The Fight for a Godly Family

I remember sitting in a group in an office, it was fairly late at night, there was about seven or eight of us, we’re all very, very close. These are men super committed to Christ, and we began to share about our families and our journeys. Some were younger, some were older, some had adult children, some of us have grandchildren. And we began to just share the challenges and the pain and the difficulties and the issues that were happening with some of our adult children or grandchildren.

And that struck a chord, because these are people that are in God’s Word on a regular basis, these are people that are committed to doing life God’s way. And all of us know the culture has been hostile to a godly family. And I began to ponder this level of pain, this level of frustration, these issues in these families – Lord, what’s going on here?

But family is big right now and in the last six or seven months I have had experiences with people that I’m very, very close to who has a son or a daughter that I know who has grown up in a very solid Christian home and it has been everything from, “Mom and Dad, I think I’m gay,” to, “Mom and Dad, I think I’m a girl, but I’m in a boy’s body,” to, “Mom and Dad, I don’t think I believe in God at all anymore.” And then we have a conversation with parents feeling overwhelmingly guilty “What did we do wrong or what has happened? And how could this happen and where did it start?”

I want to talk to you about family and I’m not Jim Daly, Focus on the Family. I’m not James Dobson. I’m not a psychologist. I’m a pastor. And I’ve been a pastor for over forty years now. I’ve got four grown kids, I’ve got twelve grandkids and, I’ve seen the whole gamut. And here’s what I have to tell you. I believe we need to address the family in a new way. I think we have got to address the issues are happening in a more dynamic way, in a way that I haven’t personally in the past with real focus.

“Well, Chip, you know, you’ve got a series on Marriage that Works, and you teach Ephesians 5 about the family and men and women and you have a series called Effective Parenting and You have another series on Experiencing God’s Dream for Your Marriage and all those skills about communication, resolving conflict.” And if you want some good teaching from us at Living on the Edge, by God’s grace it’s helped a lot of people.

But there’s something amiss, at the heart behind the kind of things that we see, these symptoms, these struggles, I think something has happened that we haven’t recognized. We haven’t recognized that we are in a battle.

So often, you know, sometimes I teach something and I have actually said the words, but the light didn’t come on for me. You do a series on marriage, you do a series on children, then you do a series on work and relationships. And you know what I’ve heard myself say is, “Now, you need to understand that all those relationships happen in the context of spiritual warfare.” I have said that out loud before. But it’s just been recently I realized, Oh my! That’s where the real battle is!

And so, it doesn’t surprise me When the Apostle Paul talks about: If any man is in Christ, if any woman is in Christ you are a new creation. The old things pass away, behold, all things become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17) You are born again, you are born from above, you have turned from darkness, you’re in a relationship with God through Christ.

And then walk in a manner worthy. The verse here is Ephesians 4 “Walk” means to live out day by day. Walk in a manner worthy of your calling. And then in verse 17 he says, “Now, walk no longer like your former manner of life.” We want to go back way we used to live. And so, he says instead you need to put off the old, you renew your mind, you put on the new. And then he is going to give them practical ways to go into training to do that.

And then chapter 5 he says: “Not only walk worthy of your calling and don’t walk in the old ways, walk in love just as Christ also walked in love.” And then he’ll later on say, “Walk as children of the light.” In other words, you live in such a way where your life, your relationships Your family is exposing and spreading and making real what is true.

And then finally verse 15, “Be very careful how you walk,” or, “you live, not as unwise,” “but as wise.” And then he says, “Making the most of the opportunity,” – why? “the days are evil.” And if Paul thought the days were evil then, think about what he might say now.

The days are evil, God wants us to walk, He wants our relationships to work, so it starts with – what? “Don’t be drunk with wine,” “but instead, be filled,” or, “controlled by God’s Spirit.” Let your relationship with God, with Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit be the central, most important thing. Let that focus your mind around the truth and how to live.

And then it goes right from there to – what? This is how marriage works. “Men, love your wives the way Jesus loved the Church. Ladies, respond to your husbands the way the Church responds to Christ.” And then, “Children, obey your parents.” This is a blessing, this will help you. And then finally we get – what? Spiritual warfare.

So, we put on the belt of truth, in other words, there are lies about our relationship with God, there are lies that we are given in our marriage or our parenting or in our work. And then the breastplate of righteousness is living a righteous life. Satan wants to condemn us, he wants to condemn that we are not living up to and God is down on us.

And the shield of faith. We need to have God’s Word and be able to speak God’s Word in a way in the midst of our marriages and our home life and identify the truth and the lies. Having our feet shod with the Gospel is about being grounded and being stable in the midst of a world where there are doubts bombarding us.

This passage on spiritual warfare is geared around identifying the lies in every aspect of a family and then helping you in your relationship with God. And if you’re married, in your singleness, those that have children, how to do that in a way where you’ll identify the lie, cast it behind you, renew your mind, understand God’s truth, abide in that truth, and what did Jesus promise? “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

I had a very unusual experience in the last year. I was asked at the local church that I go to, “Hey, could you help out with the young marrieds? And maybe they could go through your book. And whenever you’re in town, you could teach the class.” And so, we did that, in the fall, we did it in the spring. And there’s all these young couples fifty, forty young couples and all kind of backgrounds. Some brand-new Christians some from Christian homes. And I got to sit down around the table. We would teach and have time around the table and I would hear what is really going on. And some had, brand-new little babies, others some older kids, some had been married before.

And so, we went through and I taught and we got near the end and the way the book was divided was some of the chapters were very, very short and we were trying to do a chapter each week. And it just felt a bit redundant. And so, I remember saying, the thing that has helped me the most and helped Theresa the most to break strongholds and cycles in our lives, because, we came from alcoholic homes and we had big struggles in our marriage as we developed these Truth Cards.

And on one side of the cards we would write the lies that we believed and we would learn that lots of other people believed and then we put a stop sign and then we would flip it over and then we would tell the truth. I remember at one point in time, we would sit down on the couch, every morning for a couple years and review these cards and renew our minds and little by little by little we got God’s view. We were learning to recognize lies.

And so, I took those Truth Cards I made them available to the class, the atmosphere changed, overnight. They were open, before, but when I would read a lie, it was like, “Oh my.” And then I would give them the truth and then I gave them a passage to hang onto.

And so, here’s what this whole series is about. If you’re the kind of person that you would say in your heart of hearts, I really want a great family: You’re going to have to fight for it. You’re going to have to fight like never before.

I shared those stories at the beginning because those people are in God’s Word every day, in community, on mission, living for Christ, and yet, in the midst of all of that, they are having issues in their family they never dreamed would be a part of their world and their situation. You can be a good Christian, go to church two or three times a month, read the Bible some, be that nice person, encouraging person, a good, nice neighbor.

But if you don’t identify these lies and understand where they come from and what they do, your family will be destroyed. Because I’m watching it happen over and over again. These lies and false promises make it impossible for a person called to singleness to have a rich life knowing they are called by God to live in union with Him or to have a deep, rich marriage with ups and downs but with real connection, real community, real love, and real sacrifice.

And these lies make it impossible for children to grow up in a safe, stable, supportive environment where they feel valued, encouraged, supported. Where they discover their unique design and even more importantly discover the God who made them and come to a vibrant, living relationship with Jesus Christ. These lies are all through the media, academia, they come from novels, they come from music, they come from movies. They are bombarding us even coming inside the Church. Good lies like, “Your kids need a great education.” “Your kids should really be successful because that will help them be happy.”

There are half-truths in all those things, but we have kids and we have parents and we have families that love Jesus with all their heart that have made education or playing on a sports team or success or money or pleasure a higher goal and an idol that has undermined the real relationship. We have to come to grips with the reality if thirty percent of our own children in evangelical churches don’t want to follow Jesus, something is fundamentally wrong.

I don’t mean this as some indictment on those of you that are walking closely with God, but Kids are saying, “I grew up in a home where Christianity was not much more than a moral code. It wasn’t much more than we should be nice people. And, yes, my parents sent me to the youth group and I even went to a Christian school, but there wasn’t life, there wasn’t vitality, there wasn’t risk, there wasn’t life change. I didn’t see God’s power, I didn’t see this reality of Jesus and when I went away to school or to trade school or got out on my own, that Jesus that is sort of nice and this moral code as people are living completely different lives and they asked me all kind of questions that I would begin to ask myself, Is this true? And my experience began to say it’s not.”

You see, there are lies that have undermined our culture, our families, and what I would like to do in our time together is rather than give you a good teaching on marriage, rather than say, “Here are seven principles for parenting,” here are some great things you can have, I’d like to start with the lies and help you identify them and then talk about the truth how to put that truth into practice.

And here’s what I want you to know: This isn’t new, right? This isn’t new at all. And God is able and ready to break the strongholds that produce division divorce and kids without hope. You know when you pastor as long as I have, I have been on the other side of that counseling desk and heard story after story. Stories of infidelity, stories of, “I just fell out of love.” Stories like, “We grew apart.” Stories like, “We did the very best for our kids and I don’t understand it. They don’t even believe in God anymore. We can’t even have a conversation. All we do is argue about politics.”

I’ve been on the other side of that and I’m watching what it does to families. We need a different approach, we need to understand that there is something very, very sacred to God. And it’s the most fundamental unit of every society, every culture, every community.

As someone wisely said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation.” Transformation in the families today need to start I think with a surgical knife of truth that cut through the lies of the culture, help us identify some of these things that some of us – are you ready? You are actually doing things with the most sincere intentions thinking you are really helping your kids. You want your kids to get ahead, you want your kids to prosper, and the very thing that you are doing for your kids is destroying their relationship with God and your family. Let that sink in.

See, the most dangerous lies are the ones that you believe to the point where you think it’s good. Just because I have good intentions, just because I have good motives, it doesn’t mean that the outcomes won’t be just as devastating. I want to help you to uncover the things that you actually believe that are false, that are undermining that which you hold dear.

And, by the way, I'm with you in this. I've believed plenty of lies. I've pushed, in early years, my kids way too hard thinking that, they’ve got to disciplined to be successful and they need to learn this and learn that. So this isn’t about: I’ve got it together and I want to tell you this is how to do it. You’re talking to someone that’s got forty years as a pastor and kids that are grown and some grandkids that are grown and is on the journey with you. Our families are in trouble.

When some of my closest, most godly friends are having, struggles and seeing things happen in their family I think it’s time to stop and say, God, “I really want to have a great family, and I am willing to pay the price. I am willing to listen, I’m willing to learn, I’m willing to swim upstream, I’m willing to do whatever God wants me to do.”

Because here's the deal. I'm old enough now to realize the people that are happiest, the people who have a real sense of reward. It’s not how big of houses they had, not whether they went public, not whether they got famous, every family relationship flows out of your relationship with God. It’s the people that have deep, deep relationships that have adult kids that want to be around them, that see a lineage of people that are walking and growing and people of integrity, and they are at peace with themselves.

Every family has issues. I mean, pull back the curtain to my life, your life, anyone that may be a spiritual leader, a pastor, or someone you admire. You pull back the curtain, I’m just going to tell you, they’ve got issues just like you and just like me. I’m not talking about developing some cookie cutter perfect families.

We are talking about real, authentic love where it covers a multitude of sins, where we look back on our pain and how we persevere and how we recognize what we have done wrong apologize to one another forgive one another and experience the mercy and the grace and the love of God. I’m not sure there’s anything that is a greater testimony to the world, right? Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

I think the greatest good works we could ever have in the world that we’re living in is people that have been married five years and they are deeply in love. Twenty-five years deeply in love. Forty-five years and deeply in love. Seventeen years lost a child weathered through it deeply in love. Twenty-two years empty nest and they realize they need to reconnect and they persevere and they're deeply in love. Kids that grow up and don’t have it all together but honor their parents, want to walk with God, have a sense of responsibility and clear calling, purpose in life, and meaning.

You talk about good works? Few things will be more important to show the world the love of Christ than marriages that reflect Jesus and His Church. This is not new. Some of you know the Bible pretty well and others you’ll need to go to Genesis chapter 3 and maybe the first few chapters you may want to read it.

But think about a perfect environment, a loving God who has created the first human beings. The one test is don’t eat from that tree. And then the enemy comes and where does he start? With a lie. The lie is – what? “If you eat this, you won’t die.” it had a half truth. You won’t physically die, but You’ll be separated from God.

He cast doubt on God’s character. God doesn’t have your best in mind. If you do life God’s way, you’re going to miss out. That was the message. And so, there’s disobedience. Then after the disobedience, not only is there break of relationship with God, then we have our very first parents – Blaming and naming. “It was her fault!” “No, it was his fault.” “No, it’s Your fault, God. You’re the one that made this place.” And then pretty soon there’s not just division, but then there’s hostility and there’s envy. And so, we have the first murder.

Satan lies about our relationship with God, produces animosity in the relationship then has siblings who literally one kills the other and then creates a world of violence and death. So much so that by Genesis chapter 9, God says the violence is so great I’ve had enough. And we have The Flood. And then we have this new generation and God’s promise in the sky and then this tower gets built and the enemy takes technology and the amazing dignity and beauty of mankind and they build a tower to make our name great into the Heavens. And God frustrates their languages.

Here’s all I want you to know: the enemy had a lie about God, he had a lie about marriage, he gave a lie about children, he gave a lie about what makes communities work, and he gave a lie about the work of our hands and technology. And it’s been going on ever since.

We are going to spend the next month identifying some lies in our marriages, in our parenting, and in the culture around us to live in the power of the Holy Spirit that we can have the kind of families that we long for and that Jesus wants us to have for His glory and to show the world around us that there is hope, because they are hurting and He is the answer. He says: You are my method.