MAKING PEACE AT HOME

David McLemore

The hospital won’t tell you this. Neither will the pediatrician. And parenting books don’t warn you. Here’s all you need to know about raising multiple children: it requires a degree in conflict management. Or at least a certificate.

Take my home, for example. The front door is a portal into a tornado of Nerf guns, baseballs, and empty snack carton. We moved during January and some walls could already use a fresh coat of paint! It wouldn’t matter, though. In our last house, the freshly painted ceiling lasted a week before the pristine white acquired a grease blob from one of those sticky hands traded in for tickets at Chuck-E-Cheese. My house has constant chatter and an ongoing wrestling match that may never have a winner but daily has losers, as the cries down the stairwell prove.

My house is just one example of the conflict swirling around all the time. Everywhere I go, conflict looms. We’re one decision away from it at the office. One misspoken word away at church. One tweet away online. I wish I had the ease of John Lennon’s imagination, that peace is “easy if you try." But I don’t, and you probably don’t either.

Peacemaking isn’t an easy gig. But God has called believers to be people of peace, so we can’t ignore it.

DEFINING PEACE

Have you ever tried defining peacemaking? It’s not as easy as it seems. My attempts, especially early on to my children, were filled with negatives. “Don’t do this.” “Don’t do that.” Peace sounded like the absence of things. And that’s true, to a degree. Peace does mean the calming of relational storms. It means forgiving and moving on. It means forgoing retaliation and removing oneself from the fray. But it also requires positive action.

When Isaiah looked down the corridor of history to see what was coming, he said, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isa. 52:7, my emphasis).

In the midst of national conflict, Isaiah saw the end of it in the gospel’s publication. He saw the positive action of God swallowing up the negative action of his people. He saw not merely news of a cancellation or removal, sending Israel to its proverbial room, but news of justification and righteousness, a divine hug reconciling all things to himself.

God’s good news is the “gospel of peace” that Paul tells us to wear (Eph. 6:15). Paul’s Ephesian 6 metaphor is not a defensive strategy. It’s an offensive one. We are to put on God’s armor not to protect us from the world but to give us the tools by which we can push his kingdom forward. Of all the armor he gives, only the shield is to protect. The rest of the armor is for offense. So why do we hide so often? To be a peace maker means to be a warrior in Christ’s kingdom, suited in his armor, ready for every good deed, advancing into the conflict to pull things together.

When hell broke loose on earth, God moved in with holy action. When conflict arises, we need to step in. When it’s set loose in the home, we must do the same. And our children must learn to do so, too.

MAKING PEACE

Given our long history of sin, the bible shouldn’t reflect as positively as it does about God’s people. We have a glorious future because something happened two thousand years ago that changed the story. The Apostle Paul put it succinctly: Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross (Col. 1:20). While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). Facing cosmic conflict, God didn’t avoid it. He entered into the fray. He made peace.

In history’s most famous sermon, Jesus told his followers, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are sons of God” (Matt. 5:9). To be a son of God means to be like God, like Jesus. He is an intervening God, willing to get his hands dirty, to empty himself, to serve as a slave. The reigning one became the crucified one. Why? To make peace.

So making peace is a messy business. It is cross-shaped and soaked with blood. To follow Jesus into his peacemaking work is to follow a path that leads to the grave where we lay down our selfish desires for the good of God’s kingdom, too. We set aside what we want for what God wants. We make peace like he did.

Like Christ, we must endure—and teach others to endure—the cross of peace-making for the joy set before us. The joy won’t come in the moment. It lies on the other side. The happiness of the gospel came with the resurrection, three days later. It might take days for peace making to unravel the shrouds of conflict. Pride. Anger. Resentment. Jealousy. Frustration. All are bound strong.

Going to those places and slaying those dragons is no easy task. It takes faith, hope, and love. It requires endurance. It necessitates the Spirit breaking into our lives. No wonder to do so is to be a son of God.

