2002-12-04
Good Morning Faithful Ones,
Each morning I ask the Holy Spirit to give me with what God wants me to write. This morning He takes me to a very painful subject, but one which impacts more lives than any of us would like-Satan’s phenomenal record in breaking down families. Today, we’ll look at the ideal. Then, we’ll see what has happened in our society. Marriages which are ordained of God and the families that come from them are created in heaven. EPH 3: 14-17a, “For this reason I fall on my knees before the Father, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth receives its true name. I ask God from the wealth of His glory to give you power through His Spirit to be strong in your inner selves, I pray that Christ will make His home in your hearts through faith.” These marriages take place for the right reasons after the engaged parties have taken the time to know each other well and considered the decision to get married carefully and prayerfully. Let me not just imply that God is a third Partner in such unions.
While I’ve written about the passage from EPH 5: 22-6: 4 before, I am led to revisit it. To refresh our memories, this is the one where a married couple is commanded to “submit yourselves to one another, because of your reverence for God” (5: 21). It is clear that a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the church” (5: 22). The focus of a woman’s attitude should be as it appears in 5: 24, “And so wives must submit themselves completely to their husbands just as the church submits itself completely to Christ.” Further down in 5: 25, husbands are told “to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave His life for it.” And in 5: 28, we are told “men ought to love their wives just as they love their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself.” Children are told in 6: 1, “it is your Christian duty to obey your parents, for this is the right thing to do.” This is a restatement of the basic commandment, “honor your mother and your father” [EX 20: 12]. No one in the family relationship goes without a God-assigned responsibility. EPH 6: 4, “Parents, do not treat your children in such a way as to make them angry. Instead, raise them with Christian discipline and instruction.”
Let’s look at these commands more closely. There can’t be a “battle of the sexes” here, because keeping these commands means having mutual respect for one another’s needs and remaining in obedience and reverence to God. A husband who is head of the family cannot make a decision or take an action that would be harmful, insensitive, or mean-spirited to his wife. Why? Because with this kind of godly obedience, such activity would be outside the realm of the husband’s responsibility to God and to his family. A wife obeying this ideal construct would have no problem submitting to her husband, because she would need to treat him with the same kind of respect that the church is expected to have for Christ. Remember when in JN 15: 12-13 Christ was describing His kind of love? “My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you. The greatest love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them.” We need to think about it. Who is supposed to be our best friend on earth? It’s our spouse. When we look at EPH 5: 25, Christ’s willingness to give up His life for all believers is used as the template for what a husband is supposed to be willing to do for his wife. Self-preservation is innate in humans. If a man acts on that with regard to any danger to his own body, in EPH 5: 28, isn’t he being told to do the same with regard to loving his wife? This ideal picture of God’s will for marriages, if carried out in obedience by both parties, produces a life-lasting and mutually satisfying, loving marriage. That is the foundation in a God-centered home.
It is into this kind of home that God wants children to be reared. We would all like to have children who are always obedient to us as parents and grandparents, but sadly Satan interferes with that. It’s the reason why parents have the responsibility to correct bad behavior by their children before things get out of hand. My own experience has been that it’s better to set a few important rules by which the whole family lives. Then, if there is an infraction of those rules, the child must suffer the consequences without parental interference unless they are illegal, immoral, or unsafe. Later, a child over the age of six should be given the opportunity to discuss his experience suffering the consequences and allowed to learn how to analyze it and make better decisions for the future. Children who are faced with so many rules that they can’t even remember them all are defeated before they start. The same can be said for children who face parents who don’t present a united, God-directed front. If we love our children the way God loves us, then our children will have seen an example that will be valuable to them for the rest of their lives. And finally, our ideal home would never see parents who abuse their children in any way or cause their children to become so unhappy that they give up on trying to be good citizens. Each member of this ideal family would be stimulated to consider the personhood and needs of the others. Moreover, God would be a Member of this family in every way possible. It is pretty safe to say that none of our families meet every description of this ideal one. Once again, Satan is the culprit. However, it is a valuable use of our time for us to examine our own family to see where it needs change to more closely conform to this ideal that God has given us through Paul. We’ll continue on this subject for the next few messages.
PRAYER: O Lord, You have asked us to keep Your covenant in our family lives and made a wonderful promise in PS 103: 17-18. “But for those who honor the Lord, His love lasts forever, and His goodness endures for all generations of whose who are true to His covenant and who faithfully obey His commands.” Your promise is further elaborated upon in PS 128: 3-4, “Your wife will be as fruitful as a grapevine, and just as an olive tree is rich with olives, your home will be rich with healthy children. This is how the Lord will bless everyone who respects Him.” Heavenly Father, we can’t bring this life upon ourselves alone. On our own, we are left to Satan’s devices, and that leads to poorly conceived marriages that fall apart based on satisfying the desires of the flesh. Children who come into these unions are seen as burdens or are abused or neglected. All too often Satan gets his delight in seeing children in single parent homes due to divorce, children who come home from school to empty houses and no parental presence, or children who are left to fend for themselves in the streets. It is only through Your intervention in our lives and the death of Christ on the cross that we can come into faith in Him. Our salvation opens the way for us to establish homes where Your presence and guidance blesses us as spouses and our children. We invite You to come into our homes using the words of the Psalmist in PS 63: 1-8, “O God, You are my God, and I long for You. My whole being desires You; like a dry, worn-out, and waterless land, my soul is thirsty for You. Let me see You in the sanctuary; let me see how mighty and glorious You are. Your constant love is better than life itself, and so I will praise You. I will give You thanks as long as I live. I will raise my hands to You in prayer. My soul will feast and be satisfied, and I will sing glad songs of praise to You. As I lie in bed, I remember You; all night long I think of You, because You have always been my Help. In the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. I cling to You and Your hand keeps me safe.” With humble confession of sin, we offer You our adoration, worship, loyalty, diligence, glory, honor, thanks, and praise. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, I am led to continue on the subject of the breakdown of the family unit, looking at the consequences to our society. There is a reason that my prayer is a little longer than usual today. In this area, we all have a lot of praying to do. Our Abba loves us very much and is pained to see how much diversion there has been in our family lives from the plan He established as a part of our covenant relationship with Him. He hasn’t given up on us, but He wants us to make corrections now that will allow us to enjoy the full blessings of our salvation. Remember that God is eager to bless us and has even told us how to please Him. HE 11: 6, “No one can please God without faith, for whoever comes to God must have faith that God exists and rewards those who seek Him.” God loves each and every one of us. His desires for our family lives are designed to help us reap the greatest reward in eternity that heaven has to offer. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn