when we honour God.

But now, have a listen to verse 3:

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

Yes, patriarchal, the wife is the fruitful vine but it comes back to the Old Testament view of what blessing is.

Blessing in the Old Testament equalled lots of children and your own lands, pretty simple, so to the person reading that Psalm when it was written, that’s what verse 3 means. The first part is about the wife having a lot of children but have a listen again to the second part of that verse:

Your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

Olive shoots … they grow up into might olive trees that bear one of the staples of the Eastern diet, olives, from which comes the precious commodity of olive oil.

Now have a listen to what my friend Mark wrote about this particular verse. Here it is word for word from this father of nine children and it just rocked my socks off. I hope you are blessed by what Mark wrote too.

God impacted us with this idea out of our own family study of the Scriptures some time back. It comes out of Psalm 128, verse 3 which says: “The children will be like olive shoots around the table of the man who fears God.”

When learning that olive plants take between sixteen and eighteen years of careful cultivation, pruning and watering and during that time, typically they bear very little fruit and that after the eighteenth year they bear abundant fruit for many, many years to come, it gave us a reason to persevere and not be weary in well doing. That is an incredible truth from Scripture that has kept us going through some really tough times with our kids.

Don’t you love how God packs so much into His Word, it’s so full of truth. What an amazing picture of these olive shoots around the table and we invest in them – this fresh, young shoot – all that effort and investment that the farmer puts into the tree for years. It occupies a part of his orchard, takes investment and work and it bears almost no fruit and then … then one day, just as God had always planned, all along, that tree produces olives.

I love olives! There’s a cafe just down the road from us, owned by a Greek man, Alex, and he makes these olives that are to die for and you get them with some Turkish bread, and bit of Greek dip and … AH, fabulous! But imagine, Alex’s olives come from one of those trees … a tree somewhere, that some farmer has nurtured and cared for for sixteen to eighteen years until finally, it bears fruit. You see this wonderful picture? And just to top it off the Psalmist, at the end of the Psalm, helps us to realise that it doesn’t end with just the olives of that first tree – there is so much more. Psalm 128, verse 6:

“May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel.” This investment in these little olive shoots, sitting around the table of the parents who fear God; who honour God; these parents who are prepared to invest tirelessly, day after day, is going to bear fruit in a little while – fruit that will last for generations.

I look at my three: Simon almost thirty now, Michael in his late twenties and Melissa our baby who has just turned eighteen and Jacqui and I, we are so proud of whom they are. We are so delighted to see the fruit finally growing – to see them making their way in this world, rising up to be the people who God naturally made them to be.

Now I have to tell you, really, doing the whole little kid thing, it’s not my naturally gig … it’s just not. It was hard work for me. So for me, many days, it was such a tough road – being a dad, going through teaching the children over and over and over again, but the fruit … the fruit that that investment is now bearing is so incredibly worth it, I have to tell you.

I want to encourage you today that wherever your family is, whatever is going on, whatever dysfunction you perceive will absolutely prevent you from building a godly family, I want to encourage you that the Word of God is true. That when we begin to honour God and to fear God and we step out and we say, “I am believing God for a godly family,” I got to tell you, the Spirit of God will come in power.

He will show us what to do. He will show us what to say. He will show us how to live and it might take a while, but I have to tell you, my God and your God – that God is about building a godly family.