BRINGING PEACE

The easy way out of conflict is to avoid it, to usher in silence, to put the kids in separate rooms. But that only shifts the conflict from external to internal. Yes, the fists stop flying, but our hearts don’t stop feeling. We take what is seen on the outside and hold it captive inside. Hiding conflict in the corners of our heart, burying it in the darkest places of our soul only ensures the conflict rages on, and, in fact, grows. Like sin, conflict dies in the light. It breathes it’s last when something brighter enters in, when it is brought before Christ’s blazing glory.

The #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements prove this point. Those who kept conflict under wraps failed not only to love and care for those abused but failed to bring peace as Christ brings it. Those responsible for shepherding failed to fight off the lion, opting to move the sheep to a different pasture instead. The external conflict may have ended in one field, but peace was not brought to the world.

“A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace,” James 3:18 says. The wisdom of God tells us to be active sowers. “The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing” (Proverbs 20:4). A farmer faces conflict every time he faces his field. To do nothing guarantees an empty harvest. Why do we think it’s any different in other matters? Diligent ones reap a full harvest.

The harvest of righteousness sown in peace is, like farming, an active duty. We may think we are bringing peace by not confronting conflict head on. But that is to let the weeds grow deeper roots. As Ray Ortlund has said in a sermon, “Just not building relationships of comfort and honesty and gentleness—not doing that is peace-depriving. We might have many ways of doing life that seem natural to us but in fact are forms of death.” Bringers of peace don’t neglect the field, they sow and reap.

The cries from my stairwell will never be silenced by sending the boys to their rooms. I must step in as Jesus taught me, making peace for his sake. Conflicts may loom large, but there is a king on a throne who can bind the strong man. We can trust him for a peaceful heart, for peaceful homes, and even for peace in the world.

David McLemore is an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons. Read more of David’s writing on his blog, Things of the Sort.

Posted at; https://gcdiscipleship.com/article-feed/2019/10/11/making-peace-at-home

Leave and Cleave Like a Strawberry

Tim Challies

Living in a multicultural city and serving in a multicultural church has given me a wide view of some of the ways different generations of a family can relate to one another. As a young generation begins to pair up and to marry, forming new families, they need to learn to relate to the generation or generations that came before. This can take many different forms and I’ve long observed that the most significant determining factor is usually culture. We tend to conform to cultural expectations.

The God who created family is clear that marriage creates a new family unit, but also clear that biology matters and that the forming of a new unit does not entirely rupture the old one. God says “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife,” but there are many different perspectives on what it looks like to leave parents and what it looks like to cleave to a spouse. Some cultures treat marriage as if it marks a total break with birth families, while others act as if marriage really makes no substantial difference at all. When cultures mix, we begin to see that much of what we’ve always regarded as normal may not be, that what we’ve always seen as good may actually be bad.

As I was pondering this and attempting to better understand God’s view of the matter, I looked outside to our little garden which Aileen tends so carefully and cultivates so well. I looked at the hostas with their many shapes of leaves in varied shades of green. I looked at the ferns towering above them, still lush and healthy before they inevitably fade under the coming heat of the summer sun. I looked at the bright red and yellow begonias, brilliant splashes of color contrasting beautifully with the dark soil beneath. Then my eyes fixed on the irises which opened for the first time today to display their magnificent purple flowers. And I thought, “I someday want my children to leave and cleave like a strawberry.” I’d better explain.

My generation of long-time Canadians, those of us who were raised by a fully Westernized baby boom generation, have largely inherited a view of forming new families that is kind of like a wildflower. Many wildflowers produce seeds that are blown by the wind, land somewhere near or far, put down roots, and grow up into a new plant that’s entirely independent of the old one. The boomer generation was fiercely independent and held to the “Freedom 55” mindset of getting work and child-raising out of the way early, before enjoying a long and leisurely retirement. Their children were raised to become independent early and to expect (and offer) little support later in life.

Many of the newer Canadians, those arriving from non-Western countries over the past couple of decades, see forming a new family as being kind of like irises. Irises propagate by division, so the parent plant divides and forms new rhizomes that are attached to the old. Since they are attached at the root, the new flowers and the flowers grow up side-by-side. In fact, a gardener must eventually split the rhizomes and spread them out to keep the plants healthy.

