From Dream to Deliverance
Saturday, September 18, 2004
My Prayer Today
Heavenly Father, As we conclude this week of considering how You bring our dreams to deliverance in the area of our families, I thank You that You desire to be the head of our family, and a ready participant in it! I pray that You will fill me with Your Holy Spirit that I may be a child who reflects Your grace, love and forgiveness in all my relationships. I pray in particular that you will strengthen my biological family near and extended, my church family, and your family of faith throughout the world. I pray that You will use me in whatever way will bring You the most glory and honor. Guide my thoughts, words and actions, that whatever I do will draw others to notice You, my Heavenly Father. I ask this in Jesus’ name, and for the sake of His growing family! Amen.
God's Word For Me Today
Ephesians 5:21-28a; 6:1-4
21And further, you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. 23For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior. 24As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything.
25And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her 26to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God’s word. 27He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies.
1Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. 2“Honor your father and mother.” This is the first of the Ten Commandments that ends with a promise. 3And this is the promise: If you honor your father and mother, “you will live a long life, full of blessing.”
4And now a word to you fathers. Don’t make your children angry by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction approved by the Lord.
Reflecting on God’s Word
What is the best part of being a member of God’s family?
Thoughts...Children, Obey Your Parents - Revisited...
Over the years many folks who have come to know our family have asked me this question, “How did your children turn out so well when you are a pastor?” The question is certainly a backhand compliment. The assumption being made is that since I am a pastor it is unusual that Abby and Emmy have turned out “so well.” I understand the question to a degree, since I have known a handful of children belonging to pastors who have been somewhat less than well-behaved or obedient. But I have a question of my own: Why would folks assume that the children of a pastor would turn out to be disobedient, or unruly, or even as non-believers? I think I have an answer. Sometimes pastors have their priorities mixed up, just like other folks can have their priorities mixed up. Sometimes pastors assume that church work=God’s work. A lot of people make that assumption. In fact, over the years a lot of church people have apologized for cutting back on church work, because they assume that it means cutting back on God’s plan for their lives. The reality is sometimes church work is just busy work. Sometimes church work distracts us from the true work of God in our lives. If we are parents, then HOPEFULLY we are or have been spouses. That means we have at least two priorities who come after God, and before whatever work it is that we have been called by God to do. God ALWAYS comes first. He comes before spouses, children, or anything. But after our relationship with God, our spouses come before anything else. God said so in Genesis one. Remember, that he told us that we are to leave our family of origin and “cleave” to our spouses, and that the two become one. So, our priority order is God first. Spouse second. After that come our children if we have children, because children are a gift from the Lord, and a trust from the Lord. We are to train them up in the way they should go, so that when they are old they will not depart from it. After that, comes whatever vocational calling God has placed on our lives. In my case, and in the case of all pastors that vocation is serving Jesus Christ in and through the church. For someone else it may be serving Jesus in and through digging ditches, or teaching children, or working in a hospital or any of hundreds of other things.
The challenge is that sometimes we think that by working 80 or 90 hours a week we are “providing” for our families. I used to work those kinds of hours, and Abby remembers it—not fondly I may add. She doesn’t remember me being around for a lot of things that were important to her. Over the years, I have resolved to see that change, and it has. Balancing family, church, work, etc… is a myth—a MYTH. Once cannot balance these things, and ought not to try. Jesus said, “Seek FIRST the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and everything else will be added to it.” This is not balance. God is FIRST. He is THE priority. When we try to “balance” our lives we end up frustrated, because God is first, spouse is second, children are third, and everything else comes in somewhere after that. Providing for our family is a part of putting God first, spouse second, and children third, but if it becomes our first priority, then we are missing it in a way that will have serious consequences.
Working in the church is important for all of us, so long as the work is given to us by God, that we are gifted and skilled for it—or believe that God wants us to do it as a way of serving Him and others—and as long as it does not provoke our children to anger, or disrespect or show a lack of love for our spouses. Some would say, “Why is a pastor saying that church work isn’t as important as family? God comes first.” I go back to my earlier point—all church work is NOT God’s work. Our “job” is to discern what God is calling us to do, and then do it—regardless of what arena of our lives the task may fall. If we do His will, we cannot go wrong! As parents the greatest gift we can give our children is to love God completely, and our spouses fully, and them unreservedly, and to show them that our work is an outflow of God’s gifting and shaping in our lives. As we live that kind of life our children will truly be blessed and so will we. May we seek God’s will in all we do, so that He may be glorified in it!