There are positives and negatives to both wildflower and iris families. Wildflower families appropriately emphasize the independence of a new husband and wife, but tend to make the break between generations too abrupt and too significant. They leave father and mother but fail to honor father and mother. Iris families emphasize relational closeness and mutually-supporting generations, but may also be suffocating and not allow new families an appropriate level of independence. They honor father and mother but fail to honor husband and wife. Wildflowers seem prone to over-emphasize the new relationship while placing too little emphasis on the old; iris families seem prone to over-emphasize the old family while placing too little emphasis on the new.

And this is where strawberries come in. Strawberries spread by putting down runners. They send out a shoot that extends for a little distance, then puts down roots, and grows up into its own plant. It remains connected to the parent, but is still its own plant and can still produce its own fruit.

And as I think of the families I’ve known where the generations function best, they function more like strawberries than irises or wildflowers. This is true whether they share a household or live in different countries, whether they are entirely financially independent or support one another. The issue is one of expectations and obligations, of parents setting their children free and children reciprocating their great debt of care. They appropriately emphasize the discontinuity between the old family and the new, but appropriately emphasize the obligation each generation owes the other. They are independent, but not too distant. They are connected, but not suffocating. They’ve got room to grow but also room to spread their leaves.

Posted at: https://www.challies.com/articles/leave-and-cleave-like-a-strawberry/

7 Ways Parents Unfairly Provoke Their Children

by Tim Challies

Parents, do not provoke your children to anger lest they become discouraged, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” This single sentence combines the New Testament’s two most prominent passages on parenting and, as I said yesterday (see Fathers (and Mothers), Do Not Provoke Your Children!), offers a significant warning to parents: We can parent our children in such a way that we provoke them to anger and discouragement. There are times when we so provoke our children that anger is the fitting and inevitable response. Today I want to offer a few ways that we, as parents, may provoke our children to that kind of anger and discouragement.

Goodness instead of holiness. We may provoke our children to anger and discouragement when we teach them to be good instead of holy, when we care more for their good behavior than their holy hearts. We can too easily content ourselves with outwardly moral children instead of children who are inwardly holy. We can focus on bad behavior instead of the sinful heart that causes and enjoys that bad behavior. This will eventually provoke our children to anger and discouragement because they will see that we are calling them to a standard of behavior that is impossible, a standard they cannot reach until their hearts are first transformed. Not only that, but they will see the gap between what the Bible teaches and what we promote, and they will sink into angry despair. Parents, don’t content yourself with good kids but pray for holy kids, for children whose good behavior flows out of a transformed heart. Shepherd them with and to the gospel instead of badgering them with unfair and impossible demands.

We need to live before our children in such a way that we can say not only “Do what I say” but “Do what I do.”

Hypocrisy instead of authenticity. We can provoke our children to anger and discouragement when we live with hypocrisy instead of authenticity, when we hold ourselves to one standard but hold them to another one. When we allow this, our children will see that we have no firm standard and they will come to believe that the Christian faith only calls for change in the eyes of other people, not in the eyes of God. Yet God calls us to discipline and instruct our children by explanation and demonstration, by explaining with words and demonstrating with our lives. We need to live before our children in such a way that we can say not only “Do what I say” but “Do what I do.” We need to take our cues from the apostle Paul who could boldly tell others, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). (See The Humblest Words.)

Doubt instead of confidence. We can provoke our children when we live in great doubt instead of great confidence in God’s desire to save them. There are all sorts of good things we want for our children, but nothing more than their salvation. Parents can live with crippling fear that God will not save our children, and this fear has consequences: We can become heavy-handed, demanding our children turn to Christ, or we can become manipulative, constantly begging or pleading with them to make a profession. Our children may then grow angry and discouraged because they will see their parents professing faith in a God who is sovereign and good but then acting as if God is neither one. God’s instruction to parents is to discipline and instruct our children with confidence that God loves to save the lost and that he saves them through the appointed means—the gospel. (See 1 Timothy 2:4 and What Gives God Pleasure.) As we expose our children to the gospel through our discipline and instruction, we can expect that the gospel will do its work. We need to raise our children to hear the gospel proclaimed and to see it lived out. All the while we need to trust that God will work through his gospel.

We need to wisely protect our children, but without fearfully sheltering them.

Fear instead of boldness. We may provoke our children when we raise them in fear instead of boldness. It is wise parenting to protect our children by holding back evil influences until they have developed and matured. But it is unwise parenting to so shelter our children that they never see and experience sin and its ugly consequences. Many parents make decisions about relationships or church or education or family involvement based on fear. But fear-based parenting provokes children because we create a fictional world, a bubble that does not reflect reality. Not only that, but we hide from our children the experience of seeing sin and its consequences, the undeniable reality that sin promises joy and life but brings sadness and death. While we need to boldly raise our children to be in but not of the world, we cannot do this by sheltering them entirely from the world. We need to wisely protect our children, but without fearfully sheltering them.

Anger instead of patience. We may provoke our children to anger and lead to their discouragement if we raise them with anger instead of patience. So many can testify that their parents used anger or the threat of anger as a means of correction and punishment. Discipline was not delivered with calmness and self-control but with angry slaps or cutting words. And of course this leads to anger. A parent’s anger leads to their child’s anger. How couldn’t it? But in this case the parent’s anger is unjust while the child’s anger is just. God expects that we will discipline and instruct our children with patience and kindness. This involves modeling the very actions, attitudes, and words we want them to display.

Aloofness instead of involvement. We may provoke our children when we raise them with aloofness instead of involvement. Too often we are involved in our kids’ lives only when there are problems. We have little real relationship with our children, but then come rushing in during times of danger, disobedience, or difficulty. The parents I most want to imitate are the ones who deliberately build friendships with their children, who have a vision of their grown children being their friends and Christian brothers or sisters, and who then work deliberately toward those goals. These parents give time and attention to their children while they are young, they raise them with kindness and discipline, and they do this by holding in mind the future relationship they long to have. Parents, we need to pursue and befriend our children. (See An Unexpected Blessing of Parenting.)

Pride instead of humility. We will undoubtedly provoke our children to anger and discouragement if we raise them in pride instead of humility. Every generation of Christians seems to have to rediscover the ugliness of pride and the beauty of humility. Every parent needs to discover it as well. Parental pride manifests itself in a hundred different ways, but perhaps never more clearly than in an unwillingness to seek our children’s forgiveness. Pride convinces us that apologizing to our children displays weakness, that it gives them power over us. Nothing could be further from the truth! Humility convinces us that apologizing to our children displays the greatest strength, that it models the very character of Christ. We will inevitably sin against our children so we need to humbly seek their forgiveness, trusting that while God opposes the proud he gives great grace to the humble (see James 4:6).

There are undoubtedly many more ways that we can sinfully, unjustly provoke our children. There are undoubtedly many more ways that we actually do. So we honor God and love our children by examining ourselves and our parenting to find our particular temptations. Where we find them we must confess and repent. And all the while we can have confidence that God chooses to display his strength through our weakness, his power through our inadequacy.

Posted at: https://www.challies.com/articles/7-ways-parents-unfairly-provoke-our-children/

Fathers (and Mothers), Do Not Provoke Your Children

By Tim Challies

It’s a word, it’s an idea, that I have wanted to explore for some time. Within the New Testament there are two clear instructions to parents and this word features prominently in both of them. It is the word provoke. Ephesians 6:4 says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” while Colossians 3:21 echoes “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” Risking the wrath of expositors everywhere, I created a mash-up of the two that reads like this: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger lest they become discouraged, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” I’d like to suggest a number of ways that we, as parents, may sinfully, unjustly provoke our children. But before we do that, let’s walk through these two passages together.

Fathers. The first word in both passages is Fathers. While it is fathers who are addressed here, most commentators acknowledge that it is fair to see these instructions as being written to both parents. Greek society was patriarchal so Paul addressed the mothers through the fathers. We are on good ground allowing the verse to speak equally to both parents.

Do not provoke … to anger. Both passages contain the same exhortation: Do not provoke, though Ephesians adds to anger. Provoke is the kind of word you might use when you kindle a fire into flame—you begin with something small and provoke it into a roaring fire. Or from another angle, it is the kind of word you might use when you are getting your children all excited, chasing them around and tickling them until you provoke them to being all wound up. Here, of course, Paul is using it in a negative sense of stirring, exasperating, or irritating them toward anger or bitterness. Parents must not provoke their children to anger.

There are times when we so provoke our children, we so exasperate them, that anger is the fitting response.

I want to make an important application: Parents can cause their children to become angry and bitter. I’m sure you know this and I can assure you that they know this. But I think we can go even a step further to say there are times when our children are justified in their anger toward us. There are times when we so provoke our children, we so exasperate them, that anger is the fitting response. It may even be the right response if that anger is expressed in righteous ways. There may be times when your children’s anger toward you is more righteous than your actions or attitude toward them.

Next we read, lest they become discouraged. A discouraged child is one who has lost heart. He is so beaten down that he has lost hope, he has lost motivation, he doesn’t care anymore. One Bible translates it, “lest he get discouraged and quit trying.” The idea here is that you can so beat down your children that they stop trying to please you. Maybe your demands are arbitrary or unfair, maybe you never praise your children and take joy in them, maybe you live hypocritically before them with higher expectations for them than for yourself. Whatever the case, they eventually stop caring and stop trying. Douglas Moo says, “Paul does not want to see the children of Christian families disciplined to such an extent that they ‘lose heart’ and simply give up trying to please their parents.”

Putting it all together, God exhorts parents in this way: Parents, do not provoke your children to anger lest they become discouraged. On the heels of that exhortation he offers a solution: “But bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Do not beat down, but raise up. Do not provoke with impatience and injustice, but instead shepherd with nurture and tenderness, and do this through discipline and instruction.

These two words are key: discipline and instruction. Between them they offer words of training and correction, words of admonition and rebuke, words that express both the positive and the negative sides of leadership. You need to correct your children, sometimes with a look, sometimes with a word, sometimes with a timeout, and sometimes with a spank. That is the negative side of parenting. But positively, you also need to teach them, explaining to them what is right, demonstrating how they are to live. This little pair of words covers both the positive and the negative sides of learning and growing, helping our children go from folly to wisdom, from childishness to maturity, from self-centeredness to loving others, and, we trust, from sin to salvation.

Parents, do not provoke your children to anger lest they become discouraged, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. With all of this in place, we are prepared to look at how parents may sinfully, unjustly provoke their children to anger and discouragement. We will turn to that tomorrow. (See 7 Ways Parents Provoke Our Children)

Posted at: https://www.challies.com/articles/fathers-and-mothers-do-not-provoke-your-children/?fbclid=IwAR2z7znpbgEOamOoOEX46jfcvkdeohi_m0LebPOWvlUKGIIYS8ACi3c0Y1g

10 Ideas and 10 Tips for Family Devotions

Article by Tim Challies

A new year is just about upon us, and as it dawns, we have a new opportunity to lead our families in devotions. Whether you’ve been utterly consistent or mightily struggling, here are 10 ideas and 10 tips that may help as you consider the year to come.

Ten Ideas for Family Devotions

Just Read the Bible. This is the simplest suggestion of all: Just read the Bible a book at a time. Younger children tend to do best reading narratives, but as children grow older they need the whole Bible. Consider reading the epistles slowly, a few verses per day, taking time to discuss and apply them. Or read all or some of the Psalms, or whatever else seems interesting and applicable. Don’t overthink it–just commit and read.

Read Big Beliefs!. David Helm’s Big Beliefs! is one of the favorite devotional books we’ve used as a family. It includes a daily reading plus a short devotional and a couple of optional discussion questions. It’s targeted at ages 8-12, but younger kids will be able to stretch up for it while older kids will be able to stoop down. It is framed around the Westminster Confession of Faith and teaches a broad systematic theology. We loved it!

Read Morning and Evening. It’s for good reason that Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Eveningremains a devotional classic. His reflections are deep, timely, and suitable for quick reading. You may have the best success with the edition edited and modernized by Alistair Begg. You may need to put some effort into finding a suitable and significant reading to go with each since Spurgeon’s devotions are typically based on a single verse.

Read the Narratives. We’ve found great value in reading (and re-reading and re-re-reading) the narrative (story) portions of the Bible. Yes, we read other parts, too. But the stories work so well. So why not read through the big picture of the Bible in 2019 by focusing on those parts. In the Old Testament, read Genesis, parts of Exodus (you might skip the building of the tabernacle, for example, and the giving of the ceremonial law), parts of Joshua (perhaps skipping the division of the land), Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, Esther, and so on. For the New Testament, focus on a couple of gospels and Acts. Read the passages aloud, one section or one chapter at a time. Ensure that each day you read enough for it to be significant but not so much that you lose the attention of the children. Over the course of a year you should be able to make your way through much of the Bible’s big story.

Read Around the Table. Sometimes it’s best for mom and dad to do the reading from their own Bible, and especially so when children are young. But as children get older and more adept at reading, it may be best to get each child a Bible so they can follow along. When you do this, you can have each person take a turn reading aloud. It may be too clunky to read one verse per person, but perhaps each person can read a few verses at a time. Or perhaps you can have one person read each day’s entire passage. This gets children comfortable with reading (and perhaps praying) in front of others while also pushing for deeper engagement with the text.

Read Long Story Short. Marty Machowski has released a number of excellent books that are ideal for family devotions, but I most-often recommend two of them: Long Story Short and Old Story New. Long Story Short is a family devotional program designed to explain God’s plan of salvation through the Old Testament and is suitable for children from preschool through high school. Old Story New is the sequel and walks children through the great truths of the Christian faith in the New Testament. Both include daily readings, discussion points, and prayer suggestions, and are designed to be completed in about 10 minutes per day. (You might also consider his book Wise Upwhich focuses on Proverbs.)

Focus on Proverbs. The proverbs contain timeless wisdom and are written specifically for young people. Young Christians need the proverbs! Proverbs are meant to be treated like a lozenge or hard candy, to be savored over time rather than quickly chewed up. Consider reading the proverbs slowly over the course of weeks or months. Read 5 or 6 each day, but pause on 1 or 2 of them, considering what they mean and how they can be practically applied. It’s unlikely you will ever read 5 or 6 without encountering at least 1 that is especially fitting for your family. We recently visited a family and joined their devotions to find they are reading the proverbs, then taking turns attempting to summarize each one in exactly 6 words—an exercise meant to make the children think well.

Read a Catechism. The majority of today’s Christians have forgotten about catechisms, but as believers we have quite a legacy with The Shorter Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, and others like them. The Gospel Coalition has combined the best of those two (while making them a bit more Baptist-friendly) with the New City Catechism. Catechisms approach the Christian faith in a question and answer format and invariably include Scripture to go along with them. If you structure your time around a catechism, do ensure you give attention to an associated Scripture passage.

Mix It Up. Consider deliberately mixing up your devotions for 2019. Perhaps spend a month reading a book of the Bible, then follow with a devotional book for a while. Maybe through the summer you can switch to the Proverbs, then head back to reading an epistle as you head into fall and the gospels as you approach the Christmas season. Variety is the spice of life, right? Variety will keep your children engaged and, equally important, keep their parents engaged.

Ten Tips for Family Devotions

Here are ten tips related to family devotions.

1. More important than how you do family devotions is that you do family devotions.

2. Keep family devotions simple, especially when starting out. Five engaging minutes are far better than 20 rambling ones.

3. Family devotions is not only about gaining knowledge but also about establishing patterns and displaying priorities.

4. The foundation of family devotions is simple: read and pray. Better said: read, teach, and pray.

5. Family devotions don’t need to be fun, but they must not be drab either. Focus on engagement, not entertainment or the mere transfer of information.

6. The benefit of family devotions is not only gaining knowledge but also relating to God together as a family.

7. Do not grow discouraged if your children look bored. Measure long, not short, and expect your kids to behave like kids.

8. Ask for tips on family devotions from others in your local church. Glean from their successes and false starts.

9. Expect that God will work through family devotions but do not demand that his work take a certain form.

10. Dad, take responsibility for family devotions. Lead your family by leading them to the Word and leading them in prayer.

Other Resources

Finally, here are a couple of resources you may find helpful:

• How We Do Family Devotions

• The Art of Godliness, Episode 3: Family Devotions

• Why We Fail at Family Devotions

• Worship Like a Puritan (an interview with Dr. Joel Beeke)

Posted at: https://www.challies.com/resources/10-ideas-and-10-tips-for-family-devotions-in-2019/?fbclid=IwAR3Y7t38UadsBOu2jEFERVjWpa3wf_f9RgQEPPj7HCsbFRWm27r-1qNicCc

Are We Really in Danger of Making an Idol of the Family?

Article by Kevin DeYoung

“One of the acceptable idolatries among evangelical Christians is the idolatry of the family.”

That’s what I tweeted last week. To be honest, I didn’t think much about it. I’ve said similar things in sermons for the past decade, and I’ve tweeted similar things before. But this time—I was later told by friends who track with Twitter more closely than I do—the statement took on a life of its own as this one sentence was liked 1,600 times and bandied about on social media for the next few days. Unknown to me, I was (depending on who you ask) suddenly saying something wonderfully courageous or terribly misguided.

So let me clarify.

As far as I can tell, I first uttered this statement (or something close to it) in a 2010 sermon on Mark 3:31-35 entitled Jesus’s Real Family. The tweet itself comes from a more recent sermon on the miracle at Cana in Galilee. My point in both cases was that a commitment to family must not come before a commitment to God.

I began the Mark 3 sermon by noting two competing notions of the family in our culture: family as straight jacket (as in the 1998 film Pleasantville) or family as center (as in the 2000 film The Family Man). In one view, the family keeps you from everything you really want. In the other view, the family promises to give you everything you really want. Jesus promoted neither of these views. There’s no doubt the second view is much more common among Christians, and it does overlap with some Christian virtues. But it too gets some crucial things wrong when it comes to the family. I argued back in 2010 (and would argue the same today) that, according to the Bible, the family is good, necessary, and foundational, but not ultimate.

The Mark 3 sermon focused on those two words—“not ultimate”—because that was Jesus’s emphasis in verses 31-35. In Jesus’s view of the family: family ties don’t get you in, family doesn’t come first, and God’s family is open to all (that is, open to everyone who does the will of God and takes Jesus on his own terms).

There are certainly ways in which speaking of “the idolatry of the family” would be a step in the wrong direction. I’m happily married with (soon) eight children. I am most definitely a family man (and have a 15-passenger van to prove it). I would never suggest that the real problem in the world today is that parents love their kids too much or that churches are doing too much to support the family or that what really ails our culture are too many high-functioning families. In a world hellbent on redefining marriage and undermining the fundamental importance of the family, Christians would do well to honor and support all those trying to nurture healthy families.

And yet, virtually every pastor in America can tell you stories of churchgoers who have functionally displaced God in favor of the family.

• Parents who go missing from church for entire seasons because of Billy’s youth soccer league or Sally’s burgeoning volleyball career.

• Committed Christians who would never dare invite a college student or international over for Thanksgiving or Christmas because “the holidays are for family.”

• Longtime members who can’t be bothered to serve on Sundays or reach out to visitors because the whole family always gathers at grandma’s for lunch.

• Kids and grandkids who think they should be accepted into membership or be in line for baptism because their parents and grandparents have been pillars of the church.

• Churches that implicitly (or explicitly) communicate that marriage is a necessary step of spiritual maturity.

• Christians of all kinds who will jettison their theology of marriage or their convictions about church discipline once their children come out of the closet or embrace other kinds of (unrepentant) sin.

The idolatry of the family can be a real problem, either from the church that ignores singles and gears everything toward married couples with children, or from the individual whose practical commitments underscore the unfortunate reality that blood is usually thicker than theology.

God has given us many gifts in this life. Money is a gift. Sex is a gift. Work is a gift. Athletic ability and musical skill are gifts; so are intelligence and beauty. No one doubts that all of these good things can be idols. Just like the family. The conjugal family—one man and one woman whose covenant union produces offspring—is profoundly good, a necessary and foundational element of God’s creational design. But it is not ultimate. At least not if we are defining family as the natural relationships we have by marriage and blood, rather than the supernatural relationships we have by the blood of Christ.

Posted at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/really-danger-making-idol-